From The 215 To The 512

That's the route Ray Benson took. The leader of Western Swing band Asleep at the Wheel grew up in Springfield, Montgomery County - back when that was in the 215, I believe - and now he's a cardboard cut out at the Austin airport welcoming wayfaring strangers to South by Southwest conference and festival week.

I arrived in Ray's cowboy booted footsteps this afternoon, welcomed at Austin-Bergstrom by not only the two dimensional Benson, but also the statue of pioneering African American congresswoman Barbara Jordan that sits by the baggage claim area, amid a sea of hand painted guitars. Not to mention Akina Adderley & the Vintage Playboys, who were doing a quite nice swing-blues version of George Gershwin's "Summertime" at the airport's Welcome to Austin stage. Well thank you very much, it's a pleasure to be here.

Even with all that, though, I still didn't feel I had really arrived until I sat myself down at a picnic table outside the Austin Convention Center with my schedule in hand and heard a pair of duelling accordions tooting away on the Clash's "Should I Stay Or Should I Go." Turns out it was a pair of squeeze box squeezers named Joey DeVilla and Jon Grossman, who had only met moments before.

Grossman plays in the band Uncle Lucius, and he jsut moved here from Kentucky four months ago. "Once you're here, you don't want to leave," he said. DeVilla is a self-described "developer evangelist" for Microsoft in town for the winding down Interactive conference who uses his accordion as a social networking ice breaker. It's working. After "Should I Stay," they stuck around, and Grossman sang Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home."

Previously: Bigger Lovers at Johnny Brenda's