If you’ve ever gone to a show in Bushwick, it’s very likely that Todd P was in some way affiliated with it. The notorious local DIY promoter and one of the key people behind the Market Hotel is the subject of a new documentary by Bushwick director Jay Buim, Todd P Goes to Austin.

The documentary follows Todd P from Bushwick (specifically, Silent Barn and the Market Hotel) to his all-ages SXSW show in a parking lot in Austin earlier this year. Along for the ride in their own vans are Matt and Kim, the now-defunct Mika Miko, and the Death Set. The film’s lo-fi aesthetic is perfectly compatible with the sometimes grungy settings, the cramped vans, and the unpolished techiniques that the bands themselves have adopted.

While Todd P is ostensibly the star of the show, the bands he assembles for his gigs are the heart of the film. The live footage of the bands, though sometimes incongruent with the narrative, reinforce Todd P’s repeated statements that live music is an important medium that should be valued and should be available to everyone. Anybody who has ever been squashed at a basement show or played along with Dan Deacon‘s choreography is going to smile at scenes of bands swinging from the rafters and audience members crashing into drum kits. Viewers who haven’t been to such shows are either going to be horrified or will want to be a part of it.

If viewers harbor any illusions at the start of the film that being in a DIY band or booking DIY shows is somehow glamourous, Todd P Goes to Austin will effectively kill them. Venue owners don’t return calls, vans break down, PA systems blow, the cops show up at Market Hotel (before it was shut down in April) and at the parking lot in Austin, bands debate at length whether or not to defecate in a plastic bag when a restroom can’t be found, and everyone sleeps crammed up against one another. But no one does it for the glamour, they do it because they can, and the point Todd tries to drive home throughout the film is that anybody can — and should — do what he does.