SXSW 2011: Cooking Vinyl and Essential’s Annual Knees Up

• Cooking Vinyl Records and Essential Music & Marketing announce Texas envoys
• Duran Duran and Ron Sexsmith top the list of stars heading to Austin
• Acclaimed Sexsmith documentary Love Shines to show at SXSW Film
• Sexsmith and Cooking Vinyl Director Rob Collins to speak at conference

South by Southwest Film 11^th – 19^th March 2011South by Southwest Music 15^th – 20^th March 2011Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX and venues around the city9^th March 2011, London:- Cooking Vinyl Records and sister company Essential Music & Marketing are gearing up for the annual schlep to South by Southwest, the global music industry’s largest annual conference and music festival.From Cooking Vinyl’s great and varied roster of artists, Ron Sexsmith, American Music Club and Mexican Institue of Sound will all be performing as part of the six-day desert orgy of sound.Distributed, marketed and sold to retailers by Essential Music & Marketing, Brooke Fraser and Duran Duran also take their place among the luminaries and up-and-comings who will be showcasing their latest work at the conference.Signed to Essential’s client labels and performing at the festival are the Meat Puppets (Megaforce) with Roky Erickson at Austin Music Hall, Delicate Steve, Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt (Luaka Bop), The Stepkids, Strong Arm Steady, Peanut Butter Wolf (Stones Throw), Dinosaur Bones, The Golden Dogs (Dine Alone). The festival will also feature label showcases by New West Records, Fat Possum and The End Records, all part of the Essential stable.International icons Duran Duran appear at Stubb’s in downtown Austin on 16^th March at 12:30am, playing music from their 13^th studio album All You Need Is Now, produced by Mark Ronson and set for released on 21^st March.Over at SXSW Film, the documentary Love Shines is set to steal the spotlight with a showcase on 15^th March at 6:15pm (Alamo Ritz 2) and on 16^th March at 7pm (Vimeo Theater) under the 24 Beats Per Second category.With an extraordinary playlist and a stellar cast featuring Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Feist, Kiefer Sutherland and Daniel Lanois, Love Shines is a journey to the heart and soul of what songwriting is about.Sexsmith’s album Long Player Late Bloomer, which features in the documentary and entered the top 50 of the album chart this week, was released on 28^th February on Cooking Vinyl and Sexsmith himself will be playing midnight shows on 17^th March at the Creekside at Hilton Garden Inn and on 18^th March at the St. David's Episcopal Church.Over at the conference itself, Sexsmith will be speaking on the prestigious Songwriters Explain Everything panel, Cooking Vinyl Director Rob Collins will be appearing on the The Indie View: Emerging Digital Music Models. Chaired by IODA chairman Kevin Arnold, it will discuss new cloud and subscription-based services and what they mean for indie labels. Keith Marnoch, Label Manager at Essential will also be attending the conference.