AUSTIN, Texas -- Last year, after Bruce Springsteen gave a South By Southwest keynote speech for the ages, I remember pitying whoever had the unenviable task of following that. But it turned out I needn't have worried. For 2013, the SXSW braintrust put the keynote into the capable hands of Dave Grohl.

The Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters main man is a decent songwriter, an incredible drummer and by most accounts a thoroughly decent chap. And like Springsteen, he's also a music fan who has never forgotten what it's like to be outside looking in -- and to want something so bad it drives you almost insane. Grohl got the brass ring with Nirvana, and it is to his immense credit that he understands and appreciates just what a charmed career he has had.

After some preliminary music by Black Violin (a pretty amazing young group combining jumped-up rock and flowing beats with violin and cello -- wow), Grohl ambled out to greet the crowd, donning reading glasses as he fretted that he hoped he "still looked like a rock star." That set the tone for an entertaining and self-effacing spiel in which Grohl traced his career from his early Road-to-Damascus experience via the 1973 Edgar Winter instrumental hit "Frankenstein" -- which Grohl performed a capella, Bobby McFerrin-style, quite capably. He also told some tales about his old punk-rock days, evoking the joy of the do-it-yourself life: "There was no right and there was no wrong because it was all mine."

That was an inspiring thought to carry outside into the beautiful Austin sunshine. Thursday was the kind of bucolic spring day that suckers people into moving here, which they regret once the scorching heat of August kicks in. But Thursday was perfect weather for finding a good spot to sit outdoors and listen to music.

Emphasis there on "sit," as in don't move around unless you have to. South By Southwest has become almost unmanageably huge nowadays, drawing throngs of people numbering in the tens of thousands, many of them credential-less kids on spring break. It's just about impossible to scurry around and see everything you'd want to -- or anything at all, sometimes. Pretty much the entire city was gridlocked Wednesday night, and I had a frustrating evening in which I spent a lot more time standing in lines that weren't moving than actually seeing bands.

Thursday had to be better, and it was. Following Grohl's keynote, I staked out a comfortable outdoor spot at the Threadgill's beer garden and took in some old favorites including John Hiatt, a cat who has truly turned into the cool old blues troubadour he always wanted to be; Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, two fine journeyman enjoying late-career surges (among Miller's recent production credits is the Grammy-nominated "Leaving Eden" by Triangle stringband Carolina Chocolate Drops); and Richard Thompson, who never ceases to astonish. Thompson played magical guitar that somehow evoked everything from bagpipes on a misty morn' to divebombing Stukas.

Later on indoors, I caught another old favorite, Austin's own True Believers. SXSW has gotten so huge that every available space gets turned into a music venue, including some that shouldn't. The Believers played in a bike shop owned by Lance Armstrong, an odd and acoustically atrocious venue made even odder by all the pictures of the disgraced bike-racing icon on the walls. Nevertheless, the Believers just flat blew the roof off the joint with a blast of '80s glam-punk that has aged supremely well. It was the first time I'd seen them since...1994. I am delighted to report that they've not lost a step.

Another post-sundown highlight was Hiss Golden Messenger, working handle of Chapel Hill's M.C. Taylor, who played solo acoustic in a downtown Austin church and joked that he just doesn't play anything more uptempo than an amble. But his lyrical sentiments are just lacerating ("Heaven is the cruelest of 'em all" being just one"), sung in a plainspoken and quiet voice over exquisite acoustic guitar. It's difficult to describe what it is that makes him so affecting. He just is. There's a new album coming and it's great. More later.

This weekend will bring lots more March madness, including some possible opportunities to see a few big-name party-crashers who were announced at the last minute: Prince, Green Day and Justin Timberlake. The marketing goes on. But there's more magic in SXSW's smaller moments, like Hiss Golden Messenger playing for a few dozen attentive folks in a church.

For the second straight year, an act with Triangle connections will be center-stage at next February's Grammy Awards. Where it was Arcade Fire this past year, next year it will be Bon Iver -- whose frontman Justin Vernon used to call Raleigh home.

