At the South by Southwest festival in Austin this week, I had the honor of moderating two fascinating panels,  “The Transformation of Music Sync: When the Songwriter Becomes the Screenwriter,” with CAA agent Stephanie Langs, Calle 13′s Eduardo Cabra, Warner Chappell Music’s Rich Robinson, and pop songwriter Justin Tranter (pictured above), and “Fan-First Solutions for Fair Ticketing in Live Entertainment” with DICE’s Russ Tannen, NIVA’s Dayna Frank, and Newport Festivals Foundation’s Deb Girard.

If you were unable to make it to Texas, full audio of both panels is available below! Thanks to all of the participants for the great conversation and to SXSW for having me.

Cas Haley on America’s Got Talent. (Photo: Trae Patton/NBCU Photo Bank)

Singer-songwriter Cas Haley was a standout on Season 2 of America’s Got Talent, making it all the way to second place (behind ventriloquist Terry Fator) with his covers of “Walking on the Moon” by the Police and Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine.” He’s since released four independent albums, but if you’re wondering why he didn’t go the major label route, it’s because he literally went into hiding from the series’ Simon Cowell-affiliated record company, Syco.

“What I did was, I ignored them for about six months. They wanted an album out by Christmas,” Haley revealed this week during a recent South by Southwest festival panel, “Now What? Life After Reality Singing Competitions,” that also included The Voice Season 1 semifinalist Nakia and American Idol Season 6 runner-up Blake Lewis. “A day after the show was over, I was supposed to be going to meetings; they were introducing me to people that were going to be songwriters on my album. That was a wake-up call, right there. I was like, ‘I am a songwriter. I really care about me being authentic with my art. This is not the place for me.’

“The second day after the show was over, instead of going to the meeting, I flew home and I changed my phone number. True story.”

Haley explained that he’d “grown fearful and untrustworthy” during his time on AGT, which he’d only reluctantly tried out for after a well-meaning friend set up a private audition. (“I really was one of the people that really didn’t like reality TV before I auditioned. My wife loved it, and I was always sort of hating on it.”) He soon had a “rude awakening” when he “realized that it was about good TV and not about maybe doing the right thing,” after he claims producers exploited a young contestant.

“She was probably 8 years old,” Haley recalled. “The producers in the holding room tell all of us, ‘Jasmine made it through.’ Jasmine walks through the doors, everybody claps: ‘Congratulations!’ And Jasmine didn’t make it through. They get the reaction of this 8-year-old girl sort of in that moment of everybody congratulating her, and I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know about this.’ … Maybe they made a mistake, but to me it seemed like it was set up.”

Haley also felt uneasy about the show “pushing people through that obviously were a little unstable,” like “Boy Shakira,” an aspiring female impersonator who was presented as a joke. “I think they’re playing with fire, and that sort of weirded me out. That’s when I sort of stopped — like, ‘I don’t trust these people.’”

And so, when Haley was informed that the show’s powers-that-be wanted to rush out an album with him, he panicked. “What that meant was they were going to exercise all their options,” Haley explained. “Their options is the thing. They have you sign into all these different options, which in total makes a 360 deal where they have your performances capped, they have your merchandising, they have every aspect of revenue from your career they’re involved in.”

Haley subsequently bolted. But he couldn’t hide forever. Months later, in Austin, Texas, America’s Got Talent caught up with him.

“Man, I was sort of freaked out, because they found me!” Haley chuckled. “In this city, at a gig, they just showed up — this guy named Paul who was going to be my manager. … They’re introducing me to my ‘manager,’ they’re introducing me to my songwriters, they find me after I just cut off communication, and I had to basically tell them to leave, because I was freaked out. It’s like someone who didn’t realize that they were so into ma and pa business just sold it, and these other people are coming in and taking control.”

Haley laughingly admitted that he “was in breach of everything” legally, but he didn’t know what he was getting into in the first place. “They gave us the contract [when the season started] and they basically said, ‘We need this back tomorrow,’” he said. “I didn’t even have a lawyer review anything. I just signed it all. The way that it was presented to me, it was pretty much in stone and that they probably wouldn’t be changing anything.”

Runner-up Cas Haley and winner Terry Fator on the America’s Got Talent Season 2 finale. (Photo: Virginia Sherwood/NBCU Photo Bank)

However, Haley later learned from his AGT castmate, Fator, that he’d actually had more negotiating power than he’d realized at the time. “[Fator] really had his s*** together, excuse my language. When he came into the show, he had an attorney and he was just really smart. He negotiated a lot of things throughout the show. Although they might not tell you that things are negotiable, there might actually be some stuff that if you can’t legally sign into all these different options, you might actually be able to get away with not doing it. Terry was one of the ones who really knew what he wanted, knew what he was after, and did it the right way.”

