2009 Music Showcase

MUSIC: Wednesday 18 March - Sunday 22 March 2009

Registration for showcasing in 2009 opens sometime in August. Stay tuned for details.

SXSW 2008 Australian & New Zealand Artists
About Visas & SXSW
Download the September 2007 Music Brochure (700KB)

SXSW 2008 Australian & New Zealand Artists

Australia

The Bang Gang Deejays (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
Kate Bradley / The Goodbye Horses (Brisbane AUSTRALIA)
The Chevelles (Perth AUSTRALIA)
Cut Copy (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Ash Grunwald (Torquay AUSTRALIA)
Justice Yeldham (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
Paul Kelly (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Naked On The Vague (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Old Man River (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
The Panics (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Chris Pickering (Brisbane AUSTRALIA)
Something With Numbers (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
The Stems (Fremantle AUSTRALIA)
The Vines (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
Whitley (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Xno Barbequex (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
Yves Klein Blue (Brisbane AUSTRALIA)

New Zealand

Die! Die! Die! (Dunedin NEW ZEALAND)
Liam Finn (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
Rodney Fisher (New Plymouth NEW ZEALAND)
Gasoline Cowboy (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
Katchafire (Hamilton NEW ZEALAND)
The Mint Chicks (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
The Ruby Suns (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
Hollie Smith (Wellington NEW ZEALAND)
Wing (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)

The Australian BBQ	The Living End at the Australian BBQ 2006	The Grates at the Australian BBQ 2006

About US Visas and SXSW

In answer to visa questions, this article below and the tips outline many issues. Please understand that as the SXSW rep, I can NOT deal with any visa problems or inquiries beyond this extensive information below. Applications for SXSW showcases open September 1 and close October 26--it's best to get your application online at http://www.sxsw.com and send your suporting material as early as possible as over 7000 bands apply for a limited 1200 showcase slots.

If you are travelling to the US to attend a convention, for business meetings or pleasure, you do not need a visa (so long as you are not earning money, not working with a performing artist playing in the US or not staying over 90 days). For Australian & NZ citizens, the Visa Waiver program is in effect. Info at http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html. For those going to Canada, it's a different story, more relaxed but to get into the US from Canada, you still have to conform to all US Immigration requirements

Musicians performing for pay, or in a public venue whether paid or not must obtain a P1 Visa. If the artist is performing for a person or entity that supplies hotel, airfare or other consideration, it is considered earning and a P1 visa must be obtained. Details at US Government site at http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/temp_1305.html and more specifically at http://www.uscis.gov/lpBin/lpext.dll/inserts/slb/slb-1/slb-20/slb-457/slb-551?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm#slb-act101a15pi and http://www.uscis.gov/lpBin/lpext.dll/inserts/slb/slb-1/slb-10903/slb-17369/slb-19740?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm#slb-8cfrsec2142p

SXSW makes an enormous effort to get all invitations out to international artists during the month of December. They make this effort to give artists the opportunity to start applying immediately for work visas within the required 90-100 day turnaround time. The processing time for petitions filed without using the fast-track program can be anywhere between 30 and 150 days, depending on various factors.

All visa applications must be made directly with the US Consulates or Embassies in Australia or NZ. A nonimmigrant visa application can only be filed at a consulate after the petition that was filed by a US entity, in which the entity, the US based "immigration agent" or a US attorney has received notification that the petition has been approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The USCIS was formally known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Visa Tips

Do not underestimate the costs, the challenges and the time involved in securing US work visas so act immediately you receive your invitation. We recommend you seek informed advice from one of the three agencies listed in the invitation: RAZCo Visas in NYC, Tamizdat in Prague/NYC and Global Action Immigration Services in Los Angeles. (two contacts below). As examples of costs, charges by agents in the US range from US$750-US$2500 per group on average (not including consular and filing fees).

If you apply for a visa with less than 90 days turnaround you may have to pay a $1,000 premium charge to the USCIS authorities.

US Department of Homeland Security regulations require that, as of October 26, 2004, all overseas posts collect finger scans from people applying for visas. As finger scans can only be collected in person, this will mean that all visa applicants will be required to apply for a visa in person through a prearranged appointment at their relevant Embassy or Consulate.

