Musicians from around the country are gearing up for the South By Southwest festival beginning in Austin, Texas next week. Some of them got a practice run this weekend at the Savannah Stopover.

The music festival in downtown Savannah celebrated its fifth year with a lineup of around 100 bands. It’s been called “a smaller, genteel alternative” to SXSW by the music blog The Brooklyn Vegan. Especially for groups that are just getting established, that’s often part of the draw.

For brand-new acts like the Baltimore hip-hop duo Bond St. District, there’s no public relations team, no roadies – not even a hotel room. Instead, many bands traveling to Savannah for the festival stay with local musicians or music fans, who host them in their homes.

The morning of their performance, Paul Hutson, Manny Williams, and their backup dancer Ebony Jackson, showed up to their host Coy Campbell's home, a sprawling Victorian on Savannah’s east side.

Campbell has been restoring the house for its owner, the novelist and founder of The Moth storytelling organization, George Dawes Green. When they reached the top of the winding staircase, the band was impressed.

“This is like a movie set…I am in Downtown Abbey; where is Maggie Smith?” Williams raved. “We’ve gotta move to the South.”

Bond St. District released their first five-song EP in November. It represents a fusion of two very different personal backgrounds.

Williams, who’s 30 and African American, goes by the rap name DDm. He has been rapping for years, but works a day job at a utility company.

“I’m from Baltimore, West Baltimore, Park Heights section,” he said. “You may have seen some of my growing up area on ‘The Wire’ unfortunately.” Williams has what he describes as a “football-player build,” and says both he and some of his lyrics are “rough around the edges.”

Hutson, 26, is lanky with a beard. He grew up in a middle-class white family in suburban Gaithersburg, Maryland, and studied music and film in college. He’d been making beat-heavy instrumental records when he met Williams last summer at a Baltimore club.

“He’ll take a song that I wrote and might have a certain idea of what it might be saying, but he’ll put a completely different story to it and it fits so well,” Hutson said of Williams. Hutson mentioned the song Matinee, which, we should warn you, contains explicit lyrics. But Williams’ words delve into issues of race, mainstream beauty standards and the challenges of trying to make it as a rapper.

If Williams and Hutson are an unlikely juxtaposition, so is their sound compared to that of their festival host. On the night of Bond St. District's performance, Campbell performed down the street with Nightingale News, a Savannah group with a strings-heavy, Southern-rock and folk-influenced sound.

“I’ve really enjoyed listening to them,” Campbell said of his guests. “But that’s one of the great things about Stopover is just the pairings are so vast, there’s so much variety.”

For bands looking to make connections and play a show on a tight budget, Stopover is accessible and personal says music critic Bill Dawers of the blog Hissing Lawns.

“It may not be posh accommodations, but it’s very welcoming,” Dawers said. “It sounds stereotypical, but that type of Southern hospitality is very much part of the fabric of Savannah."

For many, it’s a welcoming stop on the way to the big show in Austin and a chance to stand out in a smaller crowd.

Contributors: Chadd Jones

Tags: savannah stopover, sxsw, Sarah McCammon, GPB Savannah, hissing lawns, Bond St District, Nightingale News