Got a tip? Send it our way
Share your music news — big or small — with the Austin360.com team by sending us an e-mail.
Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > ACL Festival category
ACL Festival
June 8, 2009
Interview: Passion Pit
(Passion Pit at Emo’s in March during South by Southwest. Photo by Benjamin Sklar/For the American-Statesman)
Boston-based indie pop group Passion Pit have had a big year. Feeding on momentum from last year’s much-hyped EP, they released their debut full length, “Manners,” in May to critical acclaim, selling more than 10,000 copies in the first week and landing the band a spot at No. 51 on the Billboard Top 100 album chart. They are in the middle of a non-stop tour that includes sold-out dates in the United States and Europe. They’ll also perform at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October. We caught up with Passion Pit drummer Nate Donmoyer and keyboardist Ayad Al Adhamy before their recent sold-out show at Emo’s.
American-Statesman: You’ve been selling out shows across the country. Why do you think people are so excited to see you?
Adhamy: People tell them to be excited. We have a really awesome publicist. It’s a word of mouth or word of Internet thing. It’s nothing we’re doing.
Donmoyer: … It’s our first tour through a lot of these towns so it’s still a litmus test, an ‘are these guys worth our time?’ kind of thing. It’ll be a few more tours before they’re actually here to see us.
Adhamy: We met these two girls yesterday in Dallas that said they were doing a Passion Pit Texas tour, coming to all three shows (Dallas, Austin and Houston). I’m really humbled by that.
Donmoyer: They don’t have jobs, so they can follow us around.
‘Manners’ sold more than 10,000 copies in the first week it was released. Were you surprised?
Adhamy: Floored, absolutely floored.
Donmoyer: I was expecting maybe 500.
Adhamy: I had friends e-mailing me, and they were like, oh my god, you’re in the billboard top 100.
Donmoyer: It’s some alternative reality we just clicked into.
Adhamy: We just graduated college and we’re still kids.
Donmoyer: It’s like what’s wrong with the world? Because why would we be in the top 100?
Adhamy: Actually, I disagree, because Eminem is No. 1. If he’s No. 1, then I don’t want to be No. 1. Eminem’s going to hate us now.
What have been listening to while on tour?
Adhamy: One of my favorite things is napping and waking up and seeing Nate driving to classical music and violin concertos. We all have music degrees so we’re pretty knowledgeable about that kind of thing.
Donmoyer: The new Phoenix album has been on repeat for like four months. We wish we made it.
How have you adjusted to the Texas heat?
Adhamy: I grew up in the Middle East, so I would expect to be used to it, but no, I never got used to it. It never gets comfortable. Except there, I can’t walk outside in my glasses. Here I can wear glasses, but it’s so sticky and warm when you’re setting up and carrying gear. It’s good exercise, though.
Donmoyer: In Boston you can drink and it’s freezing, so you don’t really notice. Here it’s four beers and you’re lucky if you don’t pass out on stage. That’s what happened during SXSW. I basically passed out.
Adhamy: I came straight from England (to SXSW) and was kind of stressed out, so when I flew in that morning I said, ‘This is glorious, I’m going to have a whiskey. I’m going to have four whiskeys!” Then you start eating and you have to set up, and the stage was makeshift out of balsa wood or something, like a trampoline. The laptop fell like seven times, keyboards fell, the bassist got hit in the face with the microphone.
Did you have time to see any other bands during SXSW?
Donmoyer: Grizzly Bear. My girlfriend lives in Dallas and she came down. It was the one band we wanted to see, and there were 300 people in line. I thought, what a terrible end to our time at SXSW, sitting outside waiting. I looked at my wrist, at my artist pass, and told the bouncer ‘I’m playing right now, I’m in Grizzly Bear,” and they were like “Oh yeah yeah yeah,” and they cleared a path an everyone just walked to the front of the stage and we watched the whole set.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
April 5, 2009
ACL Fest advance tickets rise to $160
Apparently, Pearl Jam ain’t cheap. The lowest tier of three-day passes to ACL Fest Oct. 2- 4 in Zilker Park will be $160, which includes all service charges. Once an undisclosed alotment sells out April 7, when tix go on sale at 10 a.m., the next tier’s pricing will go into effect. That will be $185.
In 2007, advance tickets started at $120 for three days. Last year the first tier went up to $150. Three-day passes have sold out at least a month before the festival in the past two years. The Zilker Park capacity is 65,000 per day.
Last year’s top price for three-day passes was $170. If past patterns are followed, this year’s top tier looks to be headed to $185- $195.
In the worst-kept secret since Metallica’s SXSW showcase, Pearl Jam is expected to be announced as the ACL Fest headliner on April 28. Beastie Boys, Dave Matthews Band, Kings of Leon, Levon Helm and Ghostland Observatory are other names confirmed by an ACL Fest insider.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
March 24, 2009
Did Lickona confirm Pearl Jam for ACL Fest?
On a recent chat on pbs.org “Austin City Limits” producer Terry Lickona said to look for Pearl Jam doing a taping this year. It’s the last question.
This makes our tip of Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, Dave Matthews Band, Kings of Leon and Ghostland Observatory as ACL headliners sound on the mark. Billboard has confirmed KOL and Dave Matthews has a gig in Tulsa the day before ACL, which makes the DMB likely. Still no confirmation from C3. But they’re not denying it either. We got our info from a C3 insider.
Lickona is currently in Los Angeles and couldn’t be immediately reached.
Here’s our question of the day: if those are indeed the headliners (won’t know for sure for a couple months), who would you like to see as second and third tier acts at ACL?
Permalink | Comments (73) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
March 22, 2009
A: Pearl Jam. Beastie Boys. Dave Matthews Band. Kings of Leon. Ghostland Observatory.
Q: Who are the headliners of the Austin City Limits Music Fest October 2-4, according to a loose-lipped C3 insider, overheard at the “Rock the Rabbit” party?
Asked if this leak was on the mark, ACL booker Charles Attal said he would have no comment until the lineup is officially released in about two months.
We’ve also learned that the great Levon Helm will play with his all-star band.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
March 9, 2009
Kings of Leon will likely be one ACL headlner
Our friends at Austin Soundcheck first picked up on this - Billboard is reporting that Kings of Leon will be one of the headliners at both Lollapallooza and the Austin City Limits Music Festival this year.
Austin City Limits has six headliners, technically. It seems very unlikely that Kings of Leon are the biggest band on that bill. Very.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
October 2, 2008
ACL 2009 dates: Oct 2- 4
ACL Fest will rock you in October next year, C3 Presents confirmed today. Right after they finally got lucky in September.
No word yet on whether Radiohead is available, or that they’ll even still be relevant Oct. 2- 4.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
October 1, 2008
And the best selling artists at the Waterloo booth during ACL are....
(No album titles are used, so we’re not sure which records sold, just that this particular artist sold the following number of CDs during the festival
MGMT 239
Vampire Weekend 212
Back Door Slam 149
Jenny Lewis 143
Fleet Foxes 141
Alison Krauss & Robert Plant 130
Manu Chao 118
Electric Touch 103
Jamie Lidell 92
What Made Milwaukee… 90
Abigail Washburn 86
Rodney Crowell 82
Nicole Atkins 82
Raconteurs 80
Okkervil River 80
Xavier Rudd 77
Black and White Years 76
Gogol Bordello 72
Conor Oberst 66
Eli Young Band 65
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 30, 2008
'FNL' on ACL
So we’re kicking ourselves for not thinking of this idea: Whitney Pastorek of Entertainment Weekly asked cast members from “Friday Night Lights” to review sets at last weekend’s ACL Fest. Check them out.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL takeover- Full Service
Check out Full Service, playing on the grass near Jack In the Box during ACL. The Austin band has specialized in “takeovers” since they shadowed 311 and Snoop Dogg this summer.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 29, 2008
ACL aftershow review: Conor Oberst, M. Ward and Jenny Lewis
M. Ward took the stage first to start off Conor Oberst’s aftershow at La Zona Rosa around 10 p.m Sunday, without the high-powered band that accompanied him during his Friday set at the festival. Ward is just as good solo as he is with his band, however, as the big sound of his finger-picking style compensates for the lack of umph. He played a few repeats from his Friday set, including, “Sad, Sad Song” and “Chinese Translation,” before bringing out Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, who appeared at the festival on Sunday. Rawlings and Ward traded licks and Welch sang backup on Ward’s “Fuel For Fire,” a mellow cover of “It Hurts Me Too” and Ward’s “One Life Away” to finish the set.
Lewis came out second. Her performance on Friday in the WaMu tent was good, but inside La Zona Rosa the show was bigger and better. Lewis and her band played mostly the same set as they did at the festival, starting off with “Jack Killed Mom” and “Rise Up With Fists.” Lewis’ chemistry with the rest of the band is one of her strong suits, as when she trades verses with guitarist Jonathan Rice on songs such as “Carpetbaggers.” The onstage collaboration of Ward’s set continued when Gillian Welch and David Rawlings made their second appearance of the evening to sing with the band on “Acid Tongue,” and later when Ward joined the band on “Pretty Bird.”
The crowd seemed fairly worn out by the time Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band came on after midnight, and Oberst joked that he “only thought he was going to die like three times” over the weekend. The set was more varied than Saturday night’s at the festival, with three different members of the band providing lead vocals at different points. In addition to songs off Oberst’s recently released self-titled album, such as “Moab,” “Get-Well-Cards” and “NYC-Gone, Gone,” the band offered up a bluesy cover of “Corrina, Corrina” with Jenny Lewis guitarist Blake Mills joining them on stage, as well as a fun cover of Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome,” which they also did on Saturday.
After finishing the set with “I Don’t Want To Die (In The Hospital),” Oberst returned to the stage with M. Ward for “Lenders in the Temple,” Ward’s “O’brien/o’brien’s Nocturne,” and “Smoke Without Fire” and a couple others before bringing out, you guessed it, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. It was nearly 2 a.m. by the time the four closed with a cover of Lucinda Williams’ “Sharp Cutting Wings (Song to a Poet).”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL aftershow review: The Black Keys
The ACL fest was in no hurry to die Sunday night, with hardly a place to stand in the yard at Stubb’s for the popular aftershow by the Black Keys.
After an opening Black Angels set that featured a two-song guest spot by Roky Erickson, concertgoers might have hoped for a bit of ACL synchronicity in which fest performer and “Attack & Release” producer Danger Mouse would make an appearance; he didn’t, though his Gnarls Barkley bandmate Cee-Lo Green was up in the VIP balcony for the whole show.
Instead, the band from Akron stuck to the basics: Heavy, loud garage blues in which singer and guitarist Dan Auerbach stalked one square of the stage while drummer Patrick Carney pounded away beside him on a kit decorated with a fake tiger-skin rug. Barely interacting with the crowd and allowing for little of “Attack & Release’s” sonic space (a cover of Captain Beefheart’s “I’m Glad” was among the few calm moments), the two-man group churned through a vigorous but slightly monotonous set.
Highlights included the new song “Strange Days” and older ones like “Everywhere I Go,” but the crowd seemed equally pleased by everything, bringing them back after an hour-long set for a short encore that included “Psychotic Girl.”
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: The Kills
Here’s a little tip: Texas, even in the fall, is pretty hot.
No great revelation I know, but it’s one London duo the Kills were unaware of heading into their early afternoon set Sunday and they weren’t shy about sharing their discomfort with the still-appreciative crowd.
Dressed in black (hello?) singer/guitarist Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince (guitar/vocals) started the day off with the tantalizing slink of “U.R.A. Fever,” from the band’s latest album, “Midnight Boom.”
Started in 2002 as a menacing garage blooz/doom pop outfit backed by a well-stocked sampler, the Kills have added glints of sunshine into their studio output in the years since. But in the Lonestar sun that good cheer was gone Sunday, with the duo’s guitars tangling like serpents against the clatter and bang on the sampler.
“We’ve never played a show in the sun before,” Mosshart said early on. “This was a terrible idea,” Hince lamented later.
Clearly this is music not made for sunlight, but at least all that angst and discomfort got manifested into the music and helped songs that are really pretty rudimentary gain a more dangerous edge.
“The bottoms of my feet are burning. So are the tops,” Mosshart laughingly shared after the relative calm of “Sour Cherry” as the sun warmed to somewhere in the mid 80s.
It was fun to humor them this time, but what would they have done in the hot dustbowl of ACL 2005? Stay in the smoky clubs, you two.
But thanks for trying.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Against Me!
Was that too soon?
Sorry, let’s move on.
Point is Against Me! found themselves at the front of the pack creatively after last year’s across-the-board winner “New Wave.” For their next trick, they’re trying to link up their earlier, less-nuanced output with fans inducted in the wake of the band’s newfound success.
It looks like they’re two for two based on their performance Sunday afternoon, blasting through anthems new and old without losing the sizable crowd one bit.
It was interesting to note throughout that even though many of the songs on “New Wave” such as “Stop!” or the title cut contain production touches and embellishments not found on many punk records, they stood just as strong when played stripped down, fast and loud like the older material, including “Cliche Guevara.”
Energetic and workmanlike the entire way — drummer Warren Oakes is in the running for the honor of most outwardly happy musician anywhere — that energy easily bled into the songs and let them shine.
The sweetest moment came when Tegan Quin of folk duo Tegan and Sara (also playing the festival) appeared on stage to accompany lead singer Tom Gabel on the swaying ballad “Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart.” The song, which features Quin on record as well, is one of the prettiest passages in the band’s catalog. Does that mean soon we’ll hear Against Me! blending folk-pop into its musical mix. Crazy as it sounds, at this point if they try it I wouldn’t bet against them.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Band of Horses
There are about a dozen things to nitpick with Band of Horses and the Seattle band’s set Sunday night.
Their songs routinely go on for about a minute too long and then the band doesn’t really know how to end them; most songs are generally one or two choruses and a verses repeated over and over; main cog Ben Bridwell (guitar/vocals) isn’t what you would call a strong singer and bass player Rob Hampton sounded like mud for roughly half the set.
You get the idea.
But here’s the thing, in spite of all that it’s pretty much impossible to not fall in love with this band and its more melodic if less experimental take on My Morning Jacket’s indie-roots rock. For all the missteps there were enough strengths — Bridwell’s raw emotion and honesty, the ability to pack three guitars into pop-like songs without sounding overstuffed — that the band’s after-dark set was a winner from the first notes of “The First Song,” from 2006’s “Everything All The Time.”
Loud, majestic and austere for pretty much the entire 60 minutes, Bridwell and his five-piece band played for the heavens and came within a few stars of reaching them on roaring gems like “The Great Salt Lake” and the celebratory (of course) “Weed Party,” among others.
Even if, as noted above, Bridwell’s voice isn’t technically sound, he’s got the strange ability to sound multi-tracked live and create thrilling harmonies that (to these ears) far surpass the supposed greatness of the pretty but lightweight Fleet Foxes.
It was all on display when the first notes of the almost-hit “The Funeral” teetered out of the speakers and Bridwell and company hammered it home for nearly six minutes. Afterward, Bridwell marveled at his place on stage and simply told the crowd, “I love you, you look beautiful!” and repeated a sentiment he shared after nearly every song.
For the vast majority of the thousands assembled, the feeling was mutual.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
September 28, 2008
ACL review: Foo Fighters
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Shooter Jennings
Shooter Jennings was 10 minutes late for his show in the WaMu tent Sunday evening. And when he finally did show up, the shaggy-haired, free-spirited son of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter took the stage as loudspeakers played the Darth Vadar march music from “Star Wars.”
I had the feeling, right then, that something strange was bound to happen.
But no: Jennings and his band went straight to work, churning out a string of hard-driving, high-testosterone, country-ROCK songs — “Steady at the Wheel,” “Slow Train,” “This Ol’ Wheel” — that touched on themes of alienation and a quest for freedom and the dream of going home. Newbies like me were reminded, very quickly, that the 29-year-old Jennings and his guitar-driven band share more of a musical kinship with Lynyrd Skynyrd (or the old Black Sabbath) than his father Waylon. And that’s quite all right. “The Wolf,” his third CD, reflects the spirit of a man whose committed to making music his own way.
