41st annual Austin Music Awards honor winners of Austin Chronicle poll
AUSTIN, Texas - The Austin Chronicle's 41st annual Austin Music Awards was held Sunday at the bar Mohawk.
"Kind of like Austin music prom," Rachel Rascoe, music editor at Austin Chronicle, said.
The event celebrates the winners of the annual Austin music poll. There are 51 categories with five nominees each. It's also a way for people in the industry to all get together.
"The Austin music scene used to be really small, and it was really easy to say what the biggest album of the year is, because you had to have a record label to put out your record. Now everyone can put out their own music through the internet, so there's just so much more music to consider," Rascoe said. "The essence of celebration, and it kind of being like an encyclopedia of the year and what happened has remained the same, but we have made efforts to include a lot more genres and just diversity of people in the poll every year."
There are both music awards and industry awards. Live sound engineer is just one example.
"I just started out in studio working, kind of ended up in live sound on accident. I was a volunteer for [SXSW], and I jumped in on a Macklemore show, and they thought I knew what I was doing, and I ended up going and saving the venue afterwards and been running live sound full time ever since," Amanda Justice, who won best live sound engineer said.
"I feel honored especially given two of the people I got nominated with are part of the reason I have this," she said as she accepted her award.
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Jamie Bahr, executive director of Girls Rock Austin, is in two bands herself.
"The power of just having your voice just boom, and the music that you have written just fill the area and then seeing the look on people's faces as they kind of melt with your emotional outpouring for them, so it's quite an experience," she said.
Girls Rock Austin, which empowers girls, transgender, and non-binary youth through music education, was nominated for most creative event.
The Austin Music Awards benefit the SIMS Foundation, which provides mental health services to musicians.
Whether nominee wins for the first time, or eighth, like KUTX host Laurie Gallardo, they say it's about enjoying time with others in the industry.
"I'm a little shaken and bewildered, but at the same very honored, because I must be doing something right, and to be able to call this a job is pretty awesome," she said. "Seeing my peers, seeing my colleagues, seeing my favorite musicians, just kind of having a great time."
"This is about the music," Gallardo said as she accepted her award.
A full list of winners can be found here.