From October 26, 2004, all citizens from the 27 Visa Waiver Program countries seeking to enter the U.S. for temporary business or tourism/pleasure (B status), without obtaining a visa stamp, will be required to present a machine readable passport.

Visa specialists for the US include

RON ZEELENS, Esq.
RAZCo Visas
254 West 54th Street, 14th Flr.
New York, New York 10019
USA Tel: 212-757-1289 fax 212 586 5175 ron@razcovisas.com

Tamizdat http://www.tamizdat.org/services.php
Matthew Covey
Tamizdat US
P.O. Box 20618
New York, NY 10009
P: +1.212.260.8444
F: +1.413.513.1157
Mobil: +1.646.327.0885
matthew@tamizdat.org
www.tamizdat.org

----And now an article on visa issues that points out some pitfalls-----

Locked Out
How visa procedures have blocked European musicians from the U.S. since 9-11
by Douglas Heingartner in The Village Voice New York Newspaper
July 15th, 2005 5:45 PM

Tales of musicians from nations like Syria and Cuba being kept at bay by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS) have become commonplace since 9-11. But European and Canadian musicians, too, are finding the consular walls unmanageably high.

Veteran U.K. anarcho-punks Subhumans, who finally landed a gig at B.B. King Blues Club July 19, had been successfully touring America since the early 1980s when they applied for new visas last July, assuming they were leaving more than enough time to get their paperwork in order for their scheduled tour of the U.S. that autumn. But when the U.S. embassy in London still hadn't processed their documents by mid October, Subhumans had to call off the first half-dozen of their stateside shows and then rebook an expensive set of last-minute (and non-refundable) plane tickets.

No wonder so many acts are now looking to other shores. Part of the reason is purely financial: Filing fees, travel to the local consulate, legal help, and what Ian Smith of the U.K.'s Musicians' Union calls "the thousand-dollar bribe" for premium processing can quickly add up to two grand per head. And even then there's no guarantee of getting a visa, which itself is no guarantee of getting in: The border officer at the point of entry makes that call. Figure in up-front costs for promotion and advertising, and it soon becomes untenable for some musicians to continue playing here.

At least the USCIS steers clear of any obvious political or musical profiling: No-gos hail from all genres, with metal from Canada (Cryptopsy, Into Eternity) and Norwegian (Nightwish, Marduk, Entombed, Satyricon) perhaps the hardest hit. When the drummer for Swedish death metalers Dimmu Borgir revealed a decade-old conviction for bicycle theft, that was enough to get him bumped from their upcoming U.S. tour, in fear immigration officials would otherwise nix the whole band. "We couldn't take the risk," says their guitarist Silenoz.

Mainstream acts have had their troubles too: British pop groups including the Libertines and Cooper Temple Clause have tussled with the U.S. visa man, as have eastern acts like Czech avant-punkers Sunshine and Slovakian Beatles-tribute band the Backwards. Not even marquee names like Kylie, Sting, and Blur have proven immune. "We had a situation very recently where George Michael was asked to queue," said Smith, of the Musicians' Union, "but Grosvenor Square [site of the U.S. embassy in London] decided that it would be quite a good idea just to get him in through the back door."

But smaller bands can't always afford the premium-processing needed to open doors like that. Bill Bragin, director of Joe's Pub, says that since the extra grand "can really make or break a tour," some have decided to forgo the whole process. "A thousand dollars just isn't worth it. They won't make that money back."

Phone calls to consular officials at $21 (15 euros) a pop don't help either. Dutch guitarist Peter Visser of Holland's indie-rock Bettie Serveert recently told a local music site he'd had to make seven of them for the band's upcoming tour.

"It's really harder now," says Alix Madarasz, the French American manager of Parisian techno label F Com. "It just makes you feel you're not really wanted in the U.S." With visa procedures that sometimes require artists to produce bank, phone, or property records, she says, "some of the guys just don't feel like going anymore."

One of those guys is the label's star DJ Laurent Garnier, who very publicly canceled a U.S. tour scheduled for March because of what he called on his website "completely unreasonable demands" that now make it "almost impossible for an artist to come and perform in the United States."

