by Neda Ulaby

Full SXSW Coverage for Live Concerts and Exclusive Performances

Ben squinted in spite of his sunglasses into the fading Austin sunset. "Man, this is my fourth SXSW and I keep saying I'm never coming back," he said.

"There's four thousand musicians here and you're in direct competition with all of them," he said. "You don't get enough time to set up and just a few seconds to sound check."

With a yellow bandanna fading into his wavy blonde hair and his Japanese-inspired fish scale sleeve tattoo, Ben Hasselbeck looked like — well, almost every young musician at SXSW. He's here backing up Los Angeles chanteuse Juliette Commagere.

"We've got a string section and a horn section," he said. "It creates a dilemma. Do you risk showing up and not sounding any good, or making the best of it and hope everyone's too drunk to notice?"

Ben has a good point. The awful truth is that the sound at most SXSW shows is pretty muddy. Setups are fast and sloppy. When you see a band you like, sometimes you long to hear them at their home club, where the mics and amps are perfectly calibrated, where the guitars aren't drowning out everyone else and where the singers don't sound like they're wailing through thick bolts of woolen cloth.