Watch Jimmy Eat World Go ‘Beyond The Bus’ At SXSW In New Animated Video

Punk-pop stalwarts Jimmy Eat World are the latest artists to receive the animated video treatment in uDiscover Music’s on-going series, ‘Beyond The Bus’.

Filmed exclusively for uDiscover Music, ‘Beyond The Bus’ has already showcased tales of ribald rock’ n’ roll revelry from Eagles Of Death Metal’s Jesse Hughes, irrepressible Aussie rockers Airbourne and blues-rock legend George Thorogood. Indeed, it’s fair to say that only bands with an unquenchable thirst for the road and the more exotic fare available at rock’s top table are likely to be immortalized in this series.

In going ‘Beyond The Bus’, Arizona quartet Jimmy Eat World tell uDiscover Music all about their exploits at the then relatively embryonic South By Southwest Festival in Texas in 1998. You can watch the interview in full below, but firstly, if you scroll down, you can get a taster of what went down.

“Back in 1998, South By Southwest [SXSW] was not the huge kind of corporate vibe it is now,” drummer Zach Lind says. “It was a little bit more rustic, less busy, and with mainly bands playing at venues and then temporary tents and people playing outside of a restaurant or whatever. They basically offered us a choice – $100 in badges to see all the other shows or drink tickets.

“We opted for the money and five drink tickets”, he continues. “There was five guys in our party – the band and one roadie. If you think about it, though we weren’t all that popular, it felt a bit insulting to come all this way to play this venue for hardly any money and five drink tickets.”

However, the band were nothing if not resourceful and they decided the drink tickets could be advantageous after all.

“I used to make flyers, so I kind of used that knowledge to apply it to this situation where we felt we deserved more drink tickets”, Rick Burch furthers. “Using clip art and some scissors and some sellotape we could piece together a pretty good thing. Then, we did a final print and we had a whole sheet that’s all concise and had all the information on it.”

“Tom (Linton – guitar and vocals) was on board and he loved the idea”, Burch continues. “He said, ‘hey we’ve got everything we need out of the van – go to the copy shop and work your magic.’ So Tom and I head over to the nearest copy shop and they had the same color orange paper, which was the key. Started with five, duplicated those into 10, and then into 20. That filled up a sheet of paper. Once I got the master, hit 50.”

So, having made the best out of a bad deal, did Jimmy Eat World make the most of their excess drink tickets at SXSW? Watch the rest of ‘Beyond the Bus’ to find out.

Listen to the best of Jimmy Eat World on Apple Music and Spotify.