Thankfully, by the time the show hunted Haley down, he had his own lawyer, who extricated him from the contract. “They had me locked into like a five-album option. … I have to say, with all the negative stuff that I did experience, they didn’t shelve me [and prevent me from releasing music] — and they could have. So that was sort of a good deal. And I went on my way.”

Since then, Haley, who lives quietly on a farm in Paris, Texas, with his wife, two kids, and a bunch of pigs when he’s not touring, has enjoyed an indie music career. And over the years, he’s come to appreciate his time on AGT.

“I totally think the show was a blessing for my life. I don’t know if I would actually do it again, but I definitely think that it’s changed my life for the better,” he said. “I’ve learned so much. I think my negative experiences probably could have been averted if I would have actually thought about what I was getting myself into and studied it a little bit and really researched it. Anybody that’s looking to do these kind of shows, I think you really need to put in some serious thought, and you really, really need to know what you want.”

As for whether Haley recommends that young aspiring singers try out for shows like America’s Got Talent, American Idol, or The Voice, he said, “I think it’s different for each kind of different artist. If you’re looking for pop fame, yes. If you’re looking for a bump in some money, yes. If you’re looking for respect as a songwriter, I don’t know. You need to think about it.”

Watch a Facebook Live replay of the SXSW panel “Now What? Life After Reality Singing Competitions” below.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Lynyrd Skynyrd members Gary Rossington, Rickey Medlocke, and Johnny Van Zant attend the If I Leave Here Tomorrow movie premiere at SXSW with Ronnie Van Zant’s widow, Judy. (Photo: R. Diamond/Getty Images for CMT)

Many films have been made about beleaguered Southern rock legends Lynyrd Skynyrd, but lone surviving band founder Gary Rossington and current frontman Johnny Van Zant (younger brother of late original singer Ronnie) haven’t been too thrilled with the results. They disavowed Jake Tapper’s 2002 VH1 special Uncivil War, which focused on the group’s infighting, and in 2017 they even sued one ex-bandmate, Artimus Pyle, over his plans to make a Skynyrd biopic that would focus on the tragic 1977 plane crash that killed several Skynyrd members. But they say the CMT documentary If I Leave Here Tomorrow, which just made its premiere at this year’s South by Southwest festival, finally gets their story right.

“All the other documentaries were negative, and they really didn’t show how when we started, we were brothers,” Rossington tells Yahoo Entertainment. “We’d die for each other. We grew up together, you know? We were so happy, and it was a family. [Other films] made it sound like we were all mad at each other. It wasn’t like that at all.”

Watching If I Leave Here Tomorrow’s depiction of the band members’ onetime tight bond has been an emotional roller coaster for Rossington, who serves as the primary narrator of the film. “There’s a part at the beginning when [on/off Skynyrd bassist and guitarist] Ed King is talking about our song ‘Need All My Friends.’ Then it shows us, me and Ronnie looking right at each other, and it was like, all my friends are dead and gone. I just went, ‘Oh, my God.’ It’s just real sentimental to me,” he says.

“I see all the memories and they’re alive; they’re like jumping beans in my brain. It’s weird,” Rossington continues. “I won’t be shy to say I cried a few times — you can’t not, if you were part of it, you know? My daughters were all crying. They made me cry: ‘You never told us about this stuff, Daddy!’”

The documentary’s director, Stephen Kijak (We Are X, Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, Stones in Exile), made sure to focus on the good times as well as the bad, telling Skynyrd’s colorful origin story through rare interviews and never-before-seen archival footage. “Actually, this is something, funnily enough, that came from Artimus,” Kijak tells Yahoo. “One of the things he asked me to do when we told the story is, ‘Make sure everyone knows how goddamn funny they were.’ The happier times, the wilder times — they were just funny as hell.” Kijak notes that drummer Bob Burns, who died in a 2015 car accident, “practically runs away with the whole movie.”

“Bob was funny. Man, I loved him so much,” Rossington says wistfully.

Burns is obviously not the only loss that Lynyrd Skynyrd have suffered. Band members Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, and Ronnie Van Zant all died in the above-mentioned plane crash that took place in Gillsburg, Miss., on Oct. 20, 1977, just three days after Skynyrd released their fifth album, Street Survivors. There was no way for If I Leave Here Tomorrow to avoid that major, if horrific, chapter of the band’s saga. “Hey, that’s part of it, man,” Rossington shrugs.

“We don’t turn our back on it,” Kijak explains. “You kind of start out [the film] knowing it happened, and in the middle of the movie we actually visit the crash with a guy that was there to help with the rescue effort.”

