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"  The alt-country sound of Lydia Loveless is the kind of bright, twangy goodness that goes down smooth with sunshine, a side of barbecue, and the company of a bunch of people who aren&amp;#039;t afraid to dance. Thankfully, most of her shows at SXSW involved all three. Loveless tried her luck on Austin&amp;#039;s 6th Street for the first time at the age of 19, where the girl with the soaring voice captivated the owners of her soon-to-be-label, Bloodshot Records. She&amp;#039;s returned to Austin with a brand new record under her belt, Somewhere Else. The place where it all started turned out to be a fitting setting for the launch of the next phase of Lawless&amp;#039;s career. In between sets at Bloodshot&amp;#039;s backyard shindig in South Austin, Loveless took a moment to walk us through everything from her future plans to her tour wardrobe. (She&amp;#039;s got plenty of American flag-printed clothing, and rocks a dress made from the Ohio state flag on the road.) She plays to the beat of her own drum\u2014or, more accurately, the earnest strums of her electric guitar\u2014and Austin wouldn&amp;#039;t have it any other way. Related: Exclusive: Lydia Loveless Gets Raunchy on New Single &amp;quot;Head&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve been coming to Austin for SXSW since you were 19, and it seems like it&amp;#039;s the perfect home away from home for you. Would you say you have a nostalgic connection to the festival? I do! My first SXSW, that was the first tour I ever did with a full band. I&amp;#039;ve come a long way since then. I didn&amp;#039;t even have a band; I was just playing with my dad. SXSW is our anniversary, a little bit. You have a new record to celebrate. How much of the new material did you debut here? In general, this is where [the most] people have heard the album at this point, so they connect with it more. The one I&amp;#039;m most excited about is &amp;quot;Mile High&amp;quot;, which is our 7-inch that we&amp;#039;re going to put out on Record Store Day. I wrote that song in Sweden, actually. I just had a really terrible experience there. I was kind of losing my mind. I was wearing thin after two years of touring on Indestructible Machine, so I wrote that. So you were destructible, then. Yes. I was very destructible. [laughs] Related: The 26 SXSW Bands You Need to Know Would you consider yourself to be someone who has an alter ego onstage? To an extent. There&amp;#039;s the performer side of me that&amp;#039;s very ... I don&amp;#039;t want to say obnoxious, but I&amp;#039;m definitely a little more enthusiastic up there than people see offstage. I&amp;#039;m a pretty mellow person in real life. I get a little depressed and ranty, but for the most part I&amp;#039;m pretty chill. I think a lot of people don&amp;#039;t realize that after they see our show. I think the best example of the combination of what I am would be &amp;quot;Verlaine Shot Rimbaud,&amp;quot; because it&amp;#039;s got the great pedal steel line and it&amp;#039;s a little bit country. It also exemplifies my inspiration from Richard Hell and poetry. Related: Angel Olsen on Discovering Her Audience How has that been for you, perfecting your own blend of country, rock, and alternative? I&amp;#039;ve just had to pull back with the country. I grew up on an 80-acre farm, literally a farm girl, feeding cattle every day. That&amp;#039;s always going to be a part of me, but I don&amp;#039;t necessarily want to perpetuate the country music stereotype of, &amp;quot;Yeehaw!&amp;quot; I feel like people are very into that right now and I&amp;#039;m just trying to pull back and settle down into my songwriting niche instead. I just want to let all of my influences and all of my inspiration come through. With Somewhere Else, the classic rock and soul came out. I don&amp;#039;t necessarily want to be pigeonholed at all, which is hard as a woman. But I think we&amp;#039;re going in a good direction where we just want to make good music. Photo: Facebook  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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