SXSW 2009: No badge? Still Awesome.

For the economically challenged music lover (and there are so many these days), your best bet is to simply start walking up and down Red River, 5th or 6th St., and see if you hear anything that grabs your attention. Though you need a badge or wristband for many bars, there are plenty that'll gladly let you come in to see live music and drink a few icy-cold $2 Lone Stars without even paying a cover charge.

One of the best shows I saw yesterday was totally free and open to the public. Nashville's Wess Floyd & the Daisycutters rocked the faces off two-dozen lucky patrons at Touché on E 6th St., playing an energetic set of epic Westerberg and Springsteen-inspired songs that would've sounded just as appropriate pumping from the stacks of speakers at New Jersey's Meadowlands. This band isn't re-inventing the wheel when it comes to its raw, no-frills sound; what it is doing is bringing bona-fide, fist-pumping, beer-swilling stadium rock to a dive bar near you. If you can't have a good time watching these rowdies lay it down, you might as well stay home.

It's true, though: Just walking up and down the street and following your ears during SXSW, you'll stumble on plenty of great free shows, usually from local and lesser-known bands, many of whom are still hungry and glad to give 110 percent—whether it's for a hundred people or a half-dozen. And the crowds are almost always more fun at these non-conference shows, since the too-cool-for-school music-industry folks who like to stand around with their hands in their pockets, trying to look nonplussed, are nowhere to be found; you'll more likely see a bunch of loaded, smiling, head-bobbing music fans dancing their sweat-soaked asses off, shooting rotgut bourbon and playing air guitar 'til they pass out in a corner booth. I know who I'd rather hang with.