The Skynyrd members, however, make it clear that they — understandably — had zero interest in taking part in that specific scene. “No. I’m never going to go there,” Johnny Van Zant, who took over lead vocal duties for Skynyrd in 1987, says of the site crash. “No. I’ve already been there, and I don’t want to go back,” says Rossington (who broke his arms, legs, wrists, ankles, and pelvis in the accident), shaking his head.

“But we don’t try to sensationalize or sentimentalize [the plane crash tragedy],” Kijak stresses. “It’s a fact, it happened, but what you come out with on the other side, we hope, is celebration and the inspiration that these guys left behind and are still carrying on.”

Some have claimed that Lynyrd Skynyrd is the unluckiest band of all time. Along with the deaths of Ronnie Van Zant, the Gaines siblings, and Bob Burns, guitarist Allen Collins was paralyzed in a 1986 car accident and died at age 37 in 1990. Bassist Leon Wilkeson died of chronic liver disease at age 49, and keyboardist Billy Powell also died young, at age 56, of an apparent heart attack. And 66-year-old Rossington, who got into an auto accident a year before the plane crash that inspired Skynyrd’s hit “That Smell,” notes that he now has a “lot of medical stuff. I’ve got a bad heart, and had heart surgery a few times, and a lot of stents — just unhealthy, and not just all from rock ’n’ roll. That’s the way my genes are, I guess.”

But Rossington and Van Zant, who will embark on their “Last of the Street Survivors” farewell tour this May, say they don’t feel unlucky. “I feel blessed to still be here, and that I got to go through any and all of it,” Rossington asserts. “We let life pick us up and shake us and squeeze us, and we tasted it, so I’m happy. I don’t think we’re ‘cursed’ at all.”

“No, not at all,” Van Zant adds. “I think you take any big family out here — go ahead, take a poll — and there’s going to be death, there’s going to be tragedy. Gregg Allman said it best. He said, ‘If you live long enough, you’re going to experience tragedy and triumphs.’ That’s what Lynyrd Skynyrd’s been, and what Allman’s been too. It wouldn’t be Lynyrd Skynyrd without that, you know? That’s God’s will and His way, and that’s why we’re sitting here today.”

Regarding any other major misconceptions about Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Zant jokes, “What, you mean like drinking or any of that? Well, all that s***’s true — and some of that is in the movie!” And as for what the late Skynyrd band members would think of If I Leave Here Tomorrow, he chuckles, “I think they’d like this one. With some other [films], like we said, they’d probably be looking for the director’s and producer’s ass! They’d be hunting them down.”

Rossington answers the latter question more seriously and open-endedly. “I don’t know what they would think,” he begins, “except that their songs and their music and Ronnie’s lyrics are still out there, meaning something and being played. That’s what we wanted when we started, when we were 15. We wanted to be a band like the Beatles and make the right music and have people hear it. So they’d be happy that we’re doing this. It’s all over in a minute.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Linda Perry performs at the Townsend on March 13 in Austin, Texas. (Photo: Lorne Thomson/Redferns)

Linda Perry started off as a ’90s rock trailblazer with 4 Non Blondes, then established herself as one of the most successful producers and songwriters in the business as she worked with fellow strong women like P!nk, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, Adele, and Courtney Love. But Perry is an anomaly in the business: A famous study from 2010 claimed women accounted for less than 5 percent of music producers and engineers, and Terri Winston from Women’s Audio Mission more recently said she thinks the number is even smaller than that. Furthermore, only six women have ever received a Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, and no woman has ever won that award. In the words of 4 Non Blondes’ biggest hit, what’s going on?

In Austin, Texas, this week to give a keynote address at the South By Southwest festival and support her protégés — 13-year-old singer-songwriter Willa Amai (who recently went viral after her cover of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” was featured in an Intuit QuickBooks commercial) and eponymous rock band Dorothy — Perry sat down with Yahoo Entertainment for an eye-opening conversation about the plight of women in music today.

Yahoo Entertainment: There has been a lot of talk recently about the lack of female record producers out there. You’re one of the few successful ones. Why do you think that is?
Linda Perry: I really don’t know, to be quite honest. I know that I work hard. Producing is a lot of f***ing work, and I put in a lot of hours. A lot of people call me a “machine,” and I don’t think a lot of men or women operate the way I do. But then you take the normal woman: I don’t think the hunger and the drive is there as much. It’s not a “sexy” position, being the producer. You have to be very bossy. You have to be very aggressive. And I think, right there, that takes a lot of women out.

As a female producer, have you ever felt resistance or disrespect from male artists, or from male studio colleagues?
There’s been a couple times. I’ve gotten attitude from a couple guys before. I just don’t let it affect me.

