Austin Powell -By Ursula Barker

“Don’t put yourself out there too soon.” Austin Powell was the journalist I interviewed, who works at the Austin Chronicle in Austin, Texas. That was the most important thing he said to me, that I should know when I am completely prepared to work for a major publication. The main thing that I took from this experience is that I love to interview people, and hearing other people's stories is a really fun thing to do.

I chose to interview Austin because of what I had seen of his work in the Austin Chronicle. I’m from Austin, Texas, and have read the Austin Chronicle quite a bit. I knew that they focus a lot of their attention on music, especially local bands, and I find that really interesting. I think someday I myself would like to try out interviewing bands.

I found Austin’s email address on the chronicle’s website, and wrote him an email explaining that I was a student and that I wanted to interview him for my journalism class. Austin agreed right away to letting me interview him, although the only time he could do the interview was on Thursday night…

The research I did to prepare for the interview was brief, and didn’t seem to matter much anyways, because throughout the interview Austin told me all about what he does and how he does it. I simply went to the Chronicle’s website and looked for a column of Austin’s called “Off The Record”. He had reported on one of my favorite music festivals in the area and so I read that article and got myself acclimated with some other bands he had interviewed and some album reviews that he had gotten to write.This music festival that he wrote about is called Fun Fun Fun Fest. It's a two day music festival featuring mostly underground musical acts. In the article, the way he described the festival was accurate and clear. He seems to be really great at what he does, knowing exactly which genres a band falls into, exactly how to describe their music, which I find really hard. Reading the article made me really miss the festival, because I wasn't in Austin this year for it. Powell seems to have a really great voice and knack for describing music. He has a kind of "little kid going to their first rock show" type voice, but at the same time, he keeps his writing very clear and professional. You can tell how much he cares about the music he is reviewing.

It was fairly easy to figure out what to talk with him about: music. Right away we were talking about music, because as he mentioned in the interview, he got his start in journalism writing an entertainment column at the Daily Texan, which is the student newspaper at the University of Texas. He had originally been studying English and psychology at UT, but his girlfriend was studying to become a journalist and had joined the staff at the Daily Texan. He wanted to be closer with her so he joined too, writing about music and other entertainment news. Now, working at the chronicle, 90% of the time he writes about music. He writes reviews of bands' live performances, their albums, and gets to interview them, too. Oh, and he generally gets to pick and choose what bands he wants to write about.When I asked him about his music column "Off The Record", he said it's "a catch-all column, part music news to report in, part local music interviews with 5 interviews a week with bands." Sounds like a great job to me!

The main questions I had planned on asking him where:

“How did you get started in this field, and how did you get to work at the chronicle?”

“Do you ever get to actually interview bands?”

“Do musicians ever give you and attitude or anything during interviews?”

“Have you had an interview go wrong, or have something bad happen?”

“Are you ever intimidated on the job?”

On Thursday, I called Austin at 5pm, the time we had agreed upon, and he was walking his dogs. He thought that he would have been done walking them by the time I called, but he didn’t mind talking and walking his dogs at the same time. He was very patient and nice and a very good interviewee. He had much to say about everything I asked him, and was very relaxed and he was even pretty funny.

One of my favorite stories he told me was about how get to interview the most famous person he has ever interviewed, Willie Nelson.

“I was working at the Daily Texan at the time, and I was trying to get an interview with Willie Nelson because he was going to be playing at Austin City Limits (music festival). I reached out to his publicist, to try and get an interview, and got the usual blow-off type response talking about how ‘we will have to see if Willie has any extra time for an interview’ . It was a huge thing, getting Willie Nelson to be interviewed for a student paper! I didn’t think I would hear back form them until the next day I was driving down the freeway and I got a call. I picked up the phone and the person on the other line, with a soft, scratchy, whisper-like voice said ‘Is this Austin?’ and I said, ‘Yes, who is this?’

‘This is Willie.’

‘I don’t believe I know a Willie, sir.’

‘Willie Nelson?’

And that’s when I believe I literally said “Holy shit!’ Because it took me by so much surprise. I had to tell him that I had to call him back in about 5 minutes, because I was driving on the freeway.

And he was the most down-to-earth, nice guy. He was the type of person that can hold an interview all by himself, having so many stories, he has so many stories to tell!”

When I asked Powell if he had any horror stories from being a journalist, he said, "Yeah, probably... I can't think of any right now...but I'm sure if you let me think about it I can come up with something. One thing that freaks me out about the job though is that I don't want to get jumped, walking to my car at 2 am downtown, and I worry that something will happen to my car while I'm at a gig..." I thought that was kind of funny, seeing as how from my experience, downtown Austin is a fairly safe place for being the center of a city. The only other thing that he said about being freaked out on the job: "I'm afraid of being unprepared for an interview; if I can't think of anything to ask..." I agree with him. That seems like it would be a terrifying situation to be stuck in.

What surprised me about the interview was how easy it was. It wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be… and Austin wasn’t as intimidating as I imagined him to be. Well, he was certainly intimidating, but he was such a nice guy about everything that it certainly eased my nerves. I didn’t expect the interview to go by so quickly.

I’ve decided that interviewing people is actually really fun! I loved hearing his stories, and asking him questions about his job. It was kind of hard to type out everything as he was saying it, while listening and having my own input into the conversation, but otherwise it was great.

One very important thing that I learned from Austin is that in writing, the first sentence is key. You need to be able to hook a reader within the first sentence. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, one thing he really wanted me to get down was that before you decide to go out into the professional field of journalism, you need to really make sure you are ready. You need to make sure your "portfolio is there, you have all the necessary skills" and that its not easy. He also stressed that it is really not easy at all, and it takes patience and a lot of time.

The last thing he said to me was that even though his job may sound really great, a lot of "patience and sacrifice goes into it, listening to music and going to concerts...It takes a lot of creative energy and its really all about the writing, because you don't get paid much." He enjoys his job for the writing output, and the music he gets to listen to. It's not about the money.