Bon Iver scored nominations in the prestigious record and song of the year categories for "Holocene," a track from the group's eponymous 2011 album. That was part of a four-nomination haul including best alternative album and even best new artist.

The latter category is odd because "Bon Iver" was the group's third release -- and its first two both made the top half of the Billboard 200 album sales charts. One of the other best-new-artist nominees also has North Carolina connections, Fayetteville rapper J. Cole, nominated on the strength of his chart-topping album "Cole World: The Sideline Story."

Industry observer Sean Ross, executive editor of the Ross On Radio newsletter, cites Nicki Minaj as this year's worthiest best-new-artist nominee. But he predicts that Minaj won't win because she and J. Cole "will cancel each other out," which might allow Bon Iver to sneak in there the way Arcade Fire did for album of the year back in February.

"Then it's Bon Iver's people-who-propelled-Arcade-Fire vote versus The Band Perry's combination mainstream-audience vote and the never-insigificant 'I don't really follow new music but I hear they're good' vote," Ross said.

The nominations were announced Wednesday night at a Grammy concert at Staples Center in Los Angeles, where the awards will be presented Feb. 12. As expected, Adele's top-selling "21" album led the field with six nominations. Bruno Mars, Mumford & Sons, Rihanna and Lady Gaga all picked up multiple nominations in the major categories, too.

As for other nominations of North Carolina interest:

Eric Church, an Appalachian State alumnus from Granite Falls, was nominated for best country album, up against a field including Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum and Jason Aldean.

North Carolina School of the Arts alumnus Jim Lauderdale, a two-time winner in past years, earned a nomination for best bluegrass album -- and also appears on a Tom T. Hall tribute album nominated for best children's album. Among Lauderdale's competition in the bluegrass category will be Brevard's Steep Canyon Rangers, sharing a nomination with comedian/banjo player Steve Martin.

Asheville guitarist Warren Haynes, a veteran of Gov't Mule and Allman Brothers, was nominated for best blues album.

Durham-based Merge Records, which captured last year's best-album Grammy with Arcade Fire, picked up a best-recording-package nomination for the expanded deluxe version of the same album. Zooey Deschanel, who records with M. Ward as the Merge duo She & Him, was also nominated in best song written for visual media, for the "Winnie the Pooh" song "So Long."

Marsalis Music, the label of Durham jazzman Branford Marsalis, scored in the category of best large jazz ensemble album for "Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook."

Levon Helm's live album "Ramble at the Ryman," nominated for best Americana album, includes "Anna Lee," written by Greensboro's Laurelyn Dossett. That song has already been on one Grammy-winning album, Helm's "Dirt Farmer," which won best tradtional folk album in 2008.

ADDENDUM: Another nominee with local connections is recording engineer Miles Walker, who grew up in Raleigh and mostly works out of Atlanta. Walker engineered records that scored a total of eight nominations, including hits by Rhianna, Katy Perry and Wiz Khalifa, sharing the nomination on two of them -- Rhianna's album-of-the-year nod for "Loud," and Perry's record-of-the-year nomination for "Firework."

SECOND ADDENDUM: I received a pretty detailed response about who does and does not qualify as a "new" artist in Grammyland from another industry pundit, former USA Today music editor Ken Barnes. I'm fascinated in wonky stuff like this, so I'm passing along the whole thing:

As a 25-year Grammy voter, I've watched the definition of a new artist "evolve" from super-strict (one prior guest appearance on someone else's album disqualified Whitney Houston from new-artist consideration in the '80s) to the current, almost-anything-goes guidelines.

It's basically a wording problem at this point; if the category were called "best emerging artist" or "breakthrough artist" or something like that, it wouldn't be such a communications problem. Basically what the Grammys try to do is establish whether, with a particular album, an artist has achieved a breakthrough to the general public. If Bon Iver was considered a critical/indie/minority-taste hit prior to this record, then the Grammys would declare them eligible. If the Academy felt a breakthrough had occurred with a previous record, based on sales, airplay, critical acclaim, buzz, mass acceptance, etc., then no.

With only rather generally worded guidelines, it's always dicey, and standards tend to waffle. So there's always one or two "new artists" that stick in journalists' craws, for good reason.