What, specifically?
Well, I actually didn’t even think about it as a guy/girl thing, but this was screwed up: I had gotten a job. I wasn’t “auditioning.” I actually got the job to produce a Green Day record [21st Century Breakdown]. … Billie [Joe Armstrong] was very confused about what they wanted to do. He had saw this documentary on me and Courtney [Love] and loved the way I was with her. We sat for three hours. He’s like, “I want you to do our next album. I feel you’ll be great at directing this,” blah, blah, blah. We talked, we talked. I sent him things to focus on, whatever. And then, three weeks in, I went to Oakland to their studio, and set it up over there. They hadn’t even been playing together live … I mean, in the studio together. They didn’t record in the same room together, since Dookie. And I’m like, “Oh, no, no, no, no. You guys got to get in the room together. I would make a ’60s type of album. You obviously love the Who. Why don’t you go make that album? Let’s focus on that.”

And then, three weeks later, I didn’t hear a peep from them. They didn’t return any of my phone calls. And then, I started seeing all this internet stuff come up about, “What the f***? You guys are working with Linda Perry, the pop producer?” And then it hit me: “Oh, they totally chickened out on having me come in and do this.” And hey, I’ll take it as maybe they felt I wasn’t the right person, but what did it in was that they never called me. I got fired without a phone call, without anybody telling me. They just disappeared. And that was pretty f***ed up. If I were Rick Rubin or anybody else, they wouldn’t have done that.

Rick Rubin’s amazing, by the way. I just need to say that. … But anyway, that was probably my first and only chick/dude thing where that got in the way. But it didn’t really affect me. I just was like, “OK, all right, just keep getting better at your craft.” [Editor’s note: At the time, Green Day’s management denied rumors, sparked by Love, that the band was working with Perry. Butch Vig ended up producing 21st Century Breakdown.]

You theorize that not enough women are putting themselves out there in a production role. What did you think about that comment from Recording Academy president Neil Portnow at the Grammys this year, when he said, “Women need to step up”?
I know Neil. He is a very, very nice man, and he is all about music. … I think what he was probably trying to say was, “Hey, ladies. Great. Now it’s time to step up. You have this avenue. The window, the door, is now open. Step up and run through it!” That’s probably what he was trying to say. But he didn’t say it well. I feel sorry for him, because I know he has a lot of respect for women — but it was his time to go. That’s the way it is. Sorry, dude. In this world, in this time right now, we don’t have second chances anymore.

All the award shows this year — Grammys, Oscars, Golden Globes — were really focused on #MeToo and #TimesUp. Do you feel we’re at a turning point in the entertainment industry right now?
Absolutely. We’re in a turning point in life right now. With this Trump guy, I mean, we are just in a terrible, terrible situation with just this chaotic energy and this total moron. I don’t think anybody can debate that. It’s like, at this point, even his followers know the guy is not very smart. But what he did, unknowingly, is woke everybody the f*** up. The country, the world, is now wide-awake. Everything is out in the open right now. We see the mean people, we see the racists, we see the nice people, we see the good intentions. We see the people who are workers, we see the people who are just riding the coattails. We see the f***ing murderers and the rapists. We see them all. They’re all coming to f***ing light right now. And now, what’s happening is, the world is uniting. And we haven’t had that in a very f***ing long time. And women are uniting, I think, for the very first time in a very, very long time.

Why do you say it is for the “first time in a long time”?
Women are a**holes to other women. They are. There’s a lot of jealousy: “I don’t want her opening up for me because she looks better that me.” There’s a lot of competition in the music business. I work with a lot of women, and I see it. I see the jealousy and the competitive nature. And now, it’s like we’re free of that. Women are getting together and going, “You know what? We’re far bigger, and we should be further along than we are, and maybe it’s time we f***ing get together and move this f***ing mountain together.” I think that’s what’s beautiful to see, and that is going to carry us a very, very long way. That’s what’s been needing to happen for a very, very long time.

The ’90s, when 4 Non Blondes came up, were a good time for women, though. There was Lilith Fair, and a lot of coed and female-fronted bands. I don’t know why the progress didn’t continue.
I think what happened was the pop came in, and [record labels] didn’t want to see the girls all bruised and dirty. They wanted a clean-cut girl. Britney Spears showed up. … And then bands like L7 weren’t considered valuable, because, “Well, gee, Britney Spears is making s***loads of money.”

Do you foresee a return to the rock idealism of the ’60s through the ’90s? Or music becoming more political?
Yeah, punk rock is coming back. We’re going to see a lot of that. We’re in very crucial time right now. Every time we have a bad president, great music comes from it. Incredible music is coming, and you can hear it now. And this new generation of girls, they want someone that they can actually become to represent them. Remember The Legend of Billie Jean? They want that girl. They want someone real. They want Willa. They want Dorothy. They want something strong to represent a survivor, a warrior, not a f***ing makeup queen. Those days are done. That’s over.