Halfway through the show, Jennings sought to soften the mood a bit as the stage hands brought out an electronic keyboard — an instrument that didn’t seem to be working very well, it turns out. Jennings gave it a try for a couple of tunes. Then, following “Higher,” the stage hands returned to fix it. Shooter shooed them away. “I’m trying to get through one more song with this son of a … ,” he said, clearly frustrated.
Launching into a new song, Jennings played only a few notes before exclaiming, “What the hell is wrong with this thing?” Then he stood up at center stage, lifted the keyboard from its stand and threw it down to the floor. “Change of plan,” he said dryly.
Let the record show that Jennings promptly strapped on his Gibson guitar and ripped off an inspired rendition of “Daddy’s Farm” and eventually closed the show with a high-energy cover of the Arc Angels’ “Living in a Dream.”
Photo: Jack Plunkett ASSOCIATED PRESS
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Review
Recovering alcoholic Mike Farris has come home to God — and along the way, this one-time bad boy of the 1990s independent rock scene has developed an unabashed love for “black church music.” Hallelujah, Brother Farris. Hallelujah.
No doubt about it: Farris’ hand-clapping, foot-stomping, raise-the-roof Gospel-and-Soul set in the WaMu tent Sunday afternoon was an ACL Festival highlight. Imagine a blue-eyed soul singer and a Stax-style horn section at a tent revival, and you get the idea. Farris and his 10-piece band had the crowd in his hand from the moment he launched into Thomas A. Dorsey’s Gospel classic “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and held them through a 10-song set that drew almost entirely from his acclaimed album, “Salvation In Lights.”
It was a lot of fun, especially when nationally renowned gospel singers Ann and Regina McCrary got revved up and jumped into the mix. But make no mistake: Farris’ musical intent is quite sophisticated. He’ll take a classic gospel tune like “Can’t No Grave Hold My Body Down” and splash it oh so tastefully with soul and blues colors. At the same time, he’ll write original songs — such as “I’m Gonna Get There,” which closed the set — that mix gospel and soul, and the theme of salvation, in a way that makes them seem of the same family as those gospel standards. Easy to conceptualize, but very hard to pull off.
Farris received an extended standing ovation midway through his set for his stirring cover of Sam Cooke’s “Change is Gonna Come” — and man, did he earn it. Farris delivered the song as testimony, backed by the suggestion of a church organ, bringing to it a rare physical force as he clenched his fist and shouted out with conviction, yes, yes, a change is gonna come. He went the opposite way with “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep,” slowing it down a bit, giving it some reflective accents, and inviting a horn section solo (featuring Austin’s John Mills, Tony Campisi and Michael Mordecai) that suggested a New Orleans funeral march.
“The beauty of these old songs is that at the point of despair, (they connect) to our need to believe in a better day,” Farris said before a delicate cover of “Trouble in This World.” “That’s why songs like this are as relevant today as they were 150 years ago.”
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Kevin Fowler
I always thought the answer to the old question about what the dog would do when he finally caught the bus could be summed up in two words: “Kevin Fowler.”
Fowler may not be the most well known figure in country-rock, though he rules in that insular sub-genre that dubs itself “Texas Music.” But he inspires fan loyalty to a cult-like degree, he conducts his career according to his own road map and, most importantly from a fan perspective, he gives every appearance of having more fun than any 19 or 20 given barrels of monkeys.
Fowler came to his pre-eminence by a circuitous route. The Amarillo native first came to the attention of Austin audiences as a long-haired, head-banging member of the metal band Dangerous Toys. Now he has a buzzcut and a cowboy hat, but Fowler still knows how to wring a Les Paul dry (as evidenced by his dead-on rendition of Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion”). The crowd in front of the Austin Ventures stage on Sunday night responded accordingly.
More to the point, he is a clever and incisive writer who can craft a lyric with wicked acuity (“Beer, Bait and Ammo” and “Lord Loves the Drinkin’ Man,” to cite but two examples). He may be content to play the Bubba to the hilt (if he had bellowed, “Can I get a hell yeah?!” one more time, I was ready to put out a bounty on him), but he has a savvy appreciation for how far his persona can carry him. He gives the impression of being able to recreate himself at any time and still make valid and engaging music in the process.
In the meantime, he’s found a groove that works. As the old joke goes, the more you drink, the better he sounds. What Elsie the Cow is to milk, Fowler is to Jim Beam and Crown Royal, as songs like “Lord Loves the Drinkin’ Man,” “Triple Crown” (“…a double ain’t enough when I’m feeling this down”), “Loose, Loud and Crazy” and “Ain’t Drinking Anymore” (“…but I ain’t drinking any less”) all attest.
Fowler has never met a honky-tonk he didn’t like (outdoor festivals included) and Sunday night at the Austin Ventures stage, it was clear the feeling was mutual.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Neko Case
A surprisingly small crowd was on hand to see sometime New Pornographer Neko Case at 4:30 p.m. Sunday on the AMD Stage. Case and her band have been touring on her successful 2006 release “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” for two and a half years, and this was their last show of the tour. According to her Web site, she has a new album coming in 2009, and she played a few new songs at ACL.
The lack of interest in her performance may have been because Case’s music is fairly mellow, especially for a festival setting. This isn’t the Racontuers, or even the New Pornographers. Regardless, her voice is beautiful and it was on display in crowd-pleasers off “Fox Confessor” such as “Margaret vs. Pauline,” “Hold On, Hold On” and “Maybe Sparrow.” The new material was mostly in the same vain as “Fox Confessor,” abstract country tunes that allow her vocals to shine.
Other highlights included “I Wish I Was The Moon” from her self-titled 2002 release and an emotional cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me,” which she said will appear on the new album. Case also offered up some amusing banter to the crowd, and closed the set with the romping “John Saw That Number,” also from “Fox Confessor.”
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Okkervil River
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: The Belleville Outfit
The Belleville Outfit, one of Austin’s premier acoustic bands, raised a lot of smiles from the BMI Stage on Sunday afternoon with a cheerful and sophisticated set grounded in gypsy jazz, finely crafted vocal harmonies and a dozen different flavors of swing. Hey, who said it was hot out here? Once the Belleville sextet hit the stage, the musical spirit was nothing but cool and breezy.
The Belleville Outfit is fronted by songwriters Phoebe Hunt (violin and vocals) and Rob Teter (guitar and vocals), but it’s clear that they are a band of equals who are terrific listeners. The audience picked up on it, too, cheering the solos not so much as the band’s deft tempo changes and their keen sense of time. When pianist Connor Forsyth locks in with Hunt’s violin on “Caroline” or guitarist Marshall Hood locks in with her on “Wandrin,” it’s musical beauty of the highest order.
Sensing that their 6-month-old debut album might not seem brand new to many Austinites in the crowd, the Belleville Outfit took advantage of their first ACL gig to debut seven new songs. They opened the show with Teter’s “Let Me Go,” a swinging, crooner’s blues that sounded as if it could have been written by one of the band’s great inspirations, the late Walter Hyatt. A few minutes later, Hunt trotted out “Time to Stand,” a deep and delicate tune of reflection that showed off the band’s affinity for both Appalachian and bayou imagery. On “Nothing’s Too good for My Baby,” Hunt summoned the spirit of Anita O’Day. Special guest Warren Hood (Marshall’s cousin, and son of the late Champ Hood) joined the band on the last two tunes of the set, “Sunday Morning I’m Always Missing You” and “Oh Babe.”
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Heartless Bastards/White Denim
It would be hard to find two Austin-based, indie-identified bands with more different ways of looking at the way you write, arrange and execute rock music than these two acts, who played back-to-back at the Austin Ventures stage Sunday evening, Heartless Bastards at 5:15 and White Denim at 6:30.
Lead Bastard Erika Wennestrom recently moved here from Ohio, rebooting her band in the process and recording a new recor dwith producer Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail of Dead).
While the early comparisons to PJ Harvey seem unfortunate if inevitable, fans seem to have settled into the idea that she won’t be the American PJ we deserve. If anything, her voice is more in the ragged Joplin tradition than Harvey’s artsy howl. The band’s songs are blocky affairs, garage rock in theory but not really in practice. This isn’t spirit of ’66, Beatle boot revivalism, but ruggedly simple rock that didn’t seem to mind that its songs never quite distinguished themselves from one another.
Of course, White Denim’s didn’t either, but they went the other direction entirely. Packed with guitarist James Petralli’s triumphant, quick-change riffs the Austin trio produced high energy grooves that that dissolved into rhythmic vamps, reminding one of nothing so much as a stripped down Mars Volta, such was its complexity and detail. Joshua Block is a mesmerizing drummer, a hard hitting, hard swinging master of the frantic slam and the deft change-up.
You would have had a tough time finding a band that looked happier to be on stage (Petralli’s grin is worthy of a toothpaste ad) or a band that exploded out of the gate so forcefully. I could have watched them stretch those high velocity explorations for another 45 minutes.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
Scene report: Thoughts on fest
A few quick thoughts on the fest in general:
- Favorite acts: David Byrne, Hot Chip, Erykah Badu, Sharon Jones, Spiritualized, Band of Horses
- Favorite set from an Austin band: White Denim
- Sorry I missed: N.E.R.D., Jamie Lidell and The Mars Volta
- Not worth the time: Stars
- Favorite peripheral ACL event: The dance party the Daily Juice on Barton Springs pulled off Saturday night (and apparently Sunday, as well) with people dancing on the roof and in the streets en masse to the music of DJ Richard Gear before police very politely pulled the plug at 11 p.m.
- Most annoying time: High school kids shoving their way out of Band of Horses set to get a spot for Foo Fighters
- Best food court yet
- Unfortunate: No Mexican beer for the crowd. Heineken, Bud Light and whatever else they had didn’t seem to be strong enough options.
- Best weather of any fest. That alone makes it probably my favorite fest yet.
- Great idea by organizers to let people fill recycling bags in exchange for swag. The park was super clean, all things considered.
- No major calamities, see: fire, last-minute pull-outs
- Yes, there was some dust, but it was nothing like the year of the dust storm. Look, it’s a park: There is dirt and some withered grass. There will be some dust.
- With the exception of one or two sets, the sound bleeding was kept to a minimum. I didn’t really have any set ruined by bleeding.
- Maybe it was just me: The bass at the Dell stage was way overdone, and muddled the sound a bit from certain vantage points.
- Obvious alert: Appreciation for the sound and the sets is largely dependent on where you stand. Further back in front of a speaker is better than a little closer and to the side.
- Cool that there were stations to refill your water bottle. Even if it’s just 92 degrees, you gotta stay hydrated.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
Scene report: Neko Case
After a somewhat boring set from Montreal-based Stars, the festival kicked it up a notch with Against Me! providing some punk-rock energy to a slow early afternoon. As Silversun Pickups took the stage at one end of the field determined to bring some raw energy to the day, alt-country chantuese Neko Case brought more raw emotion and beauty than energy.
I was curious as to whether her atmospheric vocals would hold up on the massive stage in front of thousands under the hot sun, but she and her band were up to the task.
Case played songs spanning her critically acclaimed solo career. Her beautiful vocals, while not inspiring the audience to dance — or really move at all — seemed like the perfect antidote for a crowd that looked like it needed a respite from an exhausting weekend. And there’s probably no more soothing a voice to rush over you like a cool breeze on a languid summer day.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
Scene report: Out-of-towners
One of the best parts of ACL Fest is the far-flung crowds it draws. On Sunday, a few out-of-towners took a moment to talk about their festival experiences.
Olga Martinez of Poland flew in with a group of friends to see Beck, Foo Fighters and Slightly Stoopid, but they’ve enjoyed other aspects of Austin as well.
“Barton Springs, the river, was really fun,” Martinez said before heading off in search of more music.
Lauren Perkins of Houston drove to Austin to catch Mars Volta, Tegan and Sara and the Kills, but she’s enjoyed more than just the music.
“The pedicab ride was really fun,” she said. “We liked our driver. He was the best part.”
Heather Walker recently moved to Austin from Los Angeles.
“I don’t really consider myself a native yet,” she said. “I’m here for The Kills and Tegan and Sara.”
Walker’s friend, Jacqueline Garrett of Columbus, Ohio, came to ACL Fest to see Erykah Badu and Beck, but has also been getting a taste of the larger Austin culture.
“We went to Sixth Street last night, but we’re going to try South Congress tonight,” she said. “I’m not a big fan of all those jello shots and all that bumping and grinding.”
For Liz Lambert and Matt Harp of New Orleans, it’s all about the music.
“Conor Oberst was really good,” Lambert said.
“We also enjoyed Beck,” Harp said. “It’s really been all about the festival.”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Gillian Welch
Gillian Welch forgot to put goop on her hair. It was a fact that caused her much chagrin as she stood on the breezy expanse of the AMD stage. “I didn’t want to eat my hair while I was trying to sing,” she explained.
Actually, the wind-tousled look suited Welch, who — though she was born in Manhattan and grew up in L.A. — always looks like she just stepped out of a Depression-era Dorothea Lange photograph (and whose music sounds as though she were providing the soundtrack for James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”).
Welch and her longtime partner, David Rawlings, delivered an unplugged set that mixed material from her four albums with songs from a forthcoming project. And the performances were fine; it was the venue that rankled.
This marks the third time this weekend that this listener has seen a small-bore acoustic act presented in the cavernous expanse of one of the festival’s main stages. Performances that should breath intimacy and beckon listeners closer are swallowed up by the brobdingnagian scale of the stage. Surely, one of the smaller stages would be more appropriate for Welch’s understated musical portraits.
And so much for that. Welch and Rawlings have such an intuitive and finely honed sense of the sound and (more important) the feel of classic American acoustic music that more than once a song this listener thought must have come from a Library of Congress field recording (like “Sweet Tooth”) turned out to be a Welch/Rawlings original.
Other songs, like ”Knuckleball Catcher” and “The Way We Will Be” (two more new ones) had a more contemporary feel without seeming trendy, but Welch classics like “Orphan Girl” and “Red Clay Halo” retain a timeless sound.
Certainly, from the fans’ point of view, the big treat of the set came when Alison Krauss (enjoying a busman’s holiday after her show with Robert Plant last night) joined Welch and Rawlings for a reprise of “Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby,” the song they recorded for “O Brother, Where Art Thou” (Rawlings got to sing Emmylou Harris’ part). As moments of pure, unadulterated musical magic go, it was hard to top.
Photo: Erich Schlegel FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
Scene report: medical tent numbers
Friday at ACL, 114 people were treated at the medical tent, while 197 were treated Saturday. Three were transported to the hospital Friday, with 13, including two suspected drug overdoses, getting an ambulance ride Saturday.
The numbers may seem high, but they’re down from previous years, according South West Emergency Action Team (S.W.E.A.T.) supervisor Tannifer Ayres. “People are doing a better job of keeping themselves hydrated,” she said.
Heat-related causes accounted for 28 percent of those treated Saturday, followed by 26 percent for lacerations and 19 percent for asthma/respiratory problems. Only 7 percent - 13 fans- were seen for eye irritations due to dust.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: AA Bondy
When Alabama’s AA Bondy took the Dell Stage with nothing more than an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder and a harmonica fastened to his neck, the booming echoes of drumsets from other stages threatened to drown out his expertly finger-picked licks.
Bondy moved confidently through his Dylanesque folk tunes nonetheless, keeping the crowd’s chatter to a minimum and their response enthusiastic.
“I kind of feel like I should be out there among you,” he said a few songs in.
But he had no reason to worry about the performance lacking intimacy. The audience was transfixed by the Southwestern crunch of his slightly distorted acoustic riffs and the graceful imperfection of his crackling melodies.
The music was punctuated by his haunting revivalist poetics. Over the dreary drag of the minor chords in “Rapture (Sweet Rapture)” Bondy sang about trees swinging like hanging men, while in the upbeat romp “Vice Rag” he asked Jesus to take his sinner’s hand after singing that he’d drink dry an ocean full of whiskey.
Though Bondy has only released one album, 2007’s “American Hearts,” he played a surprisingly small number of cuts from it. The rest of the set was made up of equally impressive unreleased numbers. In one, he picked out a sunny, gospel-like progression while singing, “Dress well/Get pretty/You got to die.”
