So Cameron Neal (my latest local-rock man-crush) and his band of teenaged ACM@UCO students (drummer Preston Greer was the only Horse Thief-er whose hands lacked big, smeary X’s inside Friends Bar last night) sounded even larger, more looming and fierce than their Sooner Soundwave show in Norman last weekend, which was my first experience hearing them in person. With all the pressure and anticipation of the festival, I feel like they really raised the bar on local performances at SXSW. 

First off, Mr. Neal has this awesome old man authoritative rock voice that he adopts for narrative purposes on songs like “The Magician.” Most of Horse Thief’s topicality is mystical nonsense wrapped around nuggets of wisdom, so it’s a useful persona, and it gets really entertaining when he starts dumping sweat and shaking it all out in his impressive beard.

But yeah, it was really nice to see — after The Boom Bang’s raucous mess and The Non’s cerebral movements — a throwback-style band that earnestly wants to rock, while also trying to innovate a bit (they’ve got a keyboard that generates an organ sound which distinguishes them from most any other local band I know of). Cody Fowler looks up into the sky when the song calls for his bass notes to wobble all over the place and Greer makes an O-face when he gets to punish the snares. And Danny Rose looks about as happy shredding his guitar apart as Kevin Durant looks when he hits a 24-foot-stepack three.

Also, it should be noted that two members of The Boom Bang got kicked out of Friends for being rowdy at some point during Horse Thief's set which is impressive, because there was only The Non's in between them.

Photo by Doug Schwarz