I still didn’t feel I had really arrived until I sat myself down at a picnic table outside the Austin Convention Center with my schedule in hand and heard a pair of duelling accordions tooting away on the Clash’s "Should I Stay Or Should I Go." Turns out it was a pair of squeeze box squeezers named Joey DeVilla and Jon Grossman, who had only met moments before.
Grossman plays in the band Uncle Lucius, and he just moved here from Kentucky four months ago. "Once you’re here, you don’t want to leave," he said. DeVilla is a self-described "developer evangelist" for Microsoft in town for the winding down Interactive conference who uses his accordion as a social networking ice breaker. It’s working. After "Should I Stay," they stuck around, and Grossman sang Stephen Foster’s "My Old Kentucky Home."
John’s a great accordion player and a really nice guy to boot! Go check out his band, Uncle Lucius, and their tasty southern-fried rock at their site.
“Dude, check out the hipster checking me out.”