Austin live music

Here's the deal with live music in Austin -

1) There's a whole lot of it.

2) It's uniformly awesome.


For eg. - I'd been with my friend to this little pub/restaurant on sixth street, one of those places that has the TV muted to ESPN baseball and the muzak playing Sinatra. It was a fairly quiet place, by bar standards -- ideal for two graduate student teetotalers to sip Dr.Pepper while observing the many pretty waitresses. You will then understand our (mild) surprise at five hefty Irishmen in suits who emerged from a side door and took up, respectively, a violin, a pair of TAMAs, a capoed acoustic guitar, and a bass, and began playing a curious (but infinitely jaw-dropping) mixture of (insert genre here) and (insert another totally different unheard of sub-sub-genre here).

Or -- two months ago. The place -- University Avenue and Dean Keeton. The time -- very late. The instruments -- A guitar through a Boss GT-8, a bass, drums, and a theremin. The band -- four people of undetermined sex wearing ponytails and bovine masks. The lighting -- functional. The girl next to me -- tattooed and drunk. The music -- bloody brilliant.

Even the buskers are hopelessly talented. One of them, Ed, says hi to me every-time I pass by him (which is very often; Chipotle and Ed are practically neighbors). He says he learnt guitar from his dad, who lives in Tennessee. When I asked him why he was on the street selling his music to unwilling pedestrians, he murmured something about his artistic vision being "compromised by dilettantes", and resumed playing Segovia on his Taylor.

Who are these people, and why are they all in Austin, Texas?