Judging from the strength of such songs, Bondy’s next album will be just as good or better than “American Hearts.”
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet
OK, here’s the deal: One of the great bluegrass maestros of the age teams up with a young woman who sings Chinese folk songs — in Chinese. They hook up with an A-list cello player and fiddlers, and set out to play string band music that mixes Appalachian melodies with Eastern pentatonic scales. Are you with me so far?
If all that sounds off-putting or intimidating, rest assured that in the hands of Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet, it is anything but. Washburn, along with banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck, cellist Ben Sollee and fiddler Casey Driessen, provided a beguiling start to a musical Sunday as they wove their peculiar multicultural tapestry on the AT&T Stage.
Washburn fell in love with China and its people during a journey to the People’s Republic in 1996, so much so she learned to speak the language and decipher the folk songs of Sichuan and other provinces. Moreover, she began to link Chinese folk music traditions to those of her own country.
Thus, the Sparrow Quartet, a group that can go from the delicate calligraphy brushstokes of a subtle Eastern melody to a full-on bluegrass breakdown at the drop of a fingerpick.
Washburn’s set began with a stately overture that segued into her own “A Fuller Wine,” followed by a hot jazz turn on Blind Willie Johnson’s “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” which yielded to a Chinese tune that allowed Fleck to pop the clutch and blaze away.
If that kind of eclectic versatility sounds daunting to the average listener, onstage it came across as anything but. The four musicians shared an easy rapport both among themselves and with the audience. “This song is called ‘Kangding Qingge’,” said Washburn, introducing yet another Chinese tune, “but we like to call it ‘Old Timey Dance Party.” At another point, a Kazakh folk melody transformed itself into an vintage rave-up called “Banjo-Pickin’ Girl” that Washburn made her own (“I’m goin’ to North Carolina and from there off to China,” she sang). And an austere, classical sounding string quartet instrumental resolved itself into a formal reading of the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” which in turn gave way to a fiery duel of solos between Fleck and Driessen.
It was all…well, it was fun. And fascinating. And a journey in and of itself. For a few minutes, the ACL festival felt truly worldwide.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
Scene report: VIP action up
Last week Charlie Walker of C3 said the demand for VIP amenities is the fastest growing aspect of ACL. “Some people don’t care about the higher price point,” Walker said. “They just don’t want to be hassled. Hundreds paid $850 for such services as massages, spa treatments, gourmet organic food and free drinks, all in the shade of the VIP Grove. There’s also access to an Internet lounge and clean restrooms. With four VIP wristbands, you also get coveted parking.
After this year’s pleasant weather and when the new dust-busting irrigation system is put in at Zilker (C3 has pledged $2.5 million to the project, among other park improvements), the VIP section may lose much of its allure.
That would be a good problem to have.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Swell Season aftershow at the Paramount
When I interviewed her last year, singer/pianist and “Once” co-star Marketa Irglova claimed that a touring musician’s life was not for her, and that she’d return to a quieter one when movie promotion was finished. But an Oscar (for best original song) can change things, and the shy singer was a committed performer this Saturday at the Paramount — even offering new songs, occasionally taking the stage by herself, and trying to cope with shouted comments from a concertgoer who wanted to call her his girlfriend.
Co-star and Swell Season bandmate Glen Hansard was more comfortable with the crowd’s boisterous love, clearly relishing stateside success after years of trying to break through with his longtime band the Frames. (He did some Frames material, like “Fitzcarraldo” and “What Happens When the Heart Just Stops,” here.) Starting the show like the busker he played in the film — by himself with no mike or guitar amp, playing the song that sets “Once” in motion — he was the evening’s engine, frequently delivering cloudbursts of vocal emotion that would make Coldplay’s Chris Martin hide in a corner.
As if to prove they were more than a one-hit act, they played their Oscar song “Falling Slowly” up front, then kept listeners rapt through a two-hour set that stretched well beyond the movie’s soundtrack, even including one of the best Daniel Johnston covers (“Life in Vain”) this side of Kathy McCarty. All signs (including the presence of a fleshed-out band backing the two stars) suggested this could be the start, not the culmination, of a fruitful career.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
Meet the Ice Cream Man
Matt Allen, aka The Ice Cream Man, hands out ice cream on Sunday at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Photo by Jay Janner/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Not many folks backstage at ACL Fest know Matt Allen by name, but that’s OK with him. “Hey, Ice Cream Man,” a woman Saturday night after Beck’s set called out. “Do you have any Bomb Pops left?” He digs one out of the cooler and hands it to her free of charge. “You’re the best, Ice Cream Man,” she said.
Matt Allen is popular with the ladies. And the artists. And the crew. And the cops. Especially the cops. “Policemen love ice cream,” he said. So it’s not just donuts.
Allen will give away more than 3,000 pieces of ice cream before ACL Fest is over. At SXSW he gave out 11,000. He’ll be backstage at more than a dozen festivals — big and small — all over the country. He was backstage at the MTV video music awards, where Rhiannon and Chris Brown were just two of his customers.
How does he do it? Iowa company Bluebunny donates all the ice cream. It’s good promotion for them. But Allen has to stay with friends on the road because hotels aren’t feasible. Asked if he’s an ice cream freak, Long Beach, Calif., native Allen answered “I’m an adventure freak. That’s what this is, man, going all over the country, meeting so many people.”
The adventure started four years ago at Ashland, Ore., where Allen originally sold his frozen delectables. But at the All Tomorrow’s Parties fest in late 2004, Allen picked up a sponsor with an Oregon ice cream company and realized it’s a lot more fun to just give it away.
If he runs out, as he did Saturday at 5:30 p.m., he hits the local Bluebunny distributor, in Austin that’s Yumi, and they replentish the stock.
“We’ve had our share of celebrities,” Allen said. “We get a lot of their kids. Sam Beam from Iron & Wine brought his kids by and they loved it. At Lollapalooza, Jeff Tweedy’s kids acted like they had kidnapped him in exchange for more ice cream. Ice cream makes people happy.” Because it melts, Allen’s product can’t be hoarded, which makes it perfect for backstage, where bag-stuffing freeloaders roam.
Allen said it’s not the big names, but the behind-the-scenes workers that he’s there for. “They’re the people that make the festival happen. They work real hard and when I see them walk away with a big smile, it makes my day.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Beck
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
September 27, 2008
ACL Review: Les Freres Guisse
Les Freres Guisse - the three Guisse Brothers of Senegal - presented us with a most sublime musical gift Saturday afternoon in the WaMu tent. It was a gift of gentleness. A gift of harmony. A gift of hope. In music and in message, the brothers’ set of West African music was breezy and reflective, a welcome respite in world filled with so much tension and crisis. No surprise, of course, that the title of Les Freres’ breakout record, “Yakaar”, is a Peulh expression meaning “live in hope.”
The Guisse Brothers’ music is an enchanting blend of sparkling bright guitar sand subtle vocal harmonies set against a percussive aura that uses as its foundation a hard bass beat that often feels like a heart pulse. It’s not a big band, just the three brothers. And while the music is delightfully rhythmic, Les Freres Guisse is not a dance band, either. The brothers like to say that they aspire to touch their audience’s humanity in their shows, not just make their feet dance.
Les Freres Guisse filled its 45-minute set with six songs, including a gentle a capella number, a breezy Sahelian blues, and a curtain-closing celebration of Nelson Mandela. “We don’t like war. We don’t like power,” guitarist Djiby Guisse said to the crowd in introducing “C.C. Le Feu” - a tune (sung in African dialect) that speaks on behalf of “the innocents”, the victims of war in Sarajevo, in Rwanda, in Soweto. At the end, the brothers switched into English and sang “No War in Our World.” The audience, attuned throughout to the spirit of lyrics sung in a language that is foreign to them, eagerly joined in on the chorus.
Aliou Guissse, who handles percussion for the band, drew gasps from the audience while soloing during “C.C. Le Feu.” He’d been playing a leket - a globe-shaped hand-drum - and at one point, he struck it with his fist so hard that the instrument cracked open like a broken egg. There was a slight pause; the transcendant spirit seemed to break. Aliou shrugged his shoulders. Then he revealed a spare leket, raised it above his head, and put it back into play in his percussion stand. Les Freres Guisse love allegory and metaphor - and in this spontaneous moment, harmony and hope reigned supreme.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Iron and Wine
Iron and Wine’s performance two years ago at the 2006 Austin City Limits festival was a memorable one, distinctively more rock-and-roll than the quiet Southern Gothic feel of the albums. Since then singer/songwriter/guitarist Sam Beam has released “The Shepherd’s Dog,” a recording which, while it holds on to a lot of the charm of his earlier work, moves in a more jammy, psychedelic direction. That evolution was on display during tonight’s set, as the band only stopped playing a handful of times, otherwise segueing from song to song a la The Grateful Dead.
When Beam toured on “The Shepherd’s Dog” in 2007, he stuck mostly to the new material, to mixed reviews. In was a bit of a relief tonight that he returned to some of his best work, including songs such as “Woman King” and “Bird Stealing Bread.” There was a somewhat jazzy feel to the tunes, and the band layered the songs with a lot of percussion as well as a little bit of accordion. The ambient feel didn’t please everyone, as someone nearby commented, “more iron, less wine.”
Beam finished up the set with emotional versions of “Cinder and Smoke” and “Trapeze Singer,” which left the crowd begging for more.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
It’s hard to imagine a more understated opening for a more rabidly anticipated performance: the musicians, stock-still, silhouetted against the proscenium backdrop; the two headliners, emerging simultaneously from opposite wings of the stage, making their way to the pair of microphones waiting under the hot, white spotlight.
That sense of economy and understated elegance permeated the entirety of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ headline set Saturday night. The improbable pair — leather-lunged Brit superstar meets demure bluegrass songbird — has been touring behind their duet album, ‘Raising Sand.’
Now, it’s easy to imagine in some precincts that Plant would be the 500-lb. gorilla on the bill, with Alison Who? lending a little distaff charm to the ticket. But at ACL, Krauss’ musical credentials (if not her rock star charisma) easily put her on a par with her more famous duet-mate.
It was a carefully-crafted performance, built upon the foundation of a crackerjack band under the direction of T-Bone Burnett. And though Burnett laid back, his musicians, especially guitarist Buddy Miller and Stuart Duncan, tore the joint up.
The set mixed material from the album, some traditional mountain music and a handful of Led Zeppelin classics chopped, channeled and stripped down to their roots. “Black Dog,” for instance, started out in as an almost unrecognizable, hallucinatory arrangement, and you could sense the excitement ripple through the crowd as the familiar melody finally asserted itself.
It must have represented a dream come true for Plant — his Led Zeppelin tunes reimagined as part of the timeless fabric of the folk and traditional music he grew up loving in England.
Though she’s a fiddle virtuoso, Krauss hardly availed herself of the instrument during the show. But she sang like a bird, her crystalline tones providing a silvery counterpoint to Plant’s weathered blues moan. For his part, Plant kept the rock-god histrionics tamped down. It wasn’t until the ninth song of the set, “Black Country Woman,” that he finally let his powerhouse, cock-of-the-walk yowl off its leash.
Other highlights included an extended workout on “In the Mood” (no, not the Glen Miller classic) that saw Krauss dropping a chorus of the folk classic “Matty Grove” into the mix, a dreamy, druggy take on Benny Spellman’s “Fortune Teller,” a luminously beautiful Krauss vocal solo on “Through the Morning, Through the Night,” with Plant taking a back seat to echo her vocals, and the bouncy, upbeat rockabilly set-closer, a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Gone, Gone, Gone.”
“(John) Fogerty was a concert; this was a show,” enthused one spectator, summing it all up.
Photo: Erich Schlegel FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst took the stage on Saturday evening as himself, having shed his “Bright Eyes” identity in August with the release of a self-titled album. Dressed in a suit, his look was more like Jeff Tweedy and less like the cult-leader Colonel Sanders impression he offered up during his spring 2007 stop at UT’s Bass Concert Hall.
The Mystic Valley Band’s seasoned country rock sound complemented Oberst’s new material perfectly, especially on songs like “Get-Well-Cards,” where Oberst bends his voice like Bob Dylan as he sings “right there, that’s the postman sleeping in the sand.” He has been likened to Dylan before, but with the new band, especially Nate Walcott’s blasting keyboards and organ, the comparison is especially apt. All Oberst needed was a white fedora with a feather.
Oberst’s songs are typically dark, but the new material seems to be lacking the underlying sense of hope that exists on albums like “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning.” He conveyed a feeling of resignation about the state of the world as he belted out emotional verions of songs such as “Souled Out!” and “I Don’t Want To Die (In the Hospital).”
Oberst’s cover of Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” was an unexpected highlight, and it had the crowd moving their feet. The band stuck pretty closely to the original, with Simon’s retrospective lyrics a good match for Oberst’s sentimentality.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Nachito Herrera
Nachito Herrera and his orchestra staged one heck of a Cuban dance party in the WaMu tent Saturday afternoon. He started with son - and along the way, I believe, there was also some mambo, some chachacha, some pilone and a joyful little Cuban hokey-pokey experience introduced as Baile Azucar, the Sugar Dance. I’m no expert on Caribbean dance rhythms, so there was a lot more that went over my head. Suffice to say that the key word of this set was glee, unmitigated glee. Herrera had the audience on its feet from the very first note of “Descarga de Hoy” - and most in the crowd stayed on their feet until it was time to say goodnight.
Herrera is a Cuban-born maestro, a bandleader and pianist, classically trained, known to many Americans for his participation in Jesus Alemany’s band !Cubanismo!. He reminded the Austin audience, in fact, that he’d been here before, six years ago, when Cubanismo played La Zona Rosa. Like Cubanismo, Herrera’s new band is a revue-style ensemble rich with trumpets, trombone, saxophone and percussion, 11 pieces in all. But Herrera is clearly the star of the show.
Herrera, a big butter bean of a man, leads his band like a corner man at a prize fight - rising from his seat behind the keyboards, jabbing at the air, shaking his fist, exorting and commanding joy. And when it’s time to solo, Herrera plays with a kind of muscular grace. The keyboards sometimes shake beneath his powerful hands. His first big solo featured flourishes of Gershwin over mambo dance rhythms, his right hand flashing. Later, he introduced Bird-like be-bop phrasing in the middle of a chachacha number. His solos consistently referenced a world beyond Cuba, while at the same time his sense of rhythm touched the very soul of Havana.
Havana trumpet master Adalbert Lara stepped forward to solo at one point in the program - and the mood was so bright, so full of glee, that the trombone player set down his instrument and snapped a photo of the renowned “Trompetica.” Then he shot a photo of the audience in full dance mode. It was that kind of show.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: MGMT
When New York-based psych-rock outfit MGMT took the stage for their 5:30 set on the AT&T Blue Room stage, the crowd was already packed in all the way back to the bar across the way. Like the higher-profile Vampire Weekend, who played Friday, the duo formed while attending a northeastern liberal arts university and are touring on a well-recieved album, “Oracular Spectacular,” which was released earlier this year.
Lead singer and guitarist Andrew Vanwyngarden and keyboardist Ben Goldwasser added a three member band for their tour; it was a good move, as the live versions of the songs are bigger and more suited for a festival audience. This was by far one of the most excited crowds of the weekend so far, with people singing along to every song, and even crowd surfing when the band jumped into “Time to Pretend.”
At times Vanwyngarden seemed to be channeling Jack White as the band took somewhat restrained songs from the album and turned them into epic rockers, complete with Hendrix-esque guitar solos. “Electric Feel” had the entire crowd pumping their fists, and “Weekend Wars” sounded vaguley similar to something off a Yes or ELO record. On “Kids,” Goldwasser came out from behind the keyboard to sing side by side with Vanwyngarden. The two looked a little awkward dancing without their instruments, but it didn’t matter to the audience, who were loving every minute.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Drive-By Truckers
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Eli 'Paperboy' Reed and the True Loves
Eli “Paperboy” Reed clearly adores the icons of American soul: Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, James Brown. He loves them so much, in fact, that he seems to channel their spirits when he takes the stage and starts to sing. Never mind that he’s 24, from Massachusetts, too young to have known the masters in their prime. Close your eyes on a song like “Stake Your Claim” and you can almost trick yourself into believing that you’re listening to Wilson Pickett, circa 1969.
