I met the five members of The Weeks outside Austin’s Convention Center on Red River Street across from Moonshine Patio Bar and Grill. Immediately, I know which group they are despite the congested crowds weaving through the sidewalk.

They sit, sprawled out on the concrete with cigarettes in hand, wearing sleeveless T’s and tattoo’s of Mississippi on their lanky arms. Three of the five have hair longer than most women. They have fresh faces, younger looking than I had expected. To an outsider, The Weeks may appear weathered, harden by their tattoos and work boots. But when they open their mouths, they are a group of inspiring you people who are from the south, who love sweet tea, work with Kings of Leon and make the music they like.

We walk together, talking of their travels to Austin. They possess an exciting disposition, one full of vigor and thrill of what SXSW will bring them. We make our way down to Town Lake after a walk about the Marriott to use the restroom (the boys, fascinated by the hand towels). A cruise boat is setting sail and we contemplate taking the ride but due to their tight schedule that has bassist Damien Bone booked for a skate video in 45 minutes, we opt to sit on a wall overlooking the lake. It already feels like we’ve known each other a long time. Instead of an interview, we being a conversation of sorts, a fluid dialog about their label and what inspires the music they’re making.

Tell me about SX. How does it feel to be here and play?

Samuel Williams (lead guitarist): It’s nice to be back. We played one show last year and we were here for four or five days. It was good to get to play and have that under our belt before we did what we’re doing this year – five shows and we’ve got shit to do all day, everyday until 9:00. But it’s nice to stay busy.

Cyle Barnes (vocals): It’s real work right now.

Samuel: Yeah but it’s like a real workday and then you’re off at 10:00 and I get to drink.

And see great music.

Cyle: Yeah. So much great music. And it’s been really hot.

Samuel: We’ve been fucking freezing, Mississippi in March. It’s not supposed to be 50 degrees.

Cyle: It’s been so cold. Also, there’s a lot of drinking at SX, and I think that makes it a lot different than other festivals. And the fact that it’s spaced out from venue to venue, it allows people to get very intoxicated.

Damien Bone (bassist): Yeah… SX’s fun.

Cain Barnes (drummer): SX’s great because when you’re not playing you get to see so many bands you’d have to travel all across the country to see. You can seriously just drink and walk block after block and see new shit. But when you’re playing it’s stressful. I mean, so far so good and it’s totally fun.

Damien: It’s fun too because all our friends bands are here so we get to see them all at once. It’s like a big gathering of everybody that does the same thing.

That makes for way of inspiration. Do you write when on tour?

Cain: If anybody wrote while we were touring it would be Kyle writing lyrics.

Cyle: That can happen on long van rides. That will do it.

Samuel: If we have to, we can do it. We might every now and again but it’s not a daily thing. We don’t flesh around new ideas.

Well, how does it feel to be on Kings of Leon’s label Serpents and Snakes. Let’s talk about that.

Samuel: It’s pretty humbling. We’ve been fans for a while.

It seems like it’s a “meeting your maker kind “of instance. I don’t think your music is the same, but there are a lot of Kings influences.

Cyle: Oh yeah, we drew a lot of influences from them when we were kids, just starting to make our sound.

Samuel: After our initial reviews, the majority of them said how much we sounded like Kings. We kind of tossed that aside to forge our own path. So it’s nice at this point, we’d done that without loosing anything.

Right, without compromising your sound.

Samuel: Yeah, yeah yeah. But at the sometime…

Alex: It’s very organic too, the operations of the label and who they are.

Samuel: Right well when you work with a high profile band like that you’re worried they’re going to want to portray your image in their way but it was the absolute opposite.

Cain: They want us to be us.

Cyle: With the organics like you were saying, our band writes music and performs. It’s not like there’s this extremely structured crazy mathematical thing. Everybody gets to feel out their own parts and where they’re supposed to be.

Samuel: We sort of operate the way the Kings to. We want to be set to do whatever we want for the rest of our lives. That’s really everybody’s goal and they’ve seemed to do that pretty flawlessly.

Cyle: That longevity.