What is your advice to young women like Dorothy and Willa, who are new to the industry and need to be prepared for the struggle?
Well, I think in general you have to have a certain common sense in this business. If you’re not confident, people push you around. That’s it. It’s super-simple. We will always have bullies. The world will never be that amazing. It’s just never going to happen. It won’t be that evolved. But how we become evolved is by just standing our ground and being comfortable with who we are, and by being confident and moving forward.

Going back to you saying how there aren’t as many women who want to be record producers, do you foresee that changing as well?
Maybe. I mean, that’s the part I don’t know. I honestly don’t know why there aren’t more female producers out there. It could be also because it’s not in the DNA. Listen, I’m gay, right? In Los Angeles, there’s Santa Monica Boulevard, which has probably 100 f***ing guy bars. But there was one lesbian bar, the Palms — and the Palms went under. And everybody’s like, “Why?” And I’m like, “Because women aren’t loyal to the bar. They go out, they have fun for a moment, they meet their future wife, they get the U-Haul, buy a puppy, and they go f***ing watch movies until the breakup. And then they wonder why the bar isn’t there anymore, because ‘I want to go out and meet my next wife.’” The women bars close down because one, there’s no dedication and commitment, and two, lesbians are the worst tippers. But the [gay men] go out every f***ing day, barhop all over, and keep all those bars open.

So, how is this analogous to the producer situation we’re discussing?
Because what I’m saying is, it’s a lot of work, being a producer. It’s a lot of fighting, and you have to be very headstrong. You have to have a vision and be very opinionated, and I do not feel being a producer is at the top of women’s to-do list. It’s more, “I want to be a songwriter. I want to be a big star. I want to be an actress. I want to be a model.” You can probably sit in a room with 100 girls … and only a couple of them are going to say, “I want to be a producer.”

Back to the Grammy thing, few women have ever been nominated for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, and no woman has ever won.
Well, I just finished this amazing project. I can’t talk about it now, but I promise you when I can, you’ll be the first one I’ll call. It’s a pretty f***ing awesome project, and a lot of [male producers] wanted this one. A lot of the big-name dudes wanted this project, and they didn’t get it. I got it, and that was a big win for me. And I will be nominated next year for the producer award — actually, probably for several.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Rachael Ray at her South by Southwest Feedback party in 2016. (Photo: Gary Miller/Getty Images)

One of the hottest parties at Austin, Texas’s annual South by Southwest festival is celebrity chef Rachael Ray’s 3,000-capacity Feedback party, now in its 11th year, where the food is probably just as much a draw as the music. This year’s eats include Frank ’n’ Refried Beans, Pimiento Cheese Dogs, Serious Three-Meat Sloppy Joes, and Lil’ Veg-Head Corn Dogs. But when asked if her Feedback menu this year will include any “Lemonade,” Ray chuckles.

“I thought that was hilarious. I guess I looked at that as the most ultimate backward compliment — just the idea that anybody would think that I groove in a universe where I get to hang out with Jay-Z or Beyoncé or all that. To me it was like, ‘People think I’m cool enough to go to places where any of this would happen?’ It was so funny to me.”

Ray is referring to a bizarre yet amusing incident two years ago, when it was rumored that fashion designer Rachel Roy was “Becky With the Good Hair” — aka the other woman, presumably Jay-Z’s mistress, mentioned on Beyoncé’s Lemonade track “Sorry.” Particularly aggressive Bey fans mistook Ray for Roy and relentlessly attacked her on social media. Ray laughed it off — “the worst thing that had ever happened to [me and Roy] before this was that our dry-cleaning or our dinner reservations were confused!” she says — and even sent over a bottle of wine to Roy in an act of solidarity.

“I just felt weird, and [Roy] was the only one of them that I know of the people that were involved in the whole thing, so I said, ‘I’m so sorry I’m a part of this,’” recalls Ray. “Not judging any of what was going on within it. … I do not spend my time gossiping about people, because if I don’t sleep with you, and if I’m not related to you, then I truly don’t care how you live your life. I think it matters to the universe, but it certainly doesn’t matter to me. It’s none of my beeswax. No pun intended!”

Being trolled by thousands of Beyhive members would rattle most people, but the perpetually cheery lifestyle guru says, “When a weird anomaly comes along like the Lemonade thing, I guess I’m weirdly prepared for it.” Like anyone in the public eye, Ray has always had her haters, but she shrugs, “It doesn’t bother me anymore. It used to hurt my feelings. I used to go home and say, ‘Wow, maybe they’re right. Maybe I should really feel bad about myself.’” But she ditched that mindset, and over time she has won over her naysayers with hard work and an unflappable sunny attitude.

