SEAN COURTNEY

Sean Courtney is a partner in the This Is American Music record label. 

What was the food highlight of your year?

This November, my wife, Rebecca, ran the NYC marathon, and while I am not a runner, I am a serious eater and walking all over New York for a week and eating everything in sight was incredible. Totto Ramen, oysters in Greenpoint, hitting a few of David Chang's places, amazing duck-liver pasta at Osteria Morini in SOHO, mutton chops at Keens, pastrami at Katz...not to mention daily helpings of bagels with smoked fish and slices of pizza or other street meat at 2am. Honestly...I felt like I ate New York City over the course of a week. I was lucky enough to have a hat-full of recommendations and as most people know, everywhere I turned was another bar, another bodega, another smell to chase...and I did my damnedest to accommodate it all. I can't wait to return.

What was the music highlight of your year?

Standing in the wings while the Replacements played had to be the highlight, right? I mean...it's the REPLACEMENTS and I'm standing in the wings about to have a heart attack...but to be honest, the music highlight of my year is almost the same thing every year: SXSW in Austin, TX. Of course, it has become a bloated ghost of what it was in years past...but it is still one hell of a time. It doesn't hurt that I meet up with a couple dozen friends from all over the country (and abroad) every year and seeing old and new favorite bands with them is probably the greatest thing I can imagine. This year's highlights included a raucous mess from Nashville called Diarrhea Planet with four or five guitars going at once, old friends like Have Gun, Will Travel and Lydia Loveless finding new audiences, seeing Ex Hex for the first time, and slamming a few tacos & Tecates between Natural Child and Reigning Sound...two of my all time favorites.

Was there a moment when food and music came together in a memorable way?

Food and music are always intertwined in my life...aside from friends, family & pets...what else is there? Thinking back to SXSW, I remember the deep fried deviled eggs, fried chicken & gizzards and Moon Pie Pie (that's right...a pie of Moon Pie) at Lucy's Fried Chicken as well as I remember who was playing (L'il Cap'n Travis, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Ramsey Lewis) that day. That same week, I was sweating every ounce of energy I had out to Grand Champeen at the Hole in the Wall...right after ducking out of the back door for ramen and sticky buns at Paul Qui's East Side King. We actually head to SXSW a day early so that we can do a "BBQ crawl" in Lockhart, TX...always starting at Black's and then on to Smitty's, and never making it any farther than a barstool at Lily's for a couple beers before heading back into the city. It's easy to find BBQ and tacos in Austin, but the town has so much more to eat than that...of course you do worse than a week of tacos & bbq.

@wigginstock

NICK TANGBORN

Nick Tangborn has worked in both the food and music industries long enough to know better. He currently lives in Austin, TX.

What was your food highlight of the year?

My parents come to visit every year in early December on their way from Northern Minnesota to Arizona — they’re snowbirds, with the big white Ford 750 and fifth wheel RV. They always bring me canned tomatoes, pickles (my mom’s pickles blow away the competition), pickled green beans, “red hot” cinnamon cucumber pickles, sauerkraut, and plenty of Christmas cookies. This year, we went to Central Market (the big gourmet paradise grocer in Austin) and my dad said “Those tomatoes look just like the ones we canned — man they were hard to peel.” I looked at the tomatoes and realized that, somehow, my parents had meant to plant beefsteak tomatoes for canning, but had planted heirlooms instead. So now I have 12 jars of amazing, perfect peeled heirloom tomatoes canned and ready. That’s pretty awesome.

What was your music highlight of the year?

In March, when Batter Blaster — the company I helped run for 5 years — was still a functioning entity, a bunch of us were at a bar called Donn’s Depot here in Austin. I heard, across the bar, my CEO say “Don’t worry — Nick can book that Saturday show.” This was 3 weeks before SXSW. So I had 3 weeks, no budget, and a Saturday afternoon party to throw. Three weeks later, we had John Doe, both of The Posies (Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, playing separately), Ian Moore and Jesse Dayton together, Loquat, Shurman, Beaver Nelson, Carletta Sue Kay and Dave Mulligan from Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers. Ken and Ian, on the floor with no mics, singing “Give Me Another Chance” by Big Star is still my absolute favorite moment of the past year.

Was there a moment when food and music came together in a memorable way?

A lot of my memories of the past year seem to be tied to the Hole in the Wall — that’s where we threw that party in March, and that’s where a bunch of my friends tend to play, like The Mother Hips, David Dondero, etc. They just opened the back kitchen up with Paul Qui, the Top Chef winner, and his East Side King concept. Previously food trailers, now it’s a full blown brick and mortar place, just behind where the bands play. The squid ink curry ramen is outstanding, as is the chicken tortilla soup (made with bacon dashi and chicken-tortilla tom yum paste to carry the East meets West theme). It’s awesome now to go to a show there and be able to walk 25 feet and get Chicken Kara-Age and a bowl of Beer Bacon Miso Ramen.