You see their catalog and how they’ve evolved. The subtle nuisances of their beginning work…

Samuel: They’ve grown with their fame.

Right. And it would appear, that when choosing bands for their label, that’s what they would also look for.

Cain: Definitely. And that’s really exciting.

So many people desire all their life to meet the artist who got them going, and you guys are living the dream.

Samuel: It’s a special thing. It’s one thing to meet them but it’s nothing like working with them. They’re really just there, essentially, as resources and as people who help with your music. If we have problems with our record or titling it, mixing it or singling it, they are right on the other end of the telephone. They’ve done this forever and successfully so it’s great to have them to call on and not be ashamed to say, “I need help on this and I know you’ve got the answer.”

Cyle: And as people they’re genuine. I feel like that’s why this label is working for us because we wanted something that’s a lot like a family. We like the music we play. We want it to be fun and I want to enjoy what I do. It was a little nerve racking at first because you don’t know what these people are going to be like. But then we find out they’re a lot like us. Southern guys who love music and who are genuinely very nice people. It makes for a great working environment. It’s for the better for sure.

I can anticipate your reaction, but tell me about the south, what it means to y’all.

Cyle: The South is incredible. I love the south. We’ve done tours all over the United States and when we work with booking in the South we tell them, “You need to call the club and see when we need to get there, when sound check is.” And they always respond, “You can get here when you want. Just walk right in, we’re making chicken in the back.” It’s way more laid back and just a good place to be.

Alex: Parking is great.

Cyle: Parking is incredible.

Cain: It’s our home. Kids come out and they go crazy.

Samuel: Yeah, once you hit that Mason-Dixon line and you can’t get sweet tea anymore, it’s rough. There’s that one stop on tour – the first time that I get to no sweet tea, it doesn’t matter how good of a mood I’m in, I get pissed off.

Rightly so. In your music, do a lot of your tones and inspirations come from the south?

Cain: I think a lot of our inspiration comes from the south. Musically, if we tell people we’re a southern rock band they expect something completely different.

Samuel: Like Skynyrd. “Give me back my bullets!”

Cyle: We just have southern-ness is us. We’re all from the south. You can’t hide it. Lyrically, I feel like I write a lot abut the south but as far as our band being a southern band – we’re a southern band because that’s where we’re from.

Samuel: We didn’t start a band to get out of the south.

Cyle: Exactly. We started a band because we wanted to be a band from Mississippi.

Damien: I’ll wear it on my sleeve for the rest of my life.

Cyle: Yeah, we all have Mississippi tattooed on us for a reason. We wanted to be a band from Mississippi that’s a good band. We’re trying to keep that going.

So let’s get back to your lyrics. I was listening to “Dog Days” before we met up…

Samuel: Ah, nice. Throw back.

And there’s such an evolution to your writing.

Cyle – I write a lot. Not just songs, just a lot of writing. So I’ll write something and get inspired from something else I had written. The band has a good way of making their music and making their melodies in a way that kind of brings a story together for me. Hearing them play makes it easier for me to figure out what I want to write about. It’s a joint effort.

Samuel: There’s a lot of real world stuff going on in the south… the poverty, the terrible education, everything in the south seems to happen at a glacial pace. That pace is how we write out music.

Kyle: Yeah and when you’re with the people you love and around the people you love, it works out. So that’s what we’re trying to do.

So what’s next?

Samuel: Record release in six weeks and we’re touring until then. Then we’re touring again with the Kings in Europe this summer. We’ve pretty much sold our year away from this record.

Cyle: Just touring. Stoked about the record release, stoked about the tour, not stoked about being in the van for so long. European summer sounds great.

And with that the boys guaranteed they’d be taking a few off days this year. To see, “The fucking Grand Canyon” Samuel assured and “Mount Rushmore!”

I caught The Weeks final show at midnight on Saturday at the Bungalow. They killed it, in their identifiable Mississippi fashion. With bodies slamming, the crowd eating every moment of the ripped guitar strings and crowd surfing, The Weeks knew how to put on one hell of a show. 

Here’s more on The Weeks at SXSW and a link to their Tumblr page.