“I feel bad if anybody’s spewing hate anywhere. There’s just so little time on the planet; maybe we go around again, maybe we don’t. Why spend time putting negative energy out there? I believe if you put out negative, you will get negative ripples back; if you put out positive, hopefully you’ll get enough positive back to keep on going,” Ray explains. “Some of my most loyal television watchers for years were literally in a website called ‘I Hate Rachael Ray.’ I never hated them back. Eventually they kind of came to say, ‘I guess we have to give up. OK, we kind of like her. OK, she’s not going away.’”

Ray recalls winning over one detractor, fellow famous chef Anthony Bourdain, after he wrote a nasty comment on his blog expressing dismay that she’d booked one of his favorite bands, glam-rock legends the New York Dolls, to play her 2009 SXSW Feedback event. “I don’t know whether to go out and shoot a puppy, or send Rachael a fruit basket. It just does me no good at all to think of Rachael as a Dolls fan,” he griped at the time. Ray turned this into a teachable moment for Bourdain.

“I’ve always loved Tony Bourdain. I think he’s cool as hell. I’ve read everything he’s written. Which is kind of weird, because he didn’t for years care for me too much at all. I was his jump-the-shark,” she says. “He would write about me from time to time, and not say lovely things. That’s fine, and it never bothered me, but I was asked about it continuously: ‘What about Tony Bourdain? He hates you so much!’”

So after Bourdain made that snarky New York Dolls comment — but didn’t send his promised fruit basket — Ray “literally sent him a giant food basket from my friends at Agata & Valentina of snacks and fruits and things. The most giant basket ever! And he posted an open letter of public apology, that he had not given me many reasons to be kind back to him — an ‘OK, I guess I give up’ kind of thing. It was very sweet. I think that’s a great example of how you turn a table, and that’s important to me in life. Who knows how many tables you get to turn?”

Ray — who “fell in love with Austin 20 years ago; I got a girl-crush on the city” — admits that when she came up with the idea for Feedback years ago, she was worried about whether she’d be accepted by SXSW attendees, or if she’d catch similar flak. “I was petrified. Trying an event if you’re only known for being the girl who knows how to make dinner quick — an event that involves rock ’n’ roll bands? Would people hate me for even being there? Would they be like, ‘What is Rachael Ray doing at a rock ’n’ roll thing?’”

But ironically, while Ray may joke about not being “cool enough” to be a member of Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s inner circle, Feedback has become one of the coolest annual events at SXSW. The New York Dolls (whose Feedback set Ray says was “amazing”) are one of dozens of credible acts that have graced the party’s two stages; Blondie, De La Soul, the 1975, Anderson .Paak, Jimmy Cliff, George Clinton, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes, Wanda Jackson, Scott Weiland, Fitz & the Tantrums, Jenny Lewis, the Drums, the Bravery, She & Him, Jakob Dylan, and Green Day side-project Foxboro Hot Tubs have all performed. (Ray’s all-time favorite Feedback moment was Weezer’s closing set at last year’s bash.) So any SXSW-goers who once had doubts about Ray’s intentions, she says, “went and witnessed the event, had a good time, and some of them were like begrudgingly saying, ‘OK, it didn’t suck.’ And then some people were like, ‘Holy s***, this was terrific! This blew my mind!’”

Ray, a self-described “vinyl-phile” and lifelong music fan, says her mind was blown as well. “I’m just blown away that the bands that I respect so much want to come and play with us, legitimately. … The fact that I’ve been given this gift of access to artists, it makes me feel so humble.”

It’s Ray’s positive attitude — she calls it “mindfulness” — that drew her to Austin and keeps her coming back. “There was no ageism or sexism. I was so struck by how, in the middle of a very conservative state, there was this utopian empire of what it is to be an American, a city that celebrates individuality, small business, and an entrepreneurial spirit that keeps districts of the city weird,” she gushes. “That just struck me as such a beautiful environment, that music and art of every kind was so important to Austin’s culture as a community and that they were such social beings.” And she hopes that Feedback guests visiting Austin this week hold on to those good vibes.

“I believe that a good time should not just be for the rich and that every day should be an adventure, whether it’s trying a new spirit or a new dish, or turning left instead of right on your way home and finding a new alley or street,” she says. “Listening to music, not just on special occasions, but on a Thursday or a Tuesday. Life should be that for all of us. So make every day like what it is to be an Austinite: a celebration of you being on the planet and really getting a 360 experience of what it is to be human, sharing food and music and a cocktail and great art all at the same time. It’s just poetic to me.”

