I met Rob in a coffee shop on South Congress and didn’t recognize him at first. See that hair up there? According to Rob, he chopped it all off last summer for the first time. Having just done the big chop myself, we talked a little bit about our experiences without the hair that was part of our identity for so long.

Rob Lowe (yeah, not that one) is part of a six-piece instrumental ensemble called Balmorhea that formed in Austin in 2006. He will be one of four presenters in “The Value of VR for Indie Labels and Artists” panel at this year’s festival, which includes speakers from all aspects of the process, from the artist (Lowe), to labels (Matt Harmon and Robby Morris), to the VR creators (Christian Stiegler).

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your band, Balmorhea.

“My name is Rob Lowe, and my band is called Balmorhea, and we formed in 2006. I formed the band with my partner, Michael. So it’s the two of us that kind of started the band together and have been kind of leading the ship since then.”

“We do all the things bands do. We have six full-length records, and also a live record and a number of EPs and singles and seven-inch records and stuff. And we toured extensively all over the world, a bunch of touring in Europe, a lot of touring in the States and places like Asia. We’ve been to Eastern Europe. Our most recent album came out in the fall of 2017. It’s called Clear Language. So it’s been a little while since we released a record. We’re kind of gearing up right now and thinking about what our next thing is. We haven’t been playing live as much in the last few years as we were kind of around the mid-time of our band, but we’ve played at South by Southwest probably seven times, eight times. We’ve always been kind of a part of the festival since we started.”

Okay, so all I’ll add on to that a little bit then. So you’ve played South By as a musician several times, but like you told me earlier, this is your first time actually going to this side of things and your first time presenting. So what’s kind of been a little bit different for you ramping up to the festival? How has that been different than your usual process?

“Normally, you know, if we’re performing at the festival… I also have another band called RG Lowe that’s a lot newer. My first record with that project came out in 2017, as well, and, so we didn’t perform as Balmorhea last year, but I did with my other project. So I mean, usually as you prepare for the music festival as a musician, there’s a lot of rehearsals and trying to figure out what shows you’re going to do how many you’re going to do can we do really exhausting, because, you know, a lot of Austin musicians end up doing just like an insane number of shows during that period, so I mean I guess it’s just been easy that I don’t have to prepare any music.”

How were you approached to license your music for “Rectify?” What was that process like?

“I think that they just reached out through our channels, through our licensing agent at that moment. We ended up striking up a pretty significant relationship with one of the lead actors in the show, this woman named Abigail Spencer, and so we went to LA and met her and performed at a fundraiser that she was doing, and we’ve stayed in touch and we’re friends. Ray McKinnon, who’s the director on the show and writer and kind of showrunner and main guy behind Rectify, just chose that on his own. He was a fan of the band and chose that and then reached out, pretty standard process. I guess it’s not really standard that the relationships that we’ve developed with a community of people aren’t as common, but the way that they licensed it was pretty standard.”

Have you used any kind of like MR or AR in your history of marketing?

“The reason why I’m included in this panel is because we were working in conversation with Christian who is kind of the lead guy on the panel, who organized the panel. He was a fan of our music, and so we’ve been in conversation with him for over a year about trying to find a way to work together on a project for Balmorhea to make something special together using VR or AR. He’s had a lot of ideas, we’ve gone down a lot of different roads but have always kind of come up against some pretty hard obstacles in trying to get that together. Nothing super overwhelming. But I think that part of this panel is coming together for good, because we’re an independent artist that doesn’t have a lot of money backing us that we can draw upon. We’re just trying to explore the ways that technology and those applications can be beneficial to or further creative endeavors amongst people who don’t necessarily have the capital to push that. It’s because we’ve kind of been failing at making something work that I’m a part of this conversation.”

Is there anything else that you would like to add that you think needs to be said beforehand, something that you want people really to be energized about to come to the panel?

“I think it’s cool that this that this panel is happening. And I think that VR and AR are a super cool, contemporary field to be worked creatively. And a few conversations that I’ve had with Christian is that, because the technology is still somewhat in the early stages, although it’s very well developed now, as far as like a mass-market technology, it’s still kind of early. A lot of the type of artists that have access to making content, because it’s so capital intensive at this point, are people who are older, more established with a very large audience that have budgets and stuff. And so I think basically, our panel is hopefully like trying to start a conversation about what it would look like to create a community in which the barrier to entry, to the creative use of this technology, isn’t so exclusive just to people who have really large audiences or access to a lot of money and I think that’s just a matter of time but also a matter of conversation and talking about what ways can labels and other media outlets partner with artists to to create new art, new work, new material, new things for people, new experiences for people. Hopefully we can have some good conversations and create more awareness around the possibilities.”

For more information about this subject, please check out The Value of VR for Indie Labels and Artists panel on Tuesday, March 12 at 3:30 p.m. at the JW Marriott, Salon 3-4.