Featured photo by Liliana Manyara
Story by Destiny Mizell
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Audio production students alongside three department professors flew to Austin, Texas, on Tuesday to attend South by Southwest’s annual music festival.
Spending four days at the festival, this served as Middle Tennessee State University’s first time collaborating with SXSW. Professor Frank Baird spearheaded the project with support from Professor Mike Hanson and adjunct Professor Chris Collins.
The purpose of the trip aimed to instill crew culture and event safety, vital aspects of touring life that are learned through action.
Crew culture is about timeliness. Getting through TSA and operating as a group not only at the airport, but throughout the festival. Navigating uncertainties. Coordinating early mornings, long days and late nights. Having a buddy system. The list goes on.
“Crew culture is unique to the professional touring industry,” Baird said. “A lot of it is the ability to hang. That’s something that I teach in my classes. You show up early, you have to be personable, you just need to hang out.”
In order to obtain admission to SXSW’s music festival, the students had to volunteer around 40 hours. The volunteer shifts sharpened the students’ knowledge on event safety through reporting incidents and crowd control.
“They’re getting a look at what a music festival consists of: crowd control, security aspects, interaction with patrons and even interaction with talent and behind the scenes folks,” Collins said. “They’re seeing what actually goes into an international festival like South by Southwest.”
The ten students are in Baird’s Advanced Sound Reinforcement class. The upper-division course takes a comprehensive look at sound enforcement and live entertainment; This entails rigging fundamentals, entertainment electricity, event safety and more.
Originally, the students thought they would be mixing shows among fulfilling other technical duties at SXSW. Due to miscommunications, the students ended up volunteering in conference sessions where they scanned badges, monitored capacity and ensured safety protocols.
This altered the coursework planned for the week. Instead of hands-on audio production, the students learned through observation. Their new assignments called for taking photos and writing reports on how technology is used to support live bands; The criteria includes covering sound, lights, video and safety at the venues.
Devin Smithwick found observing to be beneficial to his career growth.
“I’m glad to hear and see a lot of live mixes being done because that is something I’ve realized I need to work on,” Smithwick. “There is still a lot we can get out of the trip.”
Though the students did not get the opportunity to assist in their preferred fields, other learning benefits rewarded them. The trip provided real-world insight to touring life on a broader scope than what the students would have originally received from the classroom. They also savored the food scene, city life and music venues.
Outside of crew culture and event safety, class members utilized their experience to develop professionally. Jack Charlson, a junior who aspires to work with live sound, learned the value in uplifting others in such a bustling environment.
“I learned how important it is to make others feel important,” Charlson said. “One of the crew managers remembered my name, the person I was working with had an outgoing personality and scanning badges with a smile goes a long way.”
The students are leaving the experience with well-rounded professionalism and stories that they will share for a lifetime.
The university hopes to continue building its relationship with SXSW.
“I hope this derives a relationship that is good for MTSU students and South by Southwest,” Collins said.
To contact Lifestyles Editor Destiny Mizell and Assistant Lifestyles Editor Shamani Salahuddin, email lifestyles@mtsusidelines.com. For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com, or follow us on Instagram at MTSUSidelines or on X at @MTSUSidelines.