No word yet if Beyoncé (or Becky, or Bourdain) will make a cameo at Feedback 2018 this Saturday, but the official artist lineup features Dr. Pepper’s Jaded Hearts Club Band (an all-star Beatles tribute act comprising Muse’s Matt Bellamy and members of Nine Inch Nails, the Zutons, Jet, and the Last Shadow Puppets), Salt-N-Pepa, Girl Talk, Kurt Vile, Albert Hammond Jr., and the Cringe (led by Ray’s rocker husband, John Cusimano, who also creates the party’s cocktail menu). A fabulous, mindful time will surely be had by all.

“Feedback is my Christmas,” Ray says excitedly. “It really is. It’s the thing I look most forward to.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Singing competition shows are nothing new, but their popularity and permanence don’t seem to be fading any time soon. Originally hailed as a new way to break and develop undiscovered talent, the reality is most contestants leave before making a mark and without any support or guidance from the shows or labels involved. Find out how to prepare for what happens before, during and after the cameras are rolling. Moderated by me and featuring Nakia from The Voice, Blake Lewis from American Idol, and Cas Haley from America’s Got Talent.

Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/70036 to vote for this panel to take place at South by Southwest 2018!

On Hanson’s first hit single, “MMMBop” — which went to No. 1 in 27 countries, was nominated for two Grammys, and helped the brotherly trio’s major-label debut Middle of Nowhere sell 4 million copies in the U.S. alone — the teen-idol siblings harmonized the surprisingly existential line, “In an mmmbop they’re gone/In an mmmbop they’re not there.” But 20 years after that single’s breakthrough, the Hanson brothers, now music business veterans in their thirties, are still very much here, celebrating an incredible quarter-century as a band. And this past weekend, their career came full circle as they returned to Austin, Texas’s South by Southwest festival, where they were discovered on a softball field way back in 1994.

Returning to the baseball diamond here at @sxsw in #austin 23 years after our first visit #Hanson25 pic.twitter.com/5KLPuyVTP2

— HANSON (@hansonmusic) March 18, 2017

Sitting in a loft overlooking Austin’s bustling Sixth Street, Zac Hanson, 32, recalls that famous, life-changing SXSW moment — sort of pop music’s equivalent of the old Hollywood “Lana Turner was discovered at Schwab’s drugstore” urban legend, and definitely the sort of fairy tale that hardly ever happens at SXSW anymore.

“We weren’t invited to play a showcase, nor did we know anyone in Austin,” Zac says. “We basically just showed up and started busking in the streets. Pretty much just anyone we could find, we would say, ‘Excuse me, sir, do you work for a record company? We want to sing you a song — can we sing for you?’ It really wouldn’t matter, so we did it in the streets; we did it at the record-label industry softball games.”

“We were building a fanbase, and we couldn’t play in bars, of course, but we would play wherever people would listen,” explains middle brother Taylor, now 34.

Zac admits that many of the jaded showbiz types that Hanson encountered at SXSW weren’t impressed — or were just taken aback to see youngsters roaming the “Live Music Capital of the World,” in search of a record deal. “It was a wild kind of experience: ‘Kids, singing in the streets, alone? Didn’t someone call Child Services on you?’ I don’t know, it wasn’t like that. It was just real,” he shrugs.

And of course, the brothers’ mom and dad were totally on board. “If you met our parents, it would make sense,” Taylor chuckles. “There was a lot of trust, and there wasn’t any fear of [the music business]. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, if we walk down to this festival, all of a sudden drugs are going to be there, and you’re going to start doing coke at 10 years old!’ I think even in the most liberal, free-spirited families, people [have] this idea that you’re just going to be corrupted by starting young, by working young at things.”

“I actually think people need to start working younger!” laughs eldest brother Isaac, 36.

“There was always a cautiousness about it, like, ‘OK, that one guy’s shady, and that guy’s shady,’” Taylor continues, “but yeah, [our parents] were behind it.”

Whatever the risk might have been when the Hanson family journeyed from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Austin 23 years ago, the trip clearly paid off. The boys ended up at at a SXSW softball game, serenading a young lawyer, Christopher Sabec, accompanied by a boom box – and the rest was pop history.

“[Sabec] said, ‘I love what you’re doing; I want to be your attorney!’ We said, ‘We already have an attorney,’” Zac recalls. “He said, ‘Well, then, what do you need?’ And we said, ‘We need a manager.’ And he said, ‘OK. … I love what you’re doing so much, I’m going to figure out how to be a manager.’” Sabec quit his day job, moved to California, and “became the guy who helped us get signed. It was kind of a crazy thing.”

Taylor stresses, “The thing about milestones is, you don’t know until you’ve gone past them what things will stand out or what will be important. … You never would’ve thought that, going into the baseball diamond that day when it was hot as hell, that that would be anything to remember. But I do think that especially now, with technology and as we tweet out and share content and Facebook posts to our whole world, it’s important for young artists to have the experience of not just sitting in front of a YouTube camera, where no one can tell them anything they don’t want to hear and you can just delete the comments you don’t like.”

