 "Photo: Debbie Finley; The Daily Texan")
 "Photo: Debbie Finley; The Daily Texan")
Deena Hyatt, an Austin performance artist, does many things during a show. She shouts through a bullhorn. She takes pictures of her bandmates with a disposable camera. She plays the saxophone. She crouches on the floor in child’s pose, holding the microphone like a flower.
The peripatetic Hyatt, 24, lives in a log cabin off of Highway 71 and is one physics course shy of finishing her English degree at UT.
When not promoting her burgeoning performance career, she works at the Austin School for the Blind, jumps on a trampoline for exercise and plays in three bands: Nanobangbang, Gayle Gold and Low Red Center, and enjoys doing vocals for Austin New Music Co-op.
But Hyatt is not just a musician. She’s an artistic manipulator — she quilts together song lyrics from spam e-mails, sings the words of children’s plays to morose instrumentation and choreographs dances to dissonant beats.
I met Hyatt last Saturday at Domy Books in East Austin side, a metal and concrete space filled with rotund, cigarette-smoking Japanese figurines and rare art books where she was performing that night with Low Red Center. The occasion was a meet-and-greet event with City Council candidate Chris Riley, whose campaign promise to build edible parks has garnered a substantial youth following. In a nod to the guest of honor, Hyatt clipped an article from Dwell magazine about cities of the future to use as her lyrics for the show.
The clipping, and a few pages of reworked spam e-mails, was all she had to go off of for the band’s entire set.
“That’s the thing about Low Red Center,” Hyatt says. “It’s always unexpected. People think that it’s planned but it’s not.”
You could say Hyatt’s life has also followed an improvisational trajectory. She was born in Thailand and lived in London before settling with her family in Virginia.
After a spell at American University, Hyatt relocated to Austin, and she since she’s firmly entrenched herself at the vanguard of the city’s postmodern performing arts scene, aiming to innovate and entertain.
“My main mission is eclecticism and variety,” she said. “I like pushing people, but I don’t like alienating people.”
Her bandmates agree that Hyatt is a creative force.
“She brings a confident sort of focus, like a front personality [to the group.] And a great voice,” said Low Red Center guitarist Jason Chronis, also of Voxtrot and Belaire fame.
“She’s like the cinnamon stick of the group, and the way she looks in my peripheral vision works well,” Gayle Gold guitarist Sam Vandelinder (stage name: Gary Barftits), said of Hyatt.
Dissatisfied with the volatile Austin music scene, Hyatt aspires to open her own venue and help others of her ilk.
“The big problem with musicians in Austin is they don’t have any advocates for the most part,” she said.
Hyatt also works for Awthumfest, an annual celebration of fringe art and Austin strangeness that falls on the last weekend of SXSW. She’ll be performing there this year and at KVRX's Spring Baked 2009 on March 19 with Gayle Gold. Low Red Center will be playing on March 16 at the Yeast by Sweet Beast festival.
Is this person someone who only knows me on the internet and barely in person?
Has this person seen any performances I've been a part of and did not care for it?
Does this person wish some ill of me just because I am creating things and promoting things?
Is this person in the creative community and doesn't have any promotion and is upset that I do?
Is this person someone who thinks it's stupid to create or promote anything that they don't like?Anyways, in answer to your question, Leah Finnegan is not my pen name. But I do have to do self promotion as well as promotion for others who often don't get much attention. I have a website I maintain and I make fliers and blog and such. I wish I didn't. have to do the self-promotion. In fact, I hate it as much as you do, probably more... Because it's my time and energy that I could be using cooking, being with my cat, working for more money, tidying the house, creating something, spending time with friends or sleeping. However, when a person has a creative drive and is a part of various collaborations, a lot of work is involved. And the worst feeling is when someone who genuinely wanted to go couldn't because they simply didn't know about it. Or when you and your bandmates spend x amount of hours every week and take off work to do a show and no one is there, because no one promoted for it. I have seen good results with promotion-- the last NBB show turned out over 200 people on a Sunday. It was really a blast having so many faces around- some I knew and mostly many that I didn't! I hope to keep improving as an artist and a person. And I hope not to have to promote too much for too long and I can focus on just making stuff and making it better.
DIY baby.
apart from that, bitch needs to lay off the acid for a while.