Join us and our partner Shiny Object for our 5th Annual Bring Your Own Chair party on Saturday, March 20th from noon till sundown. Enjoy our super eclectic lineup and sip beer out on the back lawn of the Pedernales Lofts all day. This year we’re  proud to partner with Wandering River Recycling so that all our waste will be properly disposed of (thanks to Keen for stepping up to help offset these additional costs). As always, this is a family friendly event – the big idea is to bring the kids out to experience a proper SX live music showcase. We’ll provide the music, beer, bouncy houses and a giant green lawn. Bring your chairs, blankets, sunscreen, family and pack a picnic if you like. Hot Mama’s will also be on site with a $5 lunch menu. Parking available on the street only. Pedi-cab service will be provided by Keen up and down 6th street. And finally, please remember that we are all guests of those who live and work at the Pedernales Lofts – keep it real.

The Lineup

Gates open at 11:30 am
12 pm The Jordans – Brooklyn
1 pm Lucy and The Popsonics – Brasilia
2 pm Natalia Mallo & Sinamantes – Sao Paulo
3 pm The Woes – NYC
3:45 pm Little Stolen Moments – Austin
4 pm Peelander-Z  - NY
5 pm Jeff The Brotherhood – Nashville, TN

Special Thanks to this Year’s Sponsors

Keen •  Allison Hughes Photo Retouching •  Mac & Cheez •   Dave Mead Photography •  Your Beyond •  Brett Stiles Design •  Tequila Mockingbird •  Association of Music Producers •  Bud Light •  Hot Mama’s •  Rogue Running

Special thanks to designers Lindsay Braun and Chandra Eklund for their work on this piece.
See the “manufacturing of the program cover” film here.

The brief – design the program for the TEDxAustin event. The theme – PLAY BIG. The solution – kids. Special thanks to Ben Powell for jumping on board and helping us capture this amazing event.

See the finished piece here.

“Dave Evans is from the future.”

Dave and The Butler Bros are in an alliance of companies. As such we are faced with opportunities that we must agree upon collectively. Dave messaged our entire group recently with his thoughts on working for equity. Once again Dave’s past experiences will change that future that I live in. He gave me permission to share his thoughts here. Perhaps you will find them to be merely common sense but I found them to be very well reasoned and most importantly, full of self esteem. I think this post will be of great value to the many start up agencies I socialize with and the many start up businesses connecting with them. Would love your comments.

My POV on “equity” projects is this: While I may do this same work in my “day job” I view these projects as “volunteer/night job/things I’d like to see happen but realize they may not…” endeavors. So, I have to limit the number of these I am working on. (That number is generally between zero and one.)

As for my involvement–and I’d except the same for all of us–it is constrained by the fact that this is an equity deal. I can balance (but don’t ask my family for a second opinion on this…) a controlled commitment with other (aka ‘paid’) work. (Otherwise, I should not be part of this.)

That said, (insert start up name here) and his team need to recognize that we are all doing some variation of this same balancing act: He is NOT getting a team that is 100% focused on this project, precisely because we have other obligations. That is his choice: His alternative is go and pitch this, seek funding, issue an RFP, and pay for a fully retained team.

As for the equity…it needs to be substantial: We need to be (appropriately for the the role we are playing) equal partners in this with (insert start up name here) and his team (minus the ‘founding’ allocations, of course…). We need to see business plan, and our involvement must be noted in it before agreeing to this.

In summary, we aren’t creating the expectation that we will work for free, and hope something nice happens. There is risk, and with that there must be an offsetting reward. We are offering instead to JOIN his team as equity partners, with a committed eye on creating shared success.

“Your life is a sacred journey. And it is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path… exactly where you are meant to be right now… And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love.”

- Caroline Adams

Legacy’s EX program helps people re-learn life without cigarettes. It’s a novel and proven approach to helping people quit and live to tell. This film exists to tell the story of EX and connect Legacy with partners that can enlarge this mission.

Smoking costs our country 200 billion dollars a year in lost productivity and in health care. This is truly a public health burden that is restraining our vitality as a nation. We hope our work will inspire captains of industry to recognize their opportunity in being a part of the solution by docking with EX in a meaningful way.

Special thanks to the director / DP team of Jeff Nichols and Adam Stone.

A big laser powered shout out to composer David Wingo for his dedication and delivery.

Much gratitude to Beth Perkins for the contribution of her moving still images.

A finally, a big east side hug to the closers, Stuck On On , for color correction and audio sweetening.

We believe in a Smoke Free Texas. Second hand smoke is a public health hazard linked to death, cancer, heart disease and respiratory illness in non-smokers. Our work with LEGACY this year has convicted us of these truths.

Last year the team at Smoke Free Texas did not reach their goal of a statewide smoking ban in public places. We believe that their communications can be more pointed and more memorable this year. It’s time to shake up the willing. We offer this redesign of their logo as a donation to this effort. Special thanks to our partner Brett Stiles for his generous donation of time and talent.

If you are interested in helping Texas become smoke free please download a petition or become a fan on Facebook.

So back to the BW piece, which focuses on a Florida based Subway franchisee named Stuart Frankel. In order to lift sagging sales he tweaked his pricing to 5 bucks for a footlong. In the article he quips, “I like round numbers.” So do real people Stuart. You knew that though because you spend lots of time with them. Enough with the decimal points already…

As the national coverage of this story would indicate, Stuarts tweak trickled up to the brass in corporate and it is now a system wide promotion at Subway with national TV spots and mountains of collateral behind it. It’s literally become a 3.8 billion dollar idea. Pardon the decimal point.

The reason this bus board ruffles my ventricles is the crass collision it creates in my mind regarding a very real public health crisis. Namely, that the leading cause of death in Texas is heart disease. So when I see this board I think, ‘you nailed it Mickey D’s, pump MORE beef in our hearts!’

Now, we are all free to eat whatever we want. We can dispassionately read the statistics about what kills the most Texans. We can browse the statistics about which cities eat the most fast food. We can ignore the correlations if we choose. We can throw hundreds of billions at health care without ever looking in the mirror. But when a brand practically taunts us with entendre and we don’t notice…that starts to feel a little too much like “Idiocracy“. What are you noticing?

This year 10/2 is LIVESTRONG Day. It’s the day Lance was diagnosed with cancer 13 years ago. Arguably it’s also the day the game changed in the cancer fight, when a new spirit of competitiveness and restlessness entered the ring – hell bent on winning. Through the work of Lance and his fast foundation tens of millions of people have been infected with the LIVESTRONG message. This manifests in awareness and funds raised, grants given, and ultimately progress.

The campaign look we created for this years LIVESTRONG Day embodies the grassroots nature of LIVESTRONG. It’s something to interpret as a talisman in your own fight. Each illustration plays on themes of hope and determination. Many phrases are taken from the foundations remarkable manifesto. It’s all about cancer to be sure. But it’s really about life. The exuberance of it. Share yours with the world this year. It’s gone global.

Special thanks to Brett Stiles for his inspired illustrations.