Austin Swing Syndicate 10th Anniversary

Last Thursday was the Austin Swing Syndicate's 10th Anniversary bash. It was a fabulous night of wonderful live music by the Syndicate All-star Band, including such awesome local musicians as Jonathan Doyle, JD Pendley, Ryan Gould, Mark Gonzales, Emily Gimble, Donna Hightower, and Erik Hokkanen. I'm missing a couple names in there, so if you know the piano, cornet and drummer's names, feel free to leave them in the comments. Anyways, the All-star Band was fantastic, playing a lot of mid-tempo, hard-swinging standards that kept the entire floor packed all night long! In particular, I absolutely loved that JD played straight rhythm guitar. Having that hard swinging guitar really brings the band together and makes me need to move.

We also got to hear and see a bit of the history surrounding the Syndicate's creation. Burke McRae and Amanda Matthews, the main founders, were in attendance. Amanda received one of this year's Syndie's, a golden ticket that allows her the privilege of never again having to pay cover or membership dues. Burke received his a few years ago. The other Syndie went to lindy-lifer Colin "Reverend Shadyglenn" Wise. Colin, a lawyer, helped draft the Syndicate's original by-laws and has been dancing, DJing or helping out at the Fed almost every single Thursday for the last 10 years! It was awesome to see them honored. It ended with a huge snowball/jam with all the board members over the years and those that were dancing back in the beginning.

Tony Spielberg took a ton of pictures, and hopefully they'll be online sometime soon. I'll make sure to add a link to them at the end of this post when that happens.

For the occasion, Laura and I put together a couple performances that we put on right after the Birthday Jam. We did our new Lindy Routine and got a few people together do the Tranky Doo. Thanks to Tony for posting those videos on Vimeo.

Here's to another 10 years of Lindy Hop in Austin!