“Life doesn’t work that way,” notes Isaac.

“Just having to just stretch those muscles,” Taylor elaborates. “I mean, yes, you can be great and talented, and, yes, the world has changed and you can make a record on a laptop, but the exercise of hitting the streets and being in front of people and getting positive and negative feedback, and actually figuring out how to push past it, that would be a good lesson for artists. … We as artists need to be tough enough to not just wither when somebody says, ‘Eh, I don’t know if I get that,’ and still push past it. We learned that pretty early on.”

Taylor certainly knows what he’s talking about. Although Hanson came up in a pre-social media age, the band’s early career did coincide with the rise of the Internet, and online detractors were vicious, ridiculing the brothers’ pretty blond looks and dismissing them as a manufactured boy band or novelty act. They caught plenty of flak in real life, too.

“Hanson haters showed up [at our concerts] with their signs that said, ‘I hate you, you girls!’ — or whatever the heck they said,” laughs Zac. “We’d say, ‘Wow, this guy just drove down, spent the time to make a sign, so that he could spend six hours waiting in line just to show us a sign. … That moron just wasted his whole day, basically, dedicating his time to us.’”

“’Thanks for buying a ticket! That’s sad.’ We felt bad for him,” says Isaac.

Back on the subject of the Internet, ironically, despite all the online hate Hanson received in the ’90s, it was ultimately the Web that turned them into teen superstars. “When we first broke, the whole industry essentially was almost laughing off the Internet,” Taylor recalls. “You had MTV.com and Hanson — those were the two top music sites on the Internet, period. So our fans were among those early [adopters], and so when we needed to transition and start our label, having the connection with the audience directly through the Internet was one of the ways that we built that.”

And now, Hanson’s placement in a post-digital music industry is secure. In fact, they’re an industry unto themselves, with their own label (3CG Records); their own craft beer (the amusingly named MMMHops); their own music festival (Hop Jam, taking place May 21 in Tulsa); a new single, “I Was Born,” which they debuted at SXSW; and an upcoming 25th anniversary tour. Says Taylor, looking back on the band’s humble SXSW beginnings: “I’m definitely grateful that we learned about work ethic early on, just the idea that you’ve got to work at things. … And part of what’s really cool about having some history is, if you survive long enough — in this business especially, because it really is survival — you get to help frame the past, and frame the truth of the past and what’s happened. Sort of like whoever wins the war writes the history books.”

And as for how the brothers have maintained their famous teen-heartthrob looks after 25 years? “We have a special elixir,” Taylor jokes. “It’s something that we keep to ourselves. You have to pay in blood.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Perhaps not since the ‘80s double-bill of “Puppet Show with Spinal Tap” — or at least since Dr. Teeth & The Mayhem played San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival last year — has there been as monumentally felt-tastic a live music event as the South by Southwest debut by the brilliantly named puppet emo band Fragile Rock.

The hyper-emotional, Austin-based collective — featuring tantrum-tossing, guyliner-sporting frontman Milo S.; blue-haired feminist/rumored Elijah Wood paramour/bassist Nic Hole; wild-eyed drummer Coco Bangs; laid-back, workmanlike guitarist Kyle Danko; and coquettish backup singers the Cocteau Triplets (not to be confused with the Cocteau Twins, of course) — brought their unique brand of #puppetpain to SXSW this week, with a show at the Sidewinder club featuring a David Bowie tribute, puppet crowd-surfing to Joy Division’s “Transmission,” and heart-on-felt-sleeve songs like “My Journal Is Blank,” “Stay Felt,” “I Am Sad And So Am I,” and the boldly political rallying cry “Socks Are Murder.”

Bowie cameo during @fragilerockband’s set #sxsw

A post shared by Lyndsey Parker (@lyndseyparker) on Mar 13, 2017 at 11:37pm PDT

Puppet crowd-surfing to Joy Division!! #sxsw #fragilerock

A post shared by Lyndsey Parker (@lyndseyparker) on Mar 13, 2017 at 11:39pm PDT

Yahoo Music met up at SXSW with two of the flame-coiffed Cocteaus (Briex and “Girl Who Has No Name”) in one of the Highball bar’s private karaoke rooms to discuss this milestone in the band’s career, that persistent Elijah Wood gossip, the important message behind “Socks Are Murder,” Fragile Rock’s disastrous 2016 audition for America’s Got Talent, and the feminist slant of Fragile Rock’s new Yoko Ono-inspired single, “Girlfriend Is the Enemy of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

Stay felt, everyone. #StayFelt.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.