Firework Show hopes South by Southwest experience will pay off

After playing the South By Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin last month, jazzy rock quartet Firework Show returns to Charleston for its show at the Pour House on Wednesday.

This will be the band's first concert in its hometown in six months, and they'll be sharing the stage with The Whigs, an Athens-based garage rock trio who has toured internationally with The Black Keys and Kings of Leon.

Firework Show frontman Zach Bodtorf is enthralled to rock out once again in the Lowcountry.

"We've got a lot of friends and family and all kinds of stuff in the city, so we're hoping that everybody can make it out," Bodtorf said. "We're probably debuting a few new songs at the show."

Firework Show made it out to Austin for SXSW and played a gig at a venue called The Thirsty Nickel. As the group played its set, the empty bar transformed into a capacity crowd as pedestrians passing by became intrigued and entered to listen.

"We started out with 10 to 15 people in the club, but by the end of the set, the place was packed," Bodtorf said. "It was crazy. The shows are free, so people walking down the street can just come in. Everybody we ran into was really supportive. "

After the festival, the guys in the band want to continue playing the festival circuit throughout 2011.

They also hope to release another record by the end of the year but are debating to go with an LP or EP release.

"We've been planning on doing a full-length record for a while now and we've got enough music for one," Bodtorf said. "We're going back and forth on doing a full-length or doing another EP with a bunch of digital content."

The members have all been exploring other musical avenues as well. Bodtorf has been playing in the Charles David Band, a soul-blues outfit based out of Charleston.

Drummer Brandon Gallagher has been playing drums out in Awendaw with several other musicians at The Swamp.

Bassist Casey Atwater plays with Ben Fagan and Friends.

And keyboardist Braxton Brown has delved into his solo hip-hop project as well.

"We're all staying busy with the band and most everyone is working on other projects."

SXSW's lessons have taught these music veterans a thing or two about the power of promotion and some insight into the mechanics of the ever-changing American music industry.

"We're just figuring out how to use Twitter. It was crazy to see the different ways musicians promoted their shows when we were in Austin," Bodtorf said.

"I'm old school, but we're going to try to keep that updated. The one thing everyone asked us when we got back was, 'Did you get a recording contract?' We didn't, but we learned so much about what's going on in music across the country."