And the strong euro makes ignoring the U.S. easier than ever. "We are dealing in a global market for the leading artists, whose schedules are completely full and who have the ability to choose among the many offers they have," says Marc Scorca, president of the trade organization Opera America. "My concern is that they will choose not to come to the United Sates because it's just too difficult."

Some evidence indicates that's already happening. CMJ showcase manager Chris White says his festival has definitely featured less foreign talent of late. When he started six years ago, he says, bands had "a willingness to do whatever it took to get over here." But since the visa procedures have toughened up, he says, "They're more willing to say, 'We just won't do this, never mind.' If you can tour Europe without any hassle, certainly you're gonna think twice about touring the States."

British singer-songwriter Julian Dawson, for example, had breezed through the visa process for most of the 1990s-bolstered by a major record deal with BMG-until his luck ran out last year: His visa got held up and gigs were lost. Now, he says, "There's very much the feeling, 'Do I have to be known in Denver?' And that's a new feeling for me because I've focused very strongly actually on America. It's a big place to crack, and I've put a lot of work into it. I'm very sad to let it go. But my feeling at the moment is that it's being made next to impossible."

And imbalanced. "It's so easy for Americans to play in the U.K.," he says. "Right now, England is awash with singer-songwriters from Austin and Tennessee and New York and Boston. It costs them 90 pounds," he said. "It's very unevenly weighted at the moment."

To Smith, whose union has been among those lobbying the British government to redress the disparities, "It's still a lot longer this end to the States than it is the States here. And if you have the wrong surname, and if your parents were born in the wrong country, there are still problems."

Such visa snags can be "surreal and farcical," says Davey Ray Moor, the Australian-Brit songwriter formerly with London-based Bacharach revivalists Cousteau. Moor happened to be born in Lebanon, where his father was stationed as an accountant for the U.N., and the Beirut label on the songwriter's passport was enough to flag his 2002 visa application for six extra weeks of vetting. Worse, in the '80s-"the '80s being a rather pretentious time"-he'd changed his name from Moore to Moor: "I thought that taking the E off it would give it a whiff of mystery and intrigue, but it probably confirmed in the mind of some visa bureaucrat that I was kind of a sultry foreigner." The hold-up meant he'd eventually miss Cousteau's U.S. tour.

There are some signs of change, though. USCIS waiting times are gradually dropping, and up-to-date info is quickly posted to the agency's site. The service center in Vermont, which handles all requests for the Northeast, now routinely processes visas in under a month-even in cases where the applicant opts not to pay extra for premium processing. "I've been doing this for seven or eight years, and it's never been that fast," says Matthew Covey of Tamizdat, an organization that helps foreign musicians sort out their paperwork. "They're stricter, but there's a much clearer sense of what they're looking for. It used to be that it was a matter of how much you'd scream or cry or cajole. Now it's a much more systematic process."

Virginia-based immigration lawyer Jonathan Ginsburg agrees. "The U.S. consulates in general are doing their utmost to accommodate the arts, who really do get a degree of attention way out of proportion to the actual numbers involved." When a rock star is delayed, he says, "you're sure to read about it somewhere," and those who lack bureaucratic finesse "are the ones normally who will get themselves in the most trouble, and who will respond in the most hysterical manner."

Indeed, the "forced to cancel" mantra that accompanies many visa stories can ring false, with musicians sometimes playing the evil-empire card to cloak their own administrative failures. "Because the immigration service is faceless," says Covey, "I know for a fact that they frequently take the fall for managerial fuck-ups. I could tick off five fairly high-profile cases right now that I know that's exactly what happened."

But he's loath to name names. According to Nigel McCune of Britain's Musicians' Union, "the vast majority of artists who are relying on their career to take off in the States at some point are not really prepared to go on record about this," in fear that "whenever their name is mentioned, some red light is gonna go off and say they're the ones who were dissing the USCIS."

But below we have links to interesting articles on the event for your perusal:

A Musician's Perspective of SXSW 2003 is a valuable guide for those intending to showcase or attend

An excellent article on how to use Conferences & Festivals with a particular analysis of SXSW

From a US PR, comments and an article on how to take full advantage of all the SXSW opportunities