The Ripe is a power pop/classic rock trio who drew quite the home crowd at their South by Southwest performance at Easy Tiger Patio. The venue was awesome if not a little bit out of the way: it was a small makeshift stage nestled against some fake rocks built up around the riverside. It was a typical Austin crowd mixed with hippies and yuppies trying to get a better view of the band, and I couldn’t help but notice that this particular audience seemed taller than usual. I would consider myself tall in a room full of average or short people, but not that night. I elbowed my way to the very front for the footage above, standing next to a pint-sized photographer who had apparently done the same. I kept thinking “This band must have excellent word of mouth because this crowd seems disproportionately large for a band with only one song on their Myspace page and no Facebook”. Turns out, The Ripe‘s hype was well deserved. They played a really tight set of well-written songs that were a perfect mix of creative melodies and catchy, appealing choruses.

One thing that really charmed me about The Ripe was how well the band handled all of the sound issues. Unfortunately that was a recurring issue with several other venues at South by, which made sense considering the lack of set up and sound check time. But I thought this particular band handled their technical difficulties particularly well: there was earsplitting feedback coming from the lead singer’s mic for the first half of the first song, and after a few polite but meaningful looks at the sound guy he just stopped the song completely. He explained that he couldn’t hear himself, and waited patiently until the problem was fixed before flashing a big smile and continuing on as if the issue had never even occurred. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation, but it probably wouldn’t have been half as classy. For more information on upcoming albums and tour dates, please visit their Myspace page.