Reed ‘s rambunctious, horn-filled 21st century revival of classic American soul had a a lot of fans dancing in front of their seats in the WaMu Tent Saturday afternoon. But for the most part, the audience mood was one of respectful consideration as Reed and his crackerjack seven-piece band (the True Loves) skated their way through the hottest cuts from their promising debut album “Roll With You.” The set was happy, fun, grounded in love … but Reed didn’t drive the tent people into musical ecstacy, at least not in the way Cuban piano maestro Nachito Hererra did three hours later.
Reed, who came to soul through his father’s record collection, writes and arranges his own music - the kind of tunes Pickett or Redding might have written 40 years ago. There’s a strong Stax influence. Muscle Shoals, too. Reed’s voice - with its capacity for soul screams and howls and good-time power - serves him well on so many of the uptempo numbers that dominated his set. But the high point may have come on “It’s Easier,” a Sam Cooke-style ballad that showed off his penchant for tenderness. Reed is, after all, a wholesome presence on stage, all rosy cheeks and brylcream.
As the set wore on, I found myself wishing I could see Reed’s set in a smoky road house. There was a little too much light, a little too much distraction in the brightness of the tent. Reed did his part well - but the magic of the music might have worked better at “the midnight hour.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
Scene reports: Mo' Murray, autograph lines
An undisclosed number of fence-jumpers made it up-and-over during Manu Chao’s set Friday. C3 had a security guard standing on a chair, overlooking the lowest section of fence Saturday.
John Fogerty had a jovial, back-slapping conversation with billionaire blues fanatic John Paul DeJoria after his set. Private party in the offing?
Spiritualized singer Jason Pierce was wearing a Roky Erickson t-shirt onstage.
Bill Murray was back on the cart, driving himself to see Conor Oberst.
Long, long lines to get MGMT’s autographs after group’s set Saturday at the AT&T Blue Room stage. But a Waterloo Records employee said it wasn’t the longest line of the first two days. That would be for Daniel Johnston Friday. D.J. was signing the commemorative poster he designed.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
Scene report: Day 2
Fleet Foxes, filling in for Ingrid Michaelson, took the stage early at 12:30, one heck of a rough time for such a buzzy band. But the beautifully harmonizing players of fabulist pop got Saturday off to a strong with a wonderful and relatively crowded set.
Bavu Blakes had everyone’s attention (including Mayor Will Wynn, who was in attendance), when he came out in an Obama mask and then put out an energetic set of originals and covers.
Band of Heathens outdid many of his their fellow BMI stage peers with an impressive crowd. I didn’t get a chance to see Man Man, but friends say they totally killed. I was over at the AT&T Blue Room stage at the time, surrounded by a ton of kids for Brazilian electro-pop outfit CSS, whose female lead had the audience swaying their hands in unison and bouncing to the band’s energetic beats.
Local act Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears were a nice ‘local boys done good story’ and played to an appreciative, if not much of a dancing, crowd, mixing retro soul and R&B.
Then it was over to Erykah Badu, the pregnant earth goddess soul sister supreme, who had the crowd eating out of her hand, as she played a healthy mix of old and new tunes and found time to mix in some political messaging in which she rep’d Barack Obama and went on to say that the country doesn’t just need a new president, but a whole new system. The fans responded with hearty approval.
Spritualized kicked things up a notch with their raucous beauty, reminding me of Oasis and the Stones. I imagine these lads made themselves a few new fans and will sell a few more records after this weekend.
John Fogerty, at whose presence some young people had scoffed when seeing the lineup, was a gigantic draw at the AMD stage, and he benefited from some leftover MGMT fans. Oddly, the usually garrulous Fogerty said he only had an hour so he wouldn’t do much talking, so it was on with the hits, and a few new tunes, which met with great singing along from fans of all ages.
Just came from Iron & Wine, who seem to be having some issues with their bass, or at least it sounds that way to me. The booming bass distortion seems more appropriate for gangta rap than singer-songwriter material, and some of the band’s ambient jamming tended to lose me. Nevertheless, still beautiful harmonizing from the talented songwriter Sam Beam and his sister Sarah.
By the time I headed over to the media area, a good number of people were splitting to find space for Beck and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. The park is just a gigantic mess of people. It is like being in deep sea. We are at the peakest of peak hours.
Time to check out the absurd scientologist (Beck) and the living legend (Plant).
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: John Fogerty
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: City and Colour
At first glance, everything about Toronto’s City and Colour screams mediocrity. It’s the sensitive singer/songwriter act led by the guitarist of a screamo band, and his latest album is a borderline pretentious allusion to a Bukowski novel.
In other words, it’s something you’d guess you’ve heard before.
But take one listen to the honey-sweet vocals of Dallas Green on this year’s “Bring Me Your Love,” and you’ll be reminded that stereotypes rarely capture the whole story.
Green’s performance at ACL Fest took City and Colour’s music to an even higher level. Backed by a full band, Green traded the reverberated acoustic guitar on his albums for an electric guitar, with gritty distortion. Beside forming a nice contrast with his smooth tenor croon, the crunch of the electric added a southern blues tone to the music. The drums and bass in songs like “Sleeping Sickness” also created an extra dynamic dimension.
The highlight was the vocals, but surprisingly, Green didn’t carry the show on his own. The band started “As Much As I Ever Could” with a few measures of flawless four-part a capella harmony. On other songs, Green and the bassist played tag-team with the melodies, and their deliveries were equally solid.
Whether audience members were fans or not, their expectations for City and Colour were surely exceeded.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL video: Electric Touch interview
Our Deborah Sengupta-Stith talks with Electric Touch before their performance Saturday at the Austin City Limits Music Festival:
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Man Man
When a band’s members play under pseudonyms like Honus Honus and Critter Cat, they’re bound to be bizarre.
And bizarre Philadelphia’s Man Man was, not just musically, but in every aspect. Their faces striped with red and white war paint, the five-piece took the stage dressed in short white shorts and t-shirts and proceeded to spastically bang out a series of cartoonishly sinister tunes with trumpets, xylophones and a drumset splashed with fluorescent paint, among other instruments.
But the band didn’t rely completely on antics. Honus’s rough-edged voice cut with an intensity similar to that of Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, and the effortless manner in which the band stormed through the complicated time signatures and transitions in their songs proved their talent.
But Man Man will not appeal to everyone. The goofy falsetto filler that screeched over the organ whistles in many songs sounded like something straight out of a Tiny Toons Halloween episode, and it was often hard to discern any actual words in the verses between the jibberish.
The main problem with a band built around so many eccentricities is that the act is hard to sustain. After you’ve tapped out rhythms on a plaster makeup of your guitarist’s head, where can you go? Man Man actually took it down a notch and eased into a love song more melodic than anything they’d played all set, but then ran out of steam and left the stage 10 minutes early.
Man Man’s live show is certainly a spectacle, but it’s easier to stomach in smaller doses than this 50-minute performance.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Bavu Blakes
When Austin mayor Will Wynn introduced hometown hip-hop hero Bavu Blakes as his friend to the scattered audience in front of the Austin Ventures stage, the response was fairly lethargic.
But a few songs after Blakes removed the Obama mask he’d taken the stage with, the crowd was into it. As listeners steadily arrived and the space in front of the stage became more and more limited, Blakes got the crowd waving their hands and responding to his calls in unison with phrases like “Black gold!”
The audience had good reason to be excited. Whether Blakes’ backup band, the Extra Plairs, were churning out soulful R&B grooves or booming bass lines under Blakes’ rapid-fire rhymes, they were on.
Once Blakes gained momentum, he didn’t let it drop. Both his music and witty banter between songs kept the audience engaged.
“Like I said, I’m not much of a singer, but unfortunately R.E.M. couldn’t make it today,” he said before playing a segment of the chorus from “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” to start his next song.
When Blakes left the stage, the crowd was still cheering.
“I’ve never seen him before, but I’m glad I did,” said one listener. “It was definitely worth coming over from the Fratellis.”
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL scene report: Austin Kiddie Limits
I took my son to Austin Kiddie Limits for the first time, and we saw more of his friends in our two hours there than I’ve seen of mine in two days of the festival. It was THE place to be if you’re 2 to 3, apparently.
If you’re thinking of a bringing a child (they’re free if they’re 10 or younger), take him/her/them directly to the Kiddie Limits, an oasis of kid-friendly music and activities - it felt like another world back there, in the shade no less.
Saturday’s music, played in 30 minute sets, included Jambo, Uncle Rock, mr. Ray, Buck Howdy with BB and the Jimmies, most of whom are playing again Sunday. As soon as a music set finished, the pint-sized crowd was directed toward a smaller facing stage, where “dance lessons” took place. Austin’s B Boy City and B Girl City dancers wowed the toddlers and other youngsters with their break-dancing; the Lannaya Dance & Drum Ensemble entranced with West African rhythms and movement.
Beyond the stage area, the kids could attend music workshops, coloring stations and hip-hop lessons. HEB handed out free ice cream to the tots (sorry, parents) and Pink Salon was on hand to turn their hair green or pink.
With more bearable temperatures this year, the festival seems more kid-friendly. If you bring a stroller, give yourself extra time to navigate the perimeter of the park. Stop by Tag A Kid to give emergency contact information - you’ll get a corresponding wristband for your child (although you might try the ankle, where they’re less likely to rip it off during a dancing frenzy). Be warned though: When the helpful staffer told my son to look for women in red T-shirts if he lost his Mommy, he burst into horrified tears. Luckily, they were the only tears of the day.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Spiritualized
If the slow-rising dust of Zilker Park at sunset suited any act, it was Spiritualized, that rare band that sounded exactly the same whether you were pushed up front or sitting on the ground four football fields away. They built intensity slowly through the set.
With guitarist/ singer Jason Pierce and the other guitarist (who was not Peter Kember- oops) set up at opposite ends of the stage, facing each other, the British band perfected a dreamy squall that they broke up with bits of Brit pop, gospel (they opened with “Amazing Grace,” sung by soulful backups Wendi Rose and Claudia Smith) and an occasional burst of thunder.
The band has such a devoted following that you can be sure several diehards bought $80 tickets just to see them, but with so much going on, the set was mainly for fans. I certainly wasn’t converted, though there were moments of transcendent beauty, such as on the closer “Come Together,” which built to a brilliant explosion of sound.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL video: Bavu Blakes interview
Our Deborah Sengupta-Stith interviews Bavu Blakes after his performance Saturday at the Austin City Limits Music Festival:
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL scene report: We Go To Eleven; the long road to Austin
We Go To Eleven got a solid-gold introduction before their set at the BMI Stage at 12:40 today. The band was brought onstage by C3 partner and ACL producer Charles Attal.
Probably it had something to do with the fact that WGTE’s drummer, 13-year old Sled Allen is Attal’s nephew; his sister, Jennifer, is married to visual artist Bale Allen.
Backstage, Attal mingled with his parents, Charles “Lucky” and Katherine Attal, as well as Sled’s grandparents—musician and artist Terry Allen and playwright/actress Jo Harvey Allen. The Allen’s spent part of their ACL sojourn catching up with another family friend, David Byrne, who performed at the Paramount Theatre on Thursday and at ACL on Friday.
Since the Austin City Limits Festival’s beginnings, it has been an article of faith that the festival could never co-exist with a U.T. football home game. Now, thanks to Hurricane Ike, Saturday saw the festival going full-steam ahead while the Longhorns hosted the Arkansas Razorbacks across town.
C3 Presents partner and ACL producer Charles Attal was asked if, in fact, the town could handle both events, might C3 be more flexible in picking a weekend to host the festival?
Nope, he said. “It’s all about hotel rooms. There are people staying in San Antonio and Waco and Bastrop this weekend. Luckily, the festival opens early and the game is in the middle of the day. But we still don’t want to have to house performers in San Antonio.”
Looks like the perfect-storm pairing of ACL and Longhorn football is a one-time convergence.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: We Go to Eleven
You know you’re getting too old for this racket when the cumulative ages of the band member’s don’t add up to the age of the dinosaur sent out to review them.
In the case of Austin’s own We Go To Eleven, only one of the three bandmembers is marginally old enough to drive, which, at least anecdotally, made them the youngest band to play not only ACL, but also Lollapolooza.
A power trio who make detours into blues, metal and pop, We Go To Eleven seem almost eerily accomplished when their youth is taken into account. But they come by it naturally, apparently. Brothers Zac (guitar, vocal) and Jake (bass) Hartwell began playing at nine and seven, respectively; Drummer Sled Allen is the grandson of West Texas musician Terry Allen, and the nephew of keyboardist Bukka Allen.
Though the band is newly minted, their musical growth was evident, as demonstrated in “Insomnia,” one of the first songs they wrote, a straight-ahead rocker that hits all the standard metal tropes, and “No Angels Cried,” a more recent tune that switched tone and mood in a sophisticated fashion. “We tried to push ourselves as much as we could musically and lyrically,” said Zac of the piece.
“Tears of Anger” and “Living It Up Out West” demonstrated similar versatility, perhaps not surprising, given that the group lists both Joe Ely and Bootsy Collins among their musical influences on the band’s My Space page. Given that WGTE writes all their own material, it will be interesting to see how far they can push the power trio format.
If there is one critique of the band—and it’s a common one among young acts—it is their self-absorption onstage; they tend to disappear inside the music rather than use the songs to project themselves out into the audience. Time and experience are both cures for that condition, and We Go To Eleven will have lots of time and experience ahead of them.
Photo: Erich Schlegel FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL scene report: Black Joe Lewis
In another fest story of “local boys done good,” young Black Joe Lewis and his Honeybears took the stage at 4 p.m. on the Austin Ventures venue, naturally. The crew of college-aged boys, and the 20-something Lewis seemed excited to be playing their first-ever ACL Fest, even if it was in the heat of the day.
Lewis was dressed, as is his wont, in all black, while his bandmates were decked out in white dress shirts, some with ties. Lewis may not count his band off the way James Brown does, but he is nonetheless a consummate leader, as his guys seem to feed off and supplement his energy. The Honeybears are a lovable lot, but they don’t quite have the chops to pull off the vintage R&B/soul sound for which they are familiar. Maybe it is just their age, but there is some cognitive dissonance in watching young cats play the music that a generation of older musicians first brought onto the scene in the 50s and 60s.
That is not to begrudge the band. They have tons of energy, a joy in their playing, both individually and collectively. Between their collective soul clapping, the call and response between Lewis and the rest of the band, and the sometimes-synchronized dance moves, there is no doubting their passion for the music.
That passion is best translated in the incredible singing voice of Lewis, who, while too young to get away singing about some woman who may have done him wrong — at this age he only has to deal with women throwing themselves at him — still pulls off the soulful swagger and commitment of a much older artist.
The afternoon set had people bobbing and nodding more than breaking loose into a full-on dance scene, but it was obvious from their whooping and clapping that the large audience enjoyed what the young local turks brought to the set.
The band has rocketed to quite a bit of local acclaim over the past year or so, and this will undoubtedly not be their last show at Zilker Park. I look forward to continuing to watch the young band mature.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Lee Boys
Boy howdy, do the Lee Boys know their core fanbase.
Until Galactic plays, their set at the WaMu/FDIC/ JP Morgan Chase tent was the place to be if you were a jam band fan. Plenty of peasant dresses, Camel back packs, and a middle-aged, mustache-sporting white guy in a Haile Selassie T-shirt. Perfect.
The Lee Boys are a mutant sacred steel band in the vein of Robert Randolph, gospel guys raised in the church who turned their faith’s passion for epic sets into something with a little more funk.
Jam band fans adore their fondness for stretching out, which they’re so used to from long church services it seems more like a habit than a sop to fans, even if their music does sound more secular than sacred.
Pedal steel player Rosevelt Collier is the clearly the band’s centerpiece, his scorching leads and detailed, frantic runs making Hendrix comparisons pretty much inevitable. Alvin Lee’s rhythm guitar is a fluid parter, while Alvin Cordy, Jr.’s seven-string bass (speaking of jam bands!) and Earl Walker’s drums push and pull the music.
It was tough to isolate songs; the band seems most comfortable with grooves that spiral and double back on themselves, the singing acting more as place holding than message. (Maybe that was just due to the unforgivingly stuffy WaMu tent, which feels like an oven even when the heat is well below 100.)
Even if the words remained obscure, it was time to praise the Lord and pass the hacky sack.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Fleet Foxes
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Black & White Years
It’s gotta be tough to run a stage at ACL, with so many acts to get on and off, but the Austin Ventures stage manager went a bit overboard Saturday ordering the plug to be pulled on Austin’s brilliant Black & White Years during the band’s final song, “Zeroes and Ones.” B&W had gone exactly 35 seconds past their scheduled 12:30 p.m. ending time when Mr. Stage Manager started frantically making cutthroat signs and ordered the sound cut. Someone forgot to take their chill pill.
The rude overreaction marred an otherwise splendid set by the quartet with the angular guitar riffs and herky jerky new wave-isms. Winning the crowd over right away with “Life Debt,” whose bleak lyrics were disguised by pure dance energy, the band bored only slightly with “Smoke and Mirrors.” An outdoor fest is no place for artsy excursions.
The final four numbers- “Hysterical Sickness,” “My Broken Hand,” “Power To Change” and about 3/4 of “Zeroes and Ones” - established Scott Butler and company as a fresh force on the scene and a safe bet to go national. Looks like they picked up quite a few new fans, though none in the festival staging business.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL scene report: Bill Murray at the fest
C3’s Charles Attal picked the right day to wear his Bushwoods Country Club t-shirt. The tee is modeled after the shirt Bill Murray wore as the groundskeeper in “Caddyshack.” It was given to Attal as a joke because he’s been the defacto groundskeeper at Zilker this week, making sure the fields are watered at night.
Well, Bill Murray himself showed up backstage at ACL. “We gave him an all access badge and keys to a golf cart,” says C3’s Charlie Jones, who later saw Murray at the monitor board during Mars Volta’s set Friday. Murray was in town for Fantastic Fest.
Also seen on the scene was Elijah Wood from “Lord of the Rings.”
Daniel Johnston is rumored to be a special guest at the Swell Season’s taping at “Austin City Limits.”
Dust, what dust? Jones said C3 received “zero” complaints about dust Friday. C3 has been rigorously watering fields for weeks, he said. Also, unlike the dust bowl of ‘05, the grass was left long.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
Manu Chao: paella for 40
It was the ultimate ACL afterparty Friday night (and early Saturday morning) when Spanish/ French reggae act Manu Chao brought a little bit of Spain to the backstage area after headlining.
Chao’s people had sent C3’s caterer a list of ingredients for paella, then after the set the band’s soundman cooked a paella that lucky C3 staffers were raving about Saturday morning. The band also passed instruments around and played Spanish folk songs until past 2 a.m.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL: How much Drive-By Truckers is too much?
For my money, the two best bands in America right now are the Hold Steady and the Drive-By Truckers. They’re doing some dates together these days, and my wiseacre colleague Joe Gross has suggested that if I were to see both bands on the same stage, my head would likely explode.
Fortunately for my still undetonated cranium, the Hold Steady isn’t with the Truckers on this swing into town for the Austin City Limits Music Festival, but the Truckers are tacking on an Emo’s appearance and then a surprise, last-minute taping of the “ACL” TV show. And this gave me the opportunity to see one of my two favorite bands three times over two days. Yes, I know. I need help. But the band often and not entirely inaccurately described as Lynyrd Skynyrd meets Nirvana write great big, brooding songs that seriously rock and break your heart at the same time. I took guitarist-singer-songwriter Jason Isbell’s departure a couple of years back like my dog had died; he took some of the band’s best songs with him but the creative core of the band, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, remains intact. And Isbell’s departure brought founding member John Neff, one heck of a pedal steel player and guitarist, back on board.
Friday 3 p.m.: So this is what happened: About a week before her scheduled taping, Erykah Badu canceled her scheduled taping of an “ACL” episode on the UT campus. As the show’s executive producer, Terry Lickona, put it Friday afternoon just before the show, “We were disappointed Erykah canceled but glad we had these guys on standby to help out.” I groveled my way into tickets. (April Burchman, you’re a great human being.)
“I used to watch this as a kid so it’s great to be here,” Hood told the crowd at the beginning. The set, which lasted about an hour and 10 minutes, and started out a little on the quiet side (this is, after all, for public television) with Cooley’s “Perfect Timing,” from the newest record, “Bigger Than Creation’s Dark,” and Hood’s “Heathens.” Bassist Shonna Tucker got a spotlight for her “I’m Sorry Huston,” her first foray into songwriting with the band. And they also threw in “18 Wheels of Love,” the latter a song from 1998’s “Gangstabilly” that Hood wrote to commemorate his mother’s marriage — in Dollywood.
“This has been one of the greatest times of my life,” Hood said as things were winding down. It sure sounded like he meant it.
With one of three shows in the bag, next up was:
Friday 10:30 p.m.: The show with the Truckers and Shooter Jennings at Emo’s was way sold out, and it was hotter in the club than it had been at Zilker Park earlier in the day. And let me just say that after you experience the state-of-the-art sound in ACL’s studio, not to mention great sight lines and no drunks sloshing beer on you, a club show requires something of an attitude adjustment — and for the band, too. In contrast to the taping, it was an all-electric set, opening with the doomed howl of “Sink Hole.”
Let me just say: At this point in their career, these guys have a lot of songs. Maybe three or at most four repeated from the afternoon taping. Instead, the crowd got “Women Without Whiskey” (sort of Cooley’s Souther rock version of “Leaving Las Vegas”), Hood’s “The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town,” “Hell, No, I Ain’t Happy” and “Lookout Mountain,” yet another of the band’s explorations of debt and suicidal (or sometimes murderous) tendencies.
Oh, and they closed with Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” because nothing can follow that, and earlier covered Van Halen’s (!) “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love.” Having seen DBT twice in one day, I could die a happy man, except they haven’t done “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac,” which leads us to:
Saturday 2:30 p.m.: Stay tuned for an update.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Saturday, ACL Festival
ACL aftershow: Gnarls Barkely at Stubb's
The stage wardrobe was more conventional than the “Star Wars”- and “Clockwork Orange”-inspired garb they’ve sported before — just tan sport coats for the bandleaders and waiter-like outfits for their colleagues — which put Gnarls Barkley in line with the packed crowd, many of whom (women especially) were primped enough that they couldn’t have been spillover from the day’s ACL shows.
Performing in advance of their Sunday showcase, the band tore energetically through songs from their two albums, making even their Violent Femmes cover “Gone Daddy Gone” sound uncontrived. While their supporting musicians flailed and jumped around, Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton) hid behind shades and worked quietly at his vintage organ. Vocalist Cee-Lo Green made up for DM’s calmness, milking drama even out of the act of wiping sweat from his bald scalp.
The show began with “The Odd Couple” opener “Charity Case,” and was highlighted by “Run (I’m a Natural Disaster),” where lyrics were fused into long polysyllabic strings, and “Suicide,” whose emotionally intense delivery had Green’s body spasming along with the guitar and drums. Claiming “my throat’s not so good tonight” (a complaint belied by his robust performance), Green let the crowd do much of the singing on their hit song “Crazy,” which came near the end of the set, but he was back in full voice for an encore including “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” and “Smiley Faces.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Gogol Bordello
That’s not to say it’s not fun. In fact, in the right dosage the unlikely hybrid preferred by lead man Eugene Hutz and company — immigrant folk and klezmer filtered through both punk rock and a weird jump blues — is pretty thrilling and almost impossible to not dance along to. And things are just as overloaded on the visual end, with players dressed in an array of ethnic garbs exaggerated to the point where the whole spectacle looks like a Benetton commercial on acid.
So there’s a lot to take in and try to process. Maybe it’s best to not think about it too much. I mean, it’s OK to just mindlessly sing along to catchy tunes like “Start Wearing Purple” or “Think Locally, (Expletive) Globally,” right?
That’ll have to do for now. Because the alternative is to realize I spent 60 minutes Friday night watching the “Saturday Night Live” Wild and Crazy Guys sketch dressed up like a rock show. And worse, I kinda liked it.
Photo: Erich Schlegel FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Yeasayer
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Del Tha Funky Homosapien
As musical cliches go, rappers claiming they’re all about “real hip-hop” is the one that sounds the loudest alarms. It’s the kind of thing Talib Kweli has said repeatedly for the 10-plus years he’s been preaching crowds to sleep; a signifier that you’re usually in for lots of back-in-the-day speechifying absent that pesky notion called fun.
So there was some worry when Oakland, Calif., rapper Del Tha Funky Homosapien was introduced early Friday afternoon, by members of Hieroglyphics and Souls of Mischief, as being about “real hip-hop.” Thankfully, Del knows that the purest essence of the music is entertainment and he didn’t let the entertainment value lag much if at all during his hour in the sun.
The crowd of a few hundred — indie wunderkinds Vampire Weekend were on an adjacent stage — did all the requisite “hey”ing and “ho”ing when prompted, but the crowd antics weren’t really necessary since Del was pretty much spectacular while twisting words on the mic. Mixing in cuts from his new album “11th Hour,” he especially shined on cuts like “Dr. Bombay” and “Mistadobalina,” which is probably the closest thing he’s had to a hit outside his guest work with Gorillaz.
Back to the “real hip-hop” thing for a second. About 35 minutes in Del took a moment to quiz the crowd about their knowledge of old-school funk, imploring them to search beyond milemarkers like Parliament and James Brown. What saved the history lesson from robbing the show of its considerable momentum? The fact that it was immediately followed by head-nodding funk beats and rhymes by an MC who knows how to not take himself too seriously.
Photo: Erich Schlegel FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL scene reports: Byrne doesn't burn gas
One of Friday’s biggest acts, David Byrne, could be the fest’s “green it like you mean it” spokesman. Forget the limo, Byrne rode his bike to Zilker Park, wearing a Chi Chi Rodriguez hat and his white stage outfit.
Austin’s Black & White Years play a “Rock the Vote” party tonight at 10 p.m. at the American Legion Hall, which has been taken over by Blender magazine and renamed the Music Lounge Mansion. It’s at 2201 Veterans Drive, just off Lake Austin Boulevard. By day, the “mansion” serves as a “gifting suite” for festival acts and the cast of “Friday Night Lights.” Hopefully, the kid who plays Tim Riggins will show up for a free haircut. There are free goodies, spa services and tattoos.
Someone at C3 can’t spell. All the signs for field access were spelled “Feild Access.”
Let us know if you hear a song dedicated to the late, great Paul Newman today.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Ryan Bingham
Who knew that plains poet Ryan Bingham rocked so ferociously? Perhaps inspired by the biggest crowd for the BMI stage all day Friday, Bingham put a metal slide on his pinky and let ‘er rip on the last two songs of his set, including KGSR fave “Bread and Water.” As a former bullrider, Bingham knows a bit about adrenaline and his slide work seemed to express the thrill of an eight second ride.
The standout of the set came earlier, with “Southside of Heaven,” the calm before the storm. With his voice set between whisper and growl, Bingham sang about feeling lost in an aimless place where “a breeze is just a change of pace.” His fine band, the Dead Horses, shaded the sentiments with care and then at the song’s end came the sweet release. Newly resolved, the singer headed down those byways and highways where he now calls home.
It was a powerful moment and the crowd reacted by pumping their arms over their heads. Next year look for Bingham on one of the bigger stages.
A sometime Austinite, Bingham plays Wednesday at Threadgill’s South.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
September 26, 2008
ACL review: Alejandro Escovedo
For as long as I have watched Alejandro Escovedo perform (and it’s been long enough for a Savings Bond to mature), I am always put in mind of that Robert Frost poem where he talks about how “work is play for mortal stakes.”
That is always how Escovedo’s work has come across to me. It’s music for grownups, infused with loss, but never quite bereft of hope, informed at every moment that it (and he) are playing for keeps. That sense of gravitas—and accompanying sentiments of fun and joy—was present from the moment that Escovedo stepped on stage for his inaugural ACL performance.
ACL visitors from out of town don’t necessarily have to know that Escovedo’s life has been shaped by cathartic and life-altering circumstances. But surely, listening to him launch headfirst into the joyous choruses of “Always A Friend,” they must have gleaned some sense that here is a man who has been there and back. There is a wonderful sense of abandon and unfettered celebration in singing “Every once in a while, honey, let your love show/Every once in a while, honey, let your love go.” There is a liberation in those lines that has to be merited, and Escovedo has earned every syllable.
The set, per se, was a sampler of his new album, “Real Animal,” as well as a hopscotch survey of his life and times and influences (heads up, Iggy Pop). “Chelsea Hotel ’78,” with its nihilistic echoes, butted up against the sunny “People We’re Only Gonna Live So Long” (Escovedo was still walking on air from having performed the latter at the Democratic National Convention), which had a shotgun wedding with the churning, paranoid “Everybody Loves Me,” which eventually yielded to the top-down unfettered rock of “Castanets.”
Escovedo, characteristically, seemed enamored of every note he played, of every musician who shared the stage, of (as that movie queen memorably phrased it) “all those wonderful people out there in the dark.” The feeling was contagious. Listening to his set was, as always, like diving into a renewing well capable of quenching every weary thirst.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Jenny Lewis
A good chunk of the crowd that was on hand for M. Ward’s fantastic set on the WaMu stage hung around to see Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis perform. Like Ward, Lewis brought out a five-person band, and also like Ward, was a highlight of day one at ACL. Lewis’s solo work is in some ways an experiment in mixing genres, from rock to country to rhythm and blues. All of these forms were on display as she made her way through the set, captivating the audience the entire time.
Lewis played a selection of songs from 2006’s “Rabbit Fur Coat” and her most recent album “Acid Tongue,” which was released earlier this week. She started off on the piano with “Jack Killed Mom,” evoking Dusty Springfield and trading lyrics with her guitarist, and then grabbed the guitar for “Rise Up With Fists.”
Lewis’s bassist Jonathan Wilson stood out on several songs, including “Bad Man’s World” off the recent album, which she dedicated to John McCain. A friend pointed out that Wilson, who looked to be wearing a George Harrison t-shirt, switched back and forth between a Rickenbacker and a Hoffner violin bass, Paul McCartney’s weapons of choice.
The band closed with the driving country-rocker “See Fernando,” also a new one, with Lewis climbing up on to the piano bench and clapping along with the crowd, who were focused on her every move.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Mates of State
The quirky pop tunes of husband-and-wife duo Mates of State have always sounded full, even with just the two members. Kori Gardner’s electronic organ pumps out so many diverse sounds over Jason Hammel’s pounding drum beats, and the two belt out such meticulously layered melodies that both their live shows and studio recordings create the illusion of at least a four-piece band.
But at the ACL Fest the duo took their live sound a step further for many songs by adding a three-piece string ensemble to the mix. The violin and two cellos soared over the doo-wop piano rolls of “Like U Crazy,” while in “You Are Free” they melded with the organ to create an epic sound.
Aside from a couple of shaky moments, the vocal delivery of both Gardner and Hammel was impeccable as always. On many numbers, their voices blended in harmony so well that it was hard to tell which member was singing what.
Equally as impressive was their seamless flow between the shifting rhythms in many of the songs. Fan favorite “Ha Ha” in particular changed drum beats at least three times, but the shifts always sounded natural. Whether they’re playing as a two-piece or more, Mates of State always seem to make it work.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL scene report: Friday night quotes
What people were saying as they left day one of the festival around 6 p.m.:
“I’m going to a presidential debate party later, but I won’t be missing any music for it. My favorite act was Gogol Bordello. We’re going to eat now.” - Rene Francis of Austin
“Awesome music. Really awesome.” - Maggie Koerner of Shreveport, La.
“It was hot, but really good. Showering is the number one priority right now, then we’ll probably walk around downtown. We ate at Kenichi last night. We really enjoyed it.” - Sarah Sour of Shreveport
“It was good. We saw Vampire Weekend, Heidi Griffith and Jenny Lewis. Vampire weekend was definitely our favorite.” - Drew Miller of Austin
“The presidential debate is actually going on in our state right now, but we’ll probably just go eat and come back.” - Andy Baker of Jackson, Miss.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: M. Ward
M. Ward and his band played to a super-packed tent, running through 2006’s “Post-War” album. Ward is an entertainer—after a solo acoustic number he brought out a band of five, which included two drummers (and two drum sets), and offered up rocking versions of “Right in the Head,” “Chinese Translation” and “Requiem,” among others.
The only low points came during a few of the lower-key songs, when chatter from the crowd drowned out the band a bit. After a cover of a John Fahey song (Ward produced a Fahey tribute album a few years back and is clearly influenced by Fahey’s fingerpicking), the band pleased the crowd with the loungy and delightful “Rollercoaster” and “Magic Trick,” the lyrics of which he changed so the song was in the first person.
He closed with a cover of Austinite Daniel Johnston’s “To Go Home,” which appears on “Post-War” as well. Part of the joy in watching Ward perform is that he appears to really love making music—he went over his allotted time, and probably would have kept playing if he didn’t have to cede the stage to Jenny Lewis.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Jakob Dylan and the Gold Mountain Rebels
With the Wallflowers’ breakthrough album, 1996’s “Bringing Down the Horse,” Jakob Dylan proved himself a solid songwriter, showing that there was more to him as a musician than just his father’s famous last name. Now with five Wallflowers releases under his belt, Dylan has dropped the roots rock for a stripped-down folk sound on his debut solo album “Seeing Things.”
Dylan’s new act translated perfectly to ACL’s AT&T stage on Friday afternoon. Dylan and his bandmates, the Gold Mountain Rebels, took the stage dressed in black suits, white shirts and shades, then breezed through an hour’s worth of softly floating folk tunes and hard-driving blues rock numbers.
There was some trouble with the mix at the start of the set and the band’s harmonies wavered slightly for the first few songs, but they found their stride with “Here Comes Now.” In the song, soft snare strokes and egg shakers created an atmosphere of understated percussion to underlie Dylan’s twinkling, finger-picked guitar lines.
The next song, “Three Marlenas,” was a pleasant surprise for longtime Wallflowers fans. The track from “Bringing Down the Horse” had audience members singing along and clapping.
The highlight of the show, however, was “Will It Grow,” a cut off Dylan’s solo album lush with imagery and smooth-flowing guitar solos. “Jet black starlit midnight rolls/I am down in the valley where I let go,” Dylan lamented with his rich voice as clean guitar lines danced in the background.
This was Dylan’s first ACL performance, but fans will surely be eager to welcome him back.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: David Byrne
“One fine daaaaay,” David Byrne sang from the AT&T stage Friday evening at Zilker Park and boy howdy was it. Dusk is always a fun time at ACL - the setting sun takes the edge off the day’s heat, and soft light fills the sky. “Then before my eyes- Is standing still/I beheld it there- a city on a hill,” he sang. There it was, right behind him, Austin at magic hour.
Playing his second set in two days, Byrne and his band of white-clad musicians, dancers and back-up singers cranked out a roiling set of Talking Heads hits and material from his new collaboration with Brian Eno, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.” As with his show Thursday night at the Paramount Theatre (and every show on this tour), Byrne drew on previous collaborations with Eno such as “Once in a Lifetime” and “Houses in Motion,” making it a theme for the tour.
Some elements worked better on the Paramount stage and some worked better at Zilker. The dancers, who already looked under rehearsed (unless it was supposed to look a little “off”) at the Paramount were completely swallowed up by the massive AT&T stage. But Byrne’s guitar was audible throughout the Zilker set, something you couldn’t say about the Paramount and its somewhat wonky acoustics. Like the Paramount set, the newer material blended seamlessly with older hits, though when the band hit “Once in a Lifetime,” with its angelic synth-drone, crisp poly-rhythms and Zen-like lyrics, really is one of the pop highlights of the past 30 years.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
'Love Hurts,' Jenny? Really?
A rule of ACL Fest should be that every act should do a cover. I mean, we love your new stuff, but out in the fields we want to hear familiarity now and then.
I wasn’t sure what to think about Jenny Lewis’ set Friday at the WaMu stage. The overflow crowd, perhaps the biggest in WaMu hist, was digging every move the high-heeled Lewis was throwing out. But I kept wondering, are these songs really great, or is this a case of style winning big?
Then, she and her shaggy guitar player, sent the rest of the band off the stage to do “Love Hurts.” This could be the laziest cover ever at ACL, akin to if David Byrne did “I Shot the Sherrif.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL scene report
If there are going to be major problems at the ACL Festival this year, they haven’t reared themselves yet. Unlike last year, when a fire erupted just a few hours into the first day, the festival’s kickoff has been smooth and, well, festive. Perhaps seeking escape from the week’s relentless financial and political roller coasters, festival-goers were ready for a good time.
By 2 p.m. the grounds were already packed as people rushed out of work to make the most of near-perfect festival weather. Breezes whipped through the crowd just at the right time during exuberant sets by What Made Milwaukee Famous, Vampire Weekend, Jamie Lidell and Gogol Bordello.
Food lines have moved quickly so far, with people packing the picnic tables and filling up the nearby WaMu Stage (aka the “FDIC Stage”), the only one at the festival covered by a tent. In fact, it was the hottest place at the festival late Friday afternoon as a swell of people crammed into the tent for Portland, Ore., troubador M. Ward and stayed for Jenny Lewis, lead singer of Rilo Kiley. No one seemed to let the financial troubles afflicting the stage’s sponsor, Washington Mutual, affect their mood.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Delta Spirit
The onset of fall is simply a rhetorical conceit in this neck of the woods. So the music of Delta Spirit, as the sun began its seemingly imperceptible descent behind the Austin Ventures stage, was entirely in keeping with the climate—a parting shot of summery indie pop and country-inflected rock.
No strangers to Austin (they took a moment to plug their upcoming Thanksgiving gig at Emo’s), the San Diego-based quintet had a bigger canvas to paint on than their customary local club gigs afford. Changing between instruments as the songs demanded, the group set up a rolling thunder of guitars, two-fisted keyboards and floor toms that alternated with more nuanced pop and confessional songwriting.
One common denominator in the musical checkerboard were the forceful vocals of frontman Matthew Vasquez (particularly as vocalists often represent the Achilles heel of even the most high-flying indie groups.) Multi-instrumentalist Kelly Winrich and drummer Brandon Young also stood out during this particular set.
Delta Spirit has drawn comparisons to Drive-By Truckers and the Waterboys (Reckless Kelly might represent the local template). But their multi-instrumental versatility, strong vocals and infectious presentation, at least to these eyes and ears, set them apart.
Songs like “Streetwalker” and “People Turn Around” painted a dour lyrical picture juxtaposed against exuberant melodies, while “Trashcan” (which, like the previous titles, derives from their sole 2007 release), with its irresistible, percussive piano line, was clearly a crowd favorite.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Vampire Weekend
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Jamie Lidell
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Sunny Sweeney
One big way in which ACL Fest is different than all the other festivals is the way mainstream country intercuts with hip indie rock bands. Even the sons of legendary promoter Louis Messina would have a hard time making it to Coachella or Bonnaroo if they had a steel guitar.
Although Austin’s Sunny Sweeney has the semi-tough demeanor of a tender biker chick, her music is aimed at Mass-ville appeal. Her self-depracating “Next Big Nothing” had the crowd of about 750 in front of the BMI stage bobbing like a rebuttal. A swipe at Lucinda Williams’ “Can’t Let Go,” meanwhile, had folks dancing. “This is Texas,” the Longview native said. “Might as well dance.”
A couple of missteps kept the set from hitting its stride. “Band of Gold,” although Sweeney’s best vocal performance of the night, was sappy, as was the new “It’s a Sweet Dance.” Even worse, “Contrary & Western,” with lines like “If you don’t like Merle, I believe/ You might end up on the fightin’ side of me” was the sort of pandering that didn’t belong in the groove fields.
At the end, Sweeney totally nailed it on “If I Could,” with its rapidfire lyrics setting up a fluid Telecaster run by Charlie Rich’s grandson Cole Lee. The Sweeney set in one word: refreshing.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Rodney Crowell
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL makes a 'Love Connection'
First celeb sighting of ACL Fest was the first person onstage. Chuck Woolery, who was the original host of “Wheel of Fortune” (right you were, Mrs. Scheibal) and brought us back “in two and two” on “Love Connection,” introduced Friday’s first act, Ben Cyllus on the BMI stage.
Woolery lives in nearby Marble Falls. His connection to Cyllus is not known, but the two were off to the American Legion Hall off Lake Austin Boulevard, which has turned into a pamper palace for ACL artists.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
ACL review: Jones Family Singers
Here’s the scene at the WaMu stage, which is known as “the gospel tent” when Bay City’s Jones Family Singers are onstage: Led by the volcanic Alexis Jones-Roberts, whose voice could dust an abandoned house, the group has about 100 audience members doing a simple synchronized dance. When the five Jones sisters vamp ten steps to the right on “I Am,” the crowd follows them. Then it’s ten paces to the left, with the crowd aping their slinky movements.
It’s still Friday morning, just past 11:30. It’s on, peoples!
What seemed like boneheaded booking, putting the ACL show-stealers on so early Friday, may turn out to be a tradition. The JFS had the tent at least half-filled and most of the folks were on their feet throughout.
The material is getting a little too secular- Roberts’ rewording of “Saving All My Love For You” was a vocal showoff, but didn’t hold up the intensity. And a short “Wind Beneath My Wings,” for a couple in the audience’s 25th anniversary, fell totally flat. Still don’t like “Shout” as the set-closer, but when this wonderfully joyful band kicks out a rock groove, it’s just plain irresistable.
I vote for having the JFS open every ACL, right after the “Star Wars” theme. This family group just puts everyone in a great mood with their choreography and electric smiles.
Photo: Erich Schlegel FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
Three day passes: $150
And on the seventh year, the unbearable heat rested. But everything else seems business as usual the first morning of ACL.
The secondary market for passes and tickets to ACL Fest is pretty brisk. One fella had a handful of three-day passes he was unloading for $150 each, though some were asking $180 and more. The top price of $170 has been sold out for a month.
Shady Grove is charging $25 for parking, while Chuy’s, closer to the fest gate, is charging $20 a car. Weird, since they’re both owned by the same company.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2008: Friday, ACL Festival
Review: David Byrne at the Paramount
No matter what he’s playing, writing, composing, programming or singing, David Byrne always lets you know he’s thinking things through.
Thursday night at the Paramount Theatre, in what that proved a fantastic kick-off to the Austin City Limits Music Festival weekend, Byrne and everyone in his band came on stage wearing all white - white trousers, white shirts of varying styles. Three backup dancers (and three backup singers) added motion and form to the sharply funky songs, drawn entirely from the music Byrne made with producer Brian Eno on such rock touchstones as “Remain in Light” and “Fear of Music” and the new Byrne/Eno collaboration “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.” The deft five-piece band breathed new life into old material and sold the heck out of the new stuff, cranking out stripped down versions of decades-old crowd pleasers such as “Once in a Lifetime,” “Crosseyed and Painless,” the gorgeous “Heaven” and “I Zimbra.”
Though Eno was not present, his keyboard parts couldn’t have been written by anyone but him, their cloudy drone distinctive as a finger print. Byrne, all of 56 and playing all the guitar parts himself, sometimes joined the dancers’ routines. He also hasn’t lost of a note of his singular voice - it was faintly startling how good he sounded. And it was smart to blend the new material with the old. Set opener “Strange Overtones,” “One Fine Day” and “My big Nurse” fit seamlessly in with the songs everyone knew.
While simple politeness kept folks (on the floor, at least) in their seats though most of the set, it’s physically impossible not to move to Byrne’s music, yet be moved by the almost Zen sense of wonder that runs though his lyrics, an admixture that legions of imitators have failed to capture. By the time a woman in crowd yelled, “I want to dance,” more to her fellow fans than the band, the dam willfully burst and fans spilled into the aisle for “Crosseyed and Painless,” remaining there for the rest of the set. Thank goodness.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Did someone say Foo?
Welcome to the first day of the 2008 Austin City Limits Music Festival. Get ready to watch music and stay hydrated, possibly not in that order.
This year’s fest is two weeks later than last year (there’s been talk of an October start date for 2009), and Austin is holding its collective breath that not only will the three-digit temps of years past be avoided but that most of the festival will take place with the mercury held to lower than 90 degrees. We’ll see.
The Foo Fighters are this year’s Sunday headliner, a slot for which ‘07 headliner Bob Dylan was utterly inappropriate. To wit, he did not, you know, rock, which seems the least a band should be expected to do when closing out a big festival. Even people without much interest in the Foos should check them out simply to say they were there: Word has it a long hiatus is in the works for this band that has managed to be around not just three times longer than head Foo Dave Grohl was in Nirvana, but nearly twice as long as Nirvana was a band at all (Nirvana 1987-1994, Foo Fighters 1995 -present). This is very weird for thirtysomethings in the crowd to deal with, so don’t be surprised if you see members of this ACL Fest target demographic mumbling to themselves during the weekend. (If you see one, just offer him or her a drink and a shady spot; they’ll be fine when they remember how old Robert Plant is.)
Speaking of the man with the golden voice, Saturday night, Plant and musical partner Alison Krauss, — the duo whose “Raising Sand” has been one of the sleeper hits of the past few years — is up against Beck, who has been around even longer than the Foo Fighters. Roky Erickson, one of music’s greatest comebacks, is playing at more or less the same time.
Is there an aesthetic theme this year? Not an overarching one — that’s not really how ACL Fest rolls. But there are two smaller trends to note.
ACL Fest is packed with indie rock this year. From the harmonies of the Fleet Foxes to the guitar histrionics of Band of Horses, from the Brazilian funk of CSS to the acoustic songwriting of M. Ward, from the somewhat less acoustic songwriting of Austin’s Okkervil River to the kitchen-sink dance rock of Austin’s own White Demin, indie rock acts are on nearly ever stage.
And some mention must be made of the accidental influence of Talking Heads. The funky New Wave legends are an influence on today’s hispters the way Gang of Four and Wire were an influence on yesterday’s. Yeasayer and Vampire Weekend have clearly heard more than a few of Talking Heads’ funkier outings. Antibalas plays actual Afrobeat, no matter that they hail from Brooklyn. MGMT have been known to cover “This Must Be the Place” while Hot Chip’s pop oddness seems impossible to conceive of without albums such as “Remain in Light.” And of course, there’s former head Head David Byrne himself, playing a set that is slated to include plenty of the Heads material that the band produced through a collaboration with brilliant producer Brian Eno.
So keep a drink in your hand, folks, and walk toward the music, whichever kind you choose. You have three days of this — pace yourself. See you out there.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 25, 2008
Live shots: David Byrne at the Paramount
(Photos by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL Fest road closures
From the City of Austin:
The Austin City Limits Music Festival will take place this weekend, Sept. 26-28, in Zilker Park. Heavy traffic is expected in and around the park grounds and event attendees are encouraged to take free shuttles to help ease congestion.
This annual festival will host more than 120 bands on eight stages over the three-day period. Approximately 50,000 to 60,000 visitors are expected at the event each day to enjoy festivities.
Road Closures for ACL
Several roadways will be closed to vehicular traffic beginning at 9 a.m. Friday, Sept. 26 through midnight Sept. 28.
- Barton Springs Road from Robert E. Lee Road to Rollingwood Drive and from Stratford Drive to Nature Center Drive
- Stratford Drive from Nature Center Drive to Barton Springs Road
- West Fourth Street from Nueces Street to Guadalupe Street
- San Antonio Street from West Third Street to West Fifth Street
Transportation to ACL
- Capital Metro will be providing free non-stop shuttle service from Republic Square Park to Zilker Park through the duration of the ACL Festival. (The shuttle is near the 2nd Street Retail District.)
- Shuttles will run from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.
- Bike racks will be available at both entrances of the event for bicyclists. Bicyclists should bring a bike lock
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Astrologer predicts ACL
Nylon magazine asked astrologer Aurora Tower to read between the stars and give a feel of what to expect at this year’s fest. Read her predictions here.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Envy party with Erykah Badu back on
It was on, it was off and now apparently it is a go at Speakeasy.
Tickets available here.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 24, 2008
Manu Chao brings crowd to its feet at ACL taping
“This is the highlight of this year’s festival, as far as I’m concerned,” “Austin City Limits” television producer Terry Lickona declared upon introducing Manu Chao at ACL’s Studio A on the UT Campus Tuesday night. The studio audience roared in agreement.
The Spanish-French singer’s U.S. performances are rare, and his American television appearances even rarer. Everyone in the room for the intimate taping seemed to recognize it was a special evening and the entire audience was on its feet well before Manu Chao took the stage. And we remained standing, dancing for the bulk of the show.
For the most part the multi-lingual Chao performed in Spanish with a set that covered a good portion of his most recent album “La Radiolina” mixed with a handful of older tracks. The performance was an exhilarating journey as the defiantly political artist sang with raw heart that transcended any language barrier. It was also an exercise in audio whiplash as the pace of the show vacillated between easy skank and breakneck, moshable ska.
As Manu Chao came to the end of his set the crowd cheered until he returned for an encore. When he left the stage a second time he was called back once more and he came back a second time not to play but instead to shake hands, exchange hugs and generally return a little love to his fans.
Overall, it was a moving evening and a testament to the efforts of ACL (both the television show and the music festival) to continue to diversify their lineups.
Manu Chao performs Thursday night at Stubb’s BBQ. The show is sold out. He headlines ACL Fest Friday night performing on the AT&T stage at 8:30 p.m. The Manu Chao episode of “Austin City Limits” will air early next year.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Eli Young debuts in top 10
The Austin-managed Eli Young Band come into ACL Fest, Friday at 6:30 p.m., on a high. landing at #5 on the Billboard country albums chart with “Jet Black & Jealous.” The Denton band, which grew out of James Young and Mike Eli’s acoustic duo, is managed by George Couri. Couri recently split from C3 Presents’ artist management division to form Triple 8 Management, taking Eli Young, Jack Ingram and Kevin Fowler with him. C3 continues to manage such acts as Robert Earl Keen, Blues Traveler, Thievery Corporation and more.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL to show Presidential debate
ACL Fest will be showing the debate between Sen. Barak Obama and Sen. John McCain in the T&T Digital Oasis tent and on screens at the Rock Island hideaway.
They will also show the UT-Arkansas game in both places Saturday.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 23, 2008
Welcome Gemma Rose Corbin-Attal
With this kid’s bloodlines, she’ll be booking the Wiggles by kindergarten. Award-winning talent bookers Amy Corbin and Charles Attal of C3 Presents are the proud parents of a baby daughter, born Sept. 17.
No photos here; the happy couple apparently signed an exclusive baby pix deal with Pollstar.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 21, 2008
ACL on the side: Aftershows and related events happening over ACL weekend
Not going to the Austin City Limits Music Festival? Looking for something to do after the lights go off at Zilker Park? There are a whole host of official and unofficial afterparties going on all weekend long.
- Melanie Spencer runs down side parties and VIP events
- Know of a good ACL side event? Tell us about it.
- Full ACL Fest coverage on Austin360.com
THURSDAY, SEPT. 25
An evening with Manu Chao at Stubb’s BBQ (801 Red River St.)
Doors 7p.m., show 8 p.m.
Sold out
David Byrne at The Paramount Theatre (713 Congress Ave.)
Doors at 7:30 p.m., Show 8:30 p.m.
Tickets: $50, $55 (plus svc fees)
Paste Magazine’s ACL kick-off at Emo’s
Music on indoor and outdoor stages featuring White Ghost Shivers, Mates of State, What Made Milwaukee Famous, Bobby Bare Jr., Dan Dyer and Thomas Function.
Doors at 9 p.m., show at 9:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public
ACL Afterhours at the Beauty Bar
Outside: Bleach Online issue release/Art Disaster 7 with The Lemurs, Brownout, White White Light, Till We’re Blue or Destroy and more
Inside: Mars Volta pre-party with DJ Nobody
Makers Mark hosted bar
Doors at 9 p.m.
Americana Songwriter Showcase at The Amsterdam (121 West 8th St. & Colorado St.)
Featuring Jim Patton & Sherry Brokus, Kim Deschamps, Jodi Adair, AJ Downing, George Carver, Kent Mayhew, Guest musicians welcome.
8 p.m., no cover
FRIDAY, SEPT. 26
G. Love & Special Sauce at La Zona Rosa (612 West Fourth St.)
Doors at 10 p.m., Show at 11 p.m.
Tickets: $25 adv/ $27 dos
Gnarls Barkley and CSS at Stubb’s BBQ
Doors 8 p.m., show 9 p.m.
Tickets: $27 adv/ $30 dos
Jamie Lidell w/ Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears at The Parish (214 E. Sixth St.)
Doors at 10 p.m., show at 11 p.m.
Tickets: $20
Drive By Truckers w/ Shooter Jennings at Emo’s (603 Red River St.)
Doors at 10 p.m., Show at 10:30 p.m.
Tickets: $20 adv/ $22 dos
Heartless Bastards w/ Dead Confederate & Wax Fang at Emo’s (Indoors, 603 Red River St.)
Doors at 10 p.m., Show at 10:30 p.m.
Tickets: $15 adv/ $17 dos
Car Stereo Wars at Emo’s Lounge
Doors at 10 p.m., show 11 p.m.
Tickets: $8 adv/ $10 dos
Rolling Stone presents The Cool Kids, Voxtrot and Belaire at the Mohawk
Doors at 8 p.m.
RSVP here
Afrobonics 1: The Melting Pot at the Whisky Bar
DJs Chicken George, Aquaman Chill with horns and percussion from the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
Doors at 10 p.m.
(Full disclosure: DJ Aquaman Chill is married to Music Source contributor Deborah Sengupta Stith)
ACL Afterhours at the Beauty Bar
Inside: Prince Klassen, Bird Peterson
Outside: AUX, Ume, The Steps, Always Already
Doors at 9 p.m.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 27
Mike Farris gospel brunch at Stubb’s BBQ
Doors at 11 a.m., Brunch at 11:30 a.m.
Call 512-480-8341 to make reservations and purchase tickets.
Tickets: $30, $40
Butthole Surfers w/ The Kills at Stubb’s BBQ (outdoors)
Doors 7 p.m., Show 8 p.m.
Tickets: $30 adv/ $33 dos
Mugison at Stubb’s BBQ (indoors)
Doors 11:30pm, show midnight
Tickets: $15
Band of Horses with James McMurtry at The Parish
Doors at 10:30 p.m.
Sold out
The Swell Season w/ Bill Callahan at The Paramount Theatre (713 Congress Ave.)
Doors at 7:30 p.m., Show at 8:30 p.m.
Tickets: $35, $42.50
Okkervil River w/ Man Man & Crooked Fingers at Emo’s (Outdoors, 603 Red River St.)
Doors at 10 p.m., show 10:30 p.m.
Tickets: $15 adv/ $17 dos
Jose Gonzalez w/ Neva Dinova & McCarthy Trenching at Emo’s (Indoors, 603 Red River St.)
Doors at 10 p.m., show 10:30 p.m.
Tickets: $18 adv/ $20 dos
Car Stereo Wars at Emo’s Lounge
Doors at 10 p.m., show 11 p.m.
Tickets: $8 adv/ $10 dos
Jakob Dylan and The Gold Mountain Rebels w/ Back Door Slam at Antone’s (213 West 5th St.)
Doors at 10 p.m., Show at 10:30 p.m.
Tickets: $23 adv, $25 dos
Ocote Soul Sounds (featuring members of Grupo Fantasma and the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra), Buscando El Monte, DJ Chorizo Funk at The Compound (1300 E 4th St.)
Doors at 9 p.m., show at 10 p.m.
$10, $5 if you arrive on a bike.
Austin Music + Entertainment unofficial ACL afterparty
Featuring Lemurs, Loxsly and Red Leaves Scoot Inn
Doors at 8 p.m.
ACL Afterhours at the Beauty Bar
Outside: Scorpion Child, Grand Ole Party, And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead (original lineup)
Inside: DJ Mel, Smalltown Pete
Doors at 9 p.m.
SUNDAY, SEPT. 28
The Black Keys w/ The Black Angels & Jessica Lea Mayfield at Stubb’s BBQ
Doors at 7 p.m., Show at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25 adv/ $25 dos
Gospel Brunch with the Shields of Faith at Stubb’s BBQ
Call 512-480-8341 to make reservations and purchase tickets.
Seatings at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis and M. Ward at La Zona Rosa
Doors at 9 p.m., Show at 10 p.m.
TIckets: $30
Papalactic Aftablasta at the Parish
Featuring Galactic’s Stanton Moore and Rob Mecurio, Papa Mali, Ivan and Cyril Neville.
Tickets $20 adv
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL sells out Saturday
All tickets to Saturday’s ACL Fest lineup- including Beck, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss and John Fogerty- have sold out and, according to booker Charles Attal, Friday and Sunday are close to reaching capacity.
The mild weather lately has no doubt helped. Forecasts put the high temps in the high 80s/ low 90s in the coming week.
VIP passes, at $850 for three days, are still available.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 18, 2008
Update: Envy party with Erykah Badu canceled
We don’t have details, but we’ve heard from Paul Levatino, director of marketing for Erykah Badu, that the Envy Magazine party has been canceled. Badu is still playing the festival.
(Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Pandora mixes ACL artists in radio stream
Our friends over at the Music Genome Project have created an ACL-centered radio station on Pandora. The station mixes an ever-changing stream of artists who are playing at ACL Fest 2008. You can find the station at the bottom right corner of Pandora’s festival page.
Thanks to Music Source reader Lynn for the tip.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Band of Horses to play ACL after-party that will benefit HAAM
The show is sponsored by Blurt, a new online music magazine from the folks behind Harp magazine, and features Band of Horses, James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards.
Tickets will be $18 in advance, $21 at the door and are available through Frontgate Tickets.
Part of the night’s proceeds will go to the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, which provides affordable healthcare to Austin’s musicians.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 16, 2008
ACL to move to early October in 2009?
So here’s the UT football schedule for 2009:
9/5 Louisiana-Monroe
9/12 at Wyoming
9/19 Central Florida
9/26 UTEP
10/10 Colorado
10/17 Oklahoma
(Dallas)
10/24 at Missouri
10/31 at Oklahoma State
11/7 Texas Tech
11/14 at Baylor
11/21 Kansas
11/26 at Texas A&M
You’ll notice that UT is away Sept. 12 and there’s no game at all Oct. 3. Sept. 12 is usually awfully hot in Austin. How about moving ACL Fest to Oct. 3?
C3 Presents principal Charles Attal said it’s a distinct possibility. “Nothing is set in stone yet, but because of the football schedule, we are looking at that weekend,” he said Tuesday.
Imagine there’s no sweating, it’s easy if you try. Imagine all the people, standing in a breeze.
Permalink | Comments (35) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 15, 2008
Autograph signings at ACL
The Waterloo Records tent at ACL will host the following signings:
Friday:
12:00pm Vampire Weekend
1:45pm Rodney Crowell
2:00pm Christopher Denny
2:45pm What Made Milwaukee Famous
3:00pm Mates of State
3:30pm Hot Chip
4:00pm Eli Young Band
5:00pm Donovan Frankenreiter
5:00pm Delta Spirit
5:00pm Jamie Lidell
6:00pm Louis XIV
6:00pm Patty Griffin
7:30pm Ryan Bingham
Saturday:
12:00pm Daniel Johnston
1:00pm Black and White Years
1:00pm Langhorne Slim
2:00pm The Old 97s
3:00pm MGMT
3:00pm The Fratellis
3:30pm Spiritualized
4:00pm Mason Jennings
4:00pm The Drive-By Truckers
4:00pm Back Door Slam
4:45pm American Bang
5:00pm Yonder Mountain String Band
6:15pm Electric Touch
Sunday:
1:00pm AA Bondy
1:30pm Buck Howdy & BB
1:45pm Abigail Washburn
2:00pm Okkervil River
3:00pm The Heartless Bastards
3:15pm The Kills
3:30pm Blues Traveller
4:00pm Mike Farris
4:00pm Flyleaf
4:00pm Nicole Atkins
5:00pm South Austin Jug Band
5:15pm Kevin Fowler
5:30pm Colour Revolt
6:00pm Xavier Rudd
6:00pm Neko Case
6:00pm Against Me!
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 14, 2008
Win a pair of ACL passes - your final chance
UPDATE: Another week, three new words. We’ve dropped this week’s code words into our 10 most recent A-List galleries. Even if you entered last week you are eligible to enter again with the new code words. This is your last chance to enter.
Our ACL scavenger hunt is back … and one lucky winner will walk away with a pair of three-day passes to the festival.
The contest runs for three weeks, beginning Monday, Sept. 1, and continuing through Sunday, Sept. 21. Each week, look through the 10 most recent A-List photo galleries at austin360.com/alist to find the three hidden code words. Once you’ve got them all, shoot an e-mail to austin360contests@statesman.com.
You can enter once each week, giving you three chances to win. We’ll announce our winner Monday, Sept. 22.
To get started, click here. Or, to read the complete contest rules, click here.
Good luck!
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 12, 2008
Unofficial ACL after party with the Cool Kids
- The A-List: The Cool Kids at Emo’s
In case you missed the Cool Kids when they were at Emo’s a couple weeks back, RollingStone.com is hosting a fly ACL after show on Friday night of the fest featuring the Kids alongside local indie pop heavies Voxtrot and Belaire. RSVP here.
(Photo by John Pesina FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 11, 2008
ACL Fest: Meet the bands - Sybris
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat, will it cramp your onstage style?
Sybris: We’ve been practicing in all black on with sun lamps turned to 11 at a bikram yoga studio so I don’t believe we’ll have to worry about the heat. Plus it’s cool to die on stage, right?
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
Unfortunately we’ll only be there Sunday so that narrows it down a bit. Definitely like to see Octupus Project, The Kills, Stars, Okkervil River, Colour Revolt, The Racontuers, Tegan and Sara, and Gnarls Barkley but there are some conflicts so…
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
People still pay for music? The last music I bought was a vinyl comp “Red Wave - 4 Underground Bands from the USSR”. It’s from 1986 and I bought it because the album is covered with pictures of the bands in ‘Say Anything’ style duds with behind the red curtain hair styles. The music isn’t too bad though.
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
Water and a sense of humor.
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
The Paper Chase, Explosions in the Sky and Whitman. Great bands.
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
I know I’ll get a lot of crap for this but I’ll say currently Jenna Fischer from “The Office.” Embarrassing.
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
Duran Duran’s “The Chauffeur” or Berlin’s “Riding on the Metro.”
What’s the one thing you want to make sure to do before leaving Austin?
Eat at Franny’s and go swimming at Barton’s Springs.
(Photo courtesy of myspace.com/sybris)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL Fest: Meet the bands - Stars
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat, will it cramp your onstage style?
Stars: I will refrigerate myself for several weeks before the show. I love the austin heat. It makes me feel thin.
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
OKKERVIL RIVER!!!! Hot Chip, David Byrne, Tegan and Sara, ROKY ERICKSON!!!! SPIRITUALIZED!!!!!
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
Captain- “This is hazelville.” I pay full price all the time!
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
Weed.
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Weed.
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Ben Gibbard.
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
“Video Killed the Radio Star”
What’s the one thing you want to make sure to do before leaving Austin?
Swim in Barton Springs with my friend Nick.
(Photo by Brian K. Diggs AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL Fest: Meet the bands - Bavu Blakes
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat, will it cramp your onstage style?
Bavu Blakes: Nope, I’ve been exercising and hydrating all summer. Let’s do this!
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
Gnarls Barkley, John Fogerty, White Denim and Katy Perry (she’s a surprise guest in my set!)
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
Choklate, “Choklate”.
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
Cocaine and strippers, mainly.
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Me… then UGK and Willie.
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Keri Hilson.
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
Bon Jovi, “Dead or Alive”.
What’s the one thing everyone should do before leaving Austin?
Slap a celebrity and YouTube it.
(Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 9, 2008
ACL passes on sale for $135!
Wednesday is Students Day for ACL Fest, with three day passes going on sale at reduced rates from 10am to 2pm at two locations: WaMu Financial Center at 24th and Guadalupe Streets and WaMu Financial Center at Hancock Center - 41st and Red River. $170 passes, which have been sold out for a few weeks, will cost $135 for those with a valid student ID.
Sales are cash only, with a limit of two per person. The allotment could sell out before 2 pm.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Upcoming ACL tapings: Foo, Badu, Manu & Duffy
Calling the 34th season of “Austin City Limits” the best one yet, producer Terry Lickona announced Tuesday a furious taping schedule during ACL Fest, including Erykah Badu, Manu Chao, Gnarls Barkley, Swell Season and the Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl and company will tape the day after their headlining set Sunday Sept. 28.
Down the road, Duffy and Nick Lowe will tape episodes in October. The ACL hotline number is 475-9077.
The 34th season kicks off on PBS Oct. 4 with R.E.M., who recorded an episode during SXSW.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Zilker Park soccer fields (aka the ACL fest site) to close for improvements for six months in 2009
Thanks in large part to a $2.5 million donation from C3 Presents, producers of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, the 42 acres of Zilker Park known as the soccer fields will be closed for about six months in 2009 while it is leveled, an irrigation sprinkler system installed and the park re-sodded, the Austin Parks Foundation announced today. This year’s festival is Sept. 26-28 at the park.
Although acting Parks and Recreation Department director Stuart Strong said most of the primary work would be done between January and March of 2009, the new grass will need a few months in the spring to take root.
“We’re going to put up the fence for the Trail of Lights and leave it up while the work is being done,” Strong said. “Immediately after the Trail of Lights is over, we’ll begin work.”
This money is over and above the 8.25 percent of ticket sales per year C3 donates to the Austin Parks Foundation every year, which breaks down to about one dollar per ticket.
Parks Foundation executive director Charlie McCabe said the leveling, irrigation and resodding project was already in the works, but it was planned to extend over a number of years.
“C3 proposed that the Parks Department do all of this work at once using Parks Department money and C3 will pay it back over a period of years,” Parks Foundation executive director. “This compressed the improvement cycle from a period of years to a period of months.”
In 2006, Austin-based C3 Presents signed a five-year contract with the City of Chicago to produce Lollapalooza in Grant Park, a deal which called for for C3 to donate $1 million a year to the Chicago Parkways Foundation.
Strong said that plans are in the works to provide new spaces for the events that take place at Zilker during the first half of the year.
(Photo by Larry Kolvoord AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 8, 2008
CD review: Okkervil River rolling
While recording “The Stage Names,” which Harp magazine named the best album of 2007, Austin-based Okkervil River was moved by a simple mantra: Be generous. Give the fans more of everything. The lyrics were the easy part, as prolific frontman Will Sheff has become something of an Oscar Wilde of the Pitchfork set, but the band would also give their fans more instrumentation, more musical ideas, more styles to latch on to.
The generosity continues with “The Stand Ins,” in stores today, which is built on songs written for “The Stage Names.” The original plan was to record a double disc, but humility prevailed.
“It just seemed too much,” Sheff says from Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lives when not touring or visiting his bandmates in Austin. He has nine more phone interviews after mine, so the time limit is 10 minutes, and Sheff, 32, spends most of it talking about just how crucial the upcoming presidential election is. But he does eventually address the double CD idea and how the more ridiculous it seemed, the more it appealed to him. Half of the 16 songs Sheff brought to the band and producer Brian Beattie in late 2006 seemed to be about the other half; why not put them together? “But eventually we decided it was better to concentrate on two short sets than to put out this big, bloated thing,” Sheff says.
Unlike the 1991 “Use Your Illusion” project — two single discs released the same day by Guns N’ Roses — Okkervil put a year between “Stage Names” and “Stand Ins.” But spiritually they’re a double CD, with both discs loosely themed on the effects of fame achieved and denied.
If you place the album cover of the new one under last year’s, the drawings fit together. Also, the credits and “thanks to” pages are almost identical. Both CD booklets isolate snippets of “Okkervil River,” the book by Russian writer Tatyana Tolstaya that gave the band its unwieldy name 10 years ago.
But where “Stage Names” was an instant delight, shattering the “lit rock” tag with big guitar riffs and a touch of mascara, “The Stand Ins” is a more difficult record. After the joyful opener “Lost Coastlines,” featuring a duet with Sheff and recently departed Jonathan (Shearwater) Meiburg, it seemed somewhat dense and dreary on first listen.
The albums you love the most, that stand up over time: Doesn’t it seem that those are the records you didn’t like much on the first couple of listens? I’m thinking about Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” and “Get Happy!” by Elvis Costello and the Attractions and everything by the Velvet Underground. We want to be entertained, not challenged, but hang in there and you just may have a friend for life.
So although I was initially disappointed by “The Stand Ins,” I wasn’t too worried that Austin’s gift to the indie rock world had shoved out a dud. Out of respect for “The Stage Names” and 2005’s “Black Sheep Boy,” the album that put this River on the map, I played “Stand Ins” about every two or three days. I quickly came around on “Starry Stairs,” the companion to last year’s “Savannah Smiles,” told from the point of view of the suicidal porn star Shannon “Savannah” Wilsey. And sly rocker “Pop Lie” soon proved to be this year’s “Our Life Is a Movie or Maybe.” But most of the other songs sounded too long. Of the painfully slow “Blue Tulip,” I wrote in a notepad that it was “a cattleguard for further listening.”
Then one morning I woke up with a melody on my mind, one I knew was from a record I’d been listening to, but which one? It sounded vaguely like a Will Sheff song, so I put on “Stand Ins” and found the unshakeable ditty was “On Tour With Zykos,” a song I hadn’t thought much of before. After “Zykos” played, I listened to the whole album, and I know it’s a cliche, but I “got” it. The complicated succession of musical tones all made sense, as if Sheff (like Robert Pollard from Guided By Voices) possesses this magical gift to pull melodies out of his pockets like candies for begging children.
“The kids all waited to meet the man in bright green who had dreamed up the dream that they wrecked their hearts upon,” Sheff sings in “Pop Lie,” continuing, “He’s the liar who lied in his pop songs, and you’re lying when you’re singing along.” The song is clearly not autobiographical.
Has any other Austin band created such an extremely high level of recorded music in such a short time?
No.
“The Stage Names” and “The Stand Ins,” tributaries that meet at a larger body, are the local scene’s “Exile On Main Street” (another classic I didn’t like much at first). There’s just so much in those records. Be generous, indeed.
As “The Stage Names” ended with “John Allyn Smith Sails,” a last look at life from a bridge through the eyes of poet John Berryman, “The Stand Ins” closes with another tragically misunderstood figure whose promise turns to depression and then death. “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel 1979” is based on little-known ’70s rocker Jobriath (real name Campbell). The year 1979 was the midpoint between when Jobriath was dropped by Elektra after dismal LP sales and when he succumbed to AIDS.
“Bruce Wayne Campbell” is the most difficult song on a difficult album, a weary tale of a sad, proud man who never had everything he was told he’d get, yet still felt as if he lost it all.
Sheff’s voice breaks under the weight. The air becomes uncomfortable. But as the song goes on, there’s something happening musically; a line of sweet nostalgia inspires a happy rhythm. A string section, stray horns, galloping drums and carnival steel guitars converge in a gorgeous blast of dignity. It’s not “Sloop John B,” but it’s all right.
That’s something good about splitting a double CD: two endings.
ACL Fest: Okkervil River will play the fest, Sunday, 5:30 p.m., AT&T Blue Room stage.
(Photo by Steve Gullick JAGJAGUWAR)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival, Reviews
5 ways to get your ACL groove on
The Austin City Limits Music Festival can seem overwhelmingly when you’re staring at the schedule. Here are five ways to make sense of the offerings, depending on how you want to have fun.
All the Big Names
Do you want to see you saw the most famous acts at ACL? Be warned: They’re often playing at the same time.
- 1. David Byrne (Friday, 6:30 p.m., AT&T stage)
- Photos: The rest
Make It Mellow
Singer-songwriters are a staple of the Austin vibe.
- 1. Sunny Sweeny (Friday, 2:30 p.m., BMI stage)
- Photos: The rest
All She Wants To Do is Dance
“Funky” is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about ACL (unless you mean the smell of 65,000 people after three says in the sun) but here are five acts that will make you shake it like a salt shaker.
- 1. N.E.R.D. (Friday, 6:30 p.m., AMD stage)
- Photos: The rest
ATX in the House
All Austin bands all, the time.
- 1. Asleep at the Wheel (Friday, 12:30 p.m., AMD stage)
- Photos: The rest
Gimmie Indie Rock!
What the kids who love KVRX and the Mohawk will be watching.
- 1.Yeasayer (Friday, 1:30 p.m., Dell stage)
- Photos: The rest
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 4, 2008
ACL Fest: Meet the bands - Nakia and his Southern Cousins
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat, will it cramp your onstage style?
Nakia: Well, to be honest with you I sweat a lot on stage. Hot or cold. Inside or outside. Rain or shine…I’ll be sweating. So not much else to do but what I always do…Drink LOTS of water!
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
In no particular order: Beck, Elizabeth Wills, David Byrne, Iron & Wine, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, and more than I can probably name right now.
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
You mean actual CD? From Waterloo? Not iTunes? Hmmm… “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” by Joe Cocker - Amazing record.
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
That’s simple… Radio.
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Not trying to sound too nostalgic here, but probably the “Austin City Limits” series on PBS. I grew up watching that in Alabama and so in my mind - as a kid - that was Texas music.
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
You’re naughty! I am SUCH A FANBOY and have WAY TOO MANY to name, but I wouldn’t dare spill my guts to you!
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
“Baby I’m A Star” by Prince. That song is filled with so much raw energy and emotion and it just really moves me.
What’s the one thing everyone should do before leaving Austin?
You mean besides see Nakia & His Southern Cousins live? (We play with the South Austin Jug Band at Momo’s the Thursday before ACL.) Oh… Well… I usually always take out-of-towners straight to Threadgill’s and throw down on some hot, fresh rolls. Seriously? Have you had those? They are like crack made of yeast and flour doughy goodness. Oh I need a fix now!
(Photo by Amanda Klauss)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
September 2, 2008
Big State Festival not happening in '08
Apparently, C3 Presents couldn’t get Rodeohead. In a brief email from publicists Fresh & Clean, C3 has finally announced that they’re throwing in the towel on this year’s Big State Festival, the country music event which had been planned for the Dallas suburb of Frisco. C3’s Charlie Walker cited “a lack of top tier talent” as the reason the fest isn’t happening this year. I’d say a lack of available top tier talent is a problem with the country music industry as a whole.
Last year’s inaugural Big State, which hoped to be a country music answer to C3’s popular Austin City Limits Music Festival, took place over a weekend in College Station, with a cast of high-paid headliners, including Tim McGraw, Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson. Walkup ticket sales to the two-day event were no doubt hindered by depression following Texas A&M’s drubbing at the hands of Texas Tech in Lubbock on the first day. Nothing kills a buzz like 35-7.
Earlier this year, C3 bailed on plans to produce a big festival in Vineland, New Jersey when a competing fest snagged Radiohead as headliner. C3 has given up entirely on Vineland, but it’s not known whether Big State will return next year.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL Fest: Meet the bands - South Austin Jug Band
We sent out questions via e-mail to all the acts playing ACL this year (Robert Plant, perhaps your answers are stuck in our spam filter). Here, James Hyland of South Austin Jug Band shares his thoughts:
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat, will it cramp your onstage style?
James Hyland: Tour the Northwest… it feels GREAT!
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
Beck.
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
Lyle Lovett, “The Road to Ensenada”
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Willie Nelson
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
Can you say “ganja” online?
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Randy Marsh and Sally Bretton
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
“Hot for Teacher”
What’s the one thing everyone should do before leaving Austin?
Spend a night with the South Austin Jug Band.
Before ACL on Sept. 28, South Austin Jug Band is scheduled to play Sept. 12 at the Parish.
(Photo by Tammy Perez FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL Fest: Meet the bands - Elizabeth Wills
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat, will it cramp your onstage style?
Elizabeth Wills: I will have plenty o’ h2o on hand. It won’t cramp our style at all. I grew up in texas and I am no heat sissy. And it doesn’t hurt that we are playing in the morning.
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
Neko Case, Patty Griffin, Allison Krauss, David Byrne and pretty much anyone else i can get to in time to see. The line up is stellar.. as usual!
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
Joni Mitchell’s latest, ‘Shine.’
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
My feather pillow. It fits in a tiny bag and I can even take it with me when I fly!
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Amazing songwriting and Willie Nelson.
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Yes, willing, but not able.
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
Anything by Annie Lennox.
What’s the one thing you want to make sure to do before leaving Austin?
Turn off the stove.
(Photo courtesy of myspace.com/elizabethwillsmusic.)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL Fest: Meet the bands - Nicole Atkins
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat, will it cramp your onstage style?
Nicole Atkins: I’m trying to wear less taffeta onstage. trying to find a good summer dress with some armpit ventilation.
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
I’m playing on Sunday so I’m looking forward to seeing Neko Case, the Raconteurs, and Band of Horses. I wish I was gonna be there on the first day for David Byrne. Shucks!
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
The Parlor Mob “And You Were a Crow,” the best rock ‘n’ roll cd that’s come out from a band that’s my age.
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
Headphones and a good book. A pillow too!
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Cotton Mather!!!!
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
I was really into Jack Nicholson during his “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” days.
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
“Echoes” from Pink Floyd.
What’s the one thing you want to make sure to do before leaving Austin?
See a thousand faces and rock them all! Ha ha!
(Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
August 29, 2008
Review: Alejandro Escovedo, Ian McLagan, (the Reivers?) at Antone's
Thursday’s benefit for the Austin Child Guidance Center was an all-star event with bite-sized sets. With most of the Antone’s floor devoted to silent auctions, VIP sponsor tables, and — what? — folding chairs, the music was the main event but had stiff competition. (Happily for the bands, the first round of auctioneering saw a stack of signed Ian McLagan records outperform, on a bid-versus-retail-price basis, a 50” plasma TV and a bike presented by a beauty queen.)
After quick sets from the Reivers — hinting at a new album and, if John Croslin was to be believed, another new name — and Ian McLagan — whose drummer Don Harvey organized the event — came one whose briefness made sense, coming as it did between somewhat more demanding gigs: playing the Democratic National Convention and opening for Bruce Springsteen.
Alejandro Escovedo may have needed some rest recently, but he was anything but exhausted here, ripping through a set heavy on rockers from his latest record. Slowing down only for “Sister Lost Soul” and to repeatedly thank the Child Guidance Center for the work they do, he began with “Always a Friend” and was soon worked up enough to have to ditch his black-and-blue iridescent suit jacket. Leading a four-piece, strings-free band, he worked the crowd up with “Chelsea Hotel ‘78” and “Real as an Animal” before zipping off the stage and disappearing — heading home, one guesses, to carefully pack his red leather shoes for a Saturday show in Milwaukee with the Boss.
Click here to view photos from the show.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival, In The Clubs, Reviews
August 28, 2008
Iron and Wine at 'Austin City Limits'
Iron and Wine’s music rewards sitting down, which makes it perfect for an “Austin City Limits” taping. Even when band leader, sole constant and Dripping Springs resident Sam Beam’s earliest acoustic reveries are given full-band rearrangements, the songs remain chilled out even as they gain steam.
Looking in a sweater and jacket like a hippieish political science professor, with his sister Sara on backing vocals and a crack band that could move from loping chug reminiscent of ’70s German “Krautrock” to jam band choogle reminiscent of, well, Phish, Beam moved around his career with ease Wednesday night.
He and Sara opened with a crisp, acoustic “Each Coming Night,” an early song that moved like spun gold in the crowded studio. Augmented at various points with pedal steel, electric guitars, precussion, bass, keys and all of the above, the set built in intensity.
Fan-favorite “Woman King” was a juggernaut, heaