Gus Voorhees – The Man of Kent and Step Back
Oust – Alas, Posterity
Paperhaus – Silent Speaking
Big Sky Conspiracy – Tornado
Supper Club – Rondamatic
Abu Jibran – Time To Save Your Soul
Kokayi – Port of Lost Angels
K-Murdock – Birdfeather
Dirdy Redzz – Red Line doors closing
The Harry Bells – Man Smart, Woman Smarter
The Mean Season – Kurtz
huSEQ – Super Extoller
Scenic MentaL Detours – Falling Leaf
Atoka Chase – Burn the Light (or Of Matriarchs and Alcohol)
Howard University Jazz Ensemble – Is There Anything Still There
Jonathan Matis – Akeboki
Deleted Scenes – The Days of Adderall
Kino Musica – Yèkèrmo Sèw
Frau Eva – Morrissey Smiling
Blankus Larry – Sam

Gordon Withers – Revolving Doors
Elijah Cole – Green Dolphin Street
Suzanne Brindamour – Pilots Rendezvous
Scythian – Last Days of Summer
Theater of Soul – Memories Of A Time Long Ago
Paperhaus – Silent Speaking
Möbius Strip – IG-88
Jackie and The Treehorns – So Many Ways (To Turn You On)
Adam Stamper – Movements of the Anansi
Empresarios – Alegria
Chester Endersby Gwazda – Globes
Roger Aldridge – Twilight Sail
Matt Chaconas – Goodnight
Constant Alarm – Cairo
Blues Condition – Lucky Star
David King – Suspension
Diamond District – Streets Won’t Let Me Chill Instrumental
Black Masala – Cool Breeze
Dan Harris – Pell Mellish
The Fishermen Band – Someday

Buildings – Water In Water
Drop Electric – Church of Glass
ZOMES – Equinox
Girls Love Distortion – Psychic Raygun
Jonathan Parker – East Lorain
Fort Knox Five – Reach (Instrumental)
Marian McLaughlin – Will-o-the-wisp
The Petticoat Tearoom – Love Isn’t Gone
Iritis – Gates of Dawn
GroundScore – My Perfect Spot
Cartoon Weapons – WTLFO
Feedel Band – Girl From Ethiopia (Live At WAMU)
Bad Brains – Cowboy
Paperhaus – Cairo
Matt Chaconas – baby bear obliquity
Baby Bry Bry – Is It Anything Or Is It Everything
Protect-U – Dit Floss
Troy and Paula Haag – Lies & Cries
Speedwell – Two Conquests
Lower Dens – Stem

But Walsh isn’t cooking for one: He’s getting ready for the latest edition of Drone Brunch, a now three-year-old event series that combines delicious food with nichey music. In the living room, keyboards and synthesizers litter the floor, and the musicians to which they belong mill about. A show is about to begin.

Two acts from Philadelphia are on the lineup — Hallowed Bells and Charles Cohen — alongside D.C. synth ensemble Br’er. When the show starts, Hallowed Bells’ peaceful twinkling gives way to Cohen’s dense and contemplative aural storytelling, and Br’er shows that it exemplifies Tom Waits’ adage of “beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

And there were scones.

Drone Brunch started when Walsh “heard from a friend of mine say the phrase ‘drone brunch,'” Walsh says.

Walsh later found out that the idea was never meant to be taken seriously. He says the term’s inventor, ex-D.C. resident Cole Goins — whose former house venue The Cherch hosted the first Drone Brunch in 2012 — told Walsh that it had been a joke he and some buddies had come up with over a few beers.

Charles Cohen performing at Drone Brunch (Photo: Keith Mathias)

“It happened to be a great idea because there’s this tradition of hardcore matinees on Sundays,” Walsh says. Famed New York City club CBGB hosted them for years, and D.C.’s hardcore scene has had its share of daytime gigs. But hardcore isn’t a calming way to wrap up the weekend.

“I enjoy a hardcore matinee,” Walsh says, “but on a Sunday afternoon, I’d prefer something a little less aggressive.”

So drone it was. It’s music built on sustained, repeated sounds — which can be made acoustically, but usually require some electronic manipulation — and the audience for it is decidedly limited. Case in point: On this particular Sunday, the people trickling in mostly seem to know each other, and conversation revolves around which shows everyone has seen recently. This is a crowd that sees a lot of music in D.C.

“Somebody who goes to one show a month isn’t going to make that show a weird Sunday afternoon show,” Walsh says. “It’s sort of a self-selecting group in that way, but it’s certainly not exclusionary and we don’t want to be exclusionary in any way. That’s just kind of the way it works out.”

Hallowed Bells (Photo: Keith Mathias)

Walsh says Drone Brunch and the people who attend it are “a little bit weird.” That’s just his style. “I like the weirdos. They’re my people,” he says.

Now, Drone Brunch isn’t the only music-and-brunch event circulating around D.C.: Northeast space Hole In The Sky recently kicked off its own series of brunch concerts, and Walsh has been working with the venue to host a Drone Brunch there sometime over the next couple of months. If it’s anything like the most recent edition, everyone in attendance is in for a treat — including the edible kind.

But Drone Brunch has no large-scale ambitions. Its purpose is simple. The series is “really just about having a nice time and eating some scones,” Walsh says, “because it rhymes with ‘drone.'”

Local legends Rare Essence are scheduled to perform at the festival Tuesday, sharing a bill with other D.C.-area artists including Prinze George, Oddisee, Paperhaus, Black Alley, Kokayi and Asheru. The showcase is technically part of the Washington, DC Economic Partnership’s technology campaign during the festival, but Rare Essence is paying for the trip itself with a combination of private donations and money it raised at a recent fundraiser concert.

Bandleader Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson, the group’s only remaining original member, says Rare Essence has been looking to play SXSW for several years to meet with industry representatives and get its sound in front of new audiences.

“We’re trying to expand Rare Essence and go-go music beyond the beltway,” Johnson says.

Now nearly 40 years old, Rare Essence could seem like a strange fit for SXSW. It’s not a buzz band with a recent Soundcloud hit or a nationally known group hitting the summer festival circuit. It’s a treasured local band that’s been performing in clubs and gymnasiums across D.C., Maryland and Virginia for decades.

Rare Essence’s fans still call it the “wickedest band alive.” They’ve seen the group through peaks — like the success of singles “Body Moves,” “Lock It” and “Work the Walls” — and tragedy, namely the deaths of trumpeter Anthony “Lil Benny” Harley and drummer Quentin “Footz” Davidson.

But like most go-go bands, Rare Essence hasn’t built a strong national following. It hasn’t had a hit outside the D.C. region for years.

Johnson says his band wants to play SXSW, in part, to change that. He says the best way to market a band like his is to perform live. That’s how go-go music must be heard.

“People like live music, and that’s the main ingredient to go-go,” Johnson says.

There’s a good chance Tuesday’s District music showcase in Austin will attract an audience that’s more D.C.-aware than the rest of the SXSW crowd, but still, Johnson says it could be a challenging performance. Rare Essence shows attract familiar faces. Band members used to do shout-outs by reading the name and neighborhood of fans from a card. Now, Johnson says, the band knows most of the shout-outs by heart. They can’t expect that level of local love in Austin.

During SXSW, Rare Essence will probably play the same songs it performs in D.C., Johnson says, but the shorter set time means the group probably won’t break into extended jam sessions like it regularly does at home — unless the audience demands it.

“We’ve been in situations where people would walk in and not know what this is and stand around for the first couple of songs,” Johnson says, “but by the end of the set, they’re into it like everyone else.”

SXSW isn’t Rare Essence’s only attempt to define itself for new audiences: The band’s trip to Texas coincides with the release of its first batch of new songs in more than a decade. Johnson says the new release contains some of the band’s best music ever. Perhaps a few business meetings and a good performance will yield more concert dates outside the D.C. region and new ears for its fresh material.

Though scholars and music journalists have already declared go-go a strictly local phenomenon, Johnson suggests maybe they’re wrong. Maybe go-go just hasn’t broken out of D.C. yet.

“The reason for us even going to South By Southwest is for us to expand Rare Essence and go-go as much as we can try to get to that next level,” Johnson says.

Over the past four or five years, I’ve watched this band grow to become a centerpiece for an arty, punky side of Washington, D.C. Its members share a house, also called Paperhaus, and it’s become a venue for an eclectic mix of noise, electronic and rock bands from in town and out. Alex Tebeleff and Eduardo Rivera both trade guitar and voice on the band’s self-titled debut, and serve as the heart of the group amid turnover in Paperhaus’ rhythm section. Their shows are about community and bringing people together, and recent performances bear that out.

With Krautrock providing a basis for what Paperhaus does, Rivera and Tebeleff even formed a Kraftwerk cover band, and they’ve been nailing those gems of the ’70s in concert, performing with real drums, guitars and, of course, synths. But there are moments when Paperhaus digs further into rock’s past, when its sound recalls lesser-known acts like Ten Years After and a time in rock music when the blues met psychedelia in long-ago songs like “50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain.” Paperhaus channels that time, as well as its spirit of experimentation, but it still sounds like right now.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Like the legendary electronic ensemble from Düsseldorf, Paperhaus’ members are audiophiles who can recognize a good sound system. Frontman Alex Tebeleff—who’s put in years playing through crappy PAs in basements and rock clubs—came up with the idea to cover Trans-Europe Express around the time he played a Madchester-themed DJ set at the U Street club in September. After his set that night, he spent some time admiring the venue’s sound system with U Hall co-owner Will Eastman.

“Me and Will were talking and I made a comment like, ‘Can you imagine something like Kraftwerk coming out of these speakers?'” says Tebeleff, 27. “It just came out of a conversation between two music nerds, basically.”

A Kraftwerk superfan, Tebeleff cites the German ensemble’s influence on pop music of all kinds, from hip-hop forebear Afrika Bambaataa to dance-punk ensemble LCD Soundsystem to his band, which usually plays a fairly straightforward strain of indie rock. When he spins music for his pals, “I always enjoy surprising people playing ‘Trans-Europe Express’ into [Bambaataa’s] ‘Planet Rock,'” says Tebeleff. Plus, Paperhaus used to cover “Neon Lights,” a melodic cut from Kraftwerk’s The Man Machine.

Paperhaus doesn’t plan to alter the record or put a unique stamp on Trans-Europe Express, save a few minor tonal adjustments. He says the group will play 85 percent of the melodies on the record, but expects to add live drums and bring new timbres and textures to the songs. The Petworth band recruited neighbor and Br’er keyboardist Erik Sleight to play a synthesizer, and they’re plotting to stack the stage with twice the amount of normal Paperhaus gear, including drum samplers, bass synths, poly synths, a vocoder and effects pedals.

Tebeleff says Paperhaus wants the audience’s focus to be on the music and not the band’s image onstage, but it wouldn’t be a Kraftwerk-inspired act without a light show. Accordingly, Tebeleff says, there will be one—though something more low-key (and low-cost) than Kraftwerk’s spectacular recent performances.

The one-off December show promises to be a dramatic detour for Paperhaus, which is currently recording its new album, scheduled for a Feb. 10 release. All of this electronics-tinkering probably won’t show up on the record; Tebeleff says that the band’s latest songs represent “some of the dirtiest, nastiest rock ‘n’ roll that we’ve done.”

While Paperhaus has already started practicing for the Dec. 14 gig, the group still isn’t sure how it’ll turn out.

“Part of the fun of getting to see us play it is seeing how the [hell] we pull this off,” Tebeleff says. “I’m not even quite sure how we’re gonna do it yet.”

Paperhaus performs Trans-Europe Express Dec. 14 at U Street Music Hall.