Carolina Chocolate Drops - Austin Convention Center Day Stage, SXSW, Austin TX - March 19, 2010

[from Durham, NC] a top show – their album is called ‘Genuine Negro Jigs’ and that’s a pretty perfect description – this show was being broadcast live over a radio station in Chicago – the formal setting of chairs and big cameras and big lights might have made them uncomfortable because all three sat stiff and unsmiling while they were waiting to play – they came alive with a vengeance once they started to play, adding dancing and facial expressions and stories to the music – ended up being an incredibly charismatic band - in addition to encompassing all artistic aspects of the music, they embrace it anthropologically, which is transmitted to the crowd with little spoken bits in between each song

– they alternated through finger clackers, dobros, banjos, fiddles, a jug and a kazoo – they encouraged the audience to sing along to their first song ‘Don’t Get Troubled in Your Mind’ – they got their next song ‘Georgia Buck’ from Joe Thompson, an old guy who taught them a lot of what they know – they switched into early jazz with Papa Charlie Jackson’s ‘Your Baby Ain’t Sweet Like Mine’ – highlights: 1) ‘the jug solo’ as Rockboy called it, 2) Rhiannon’s barefoot tap-style dancing, and 3) realizing the kazoo is responsible for that wacky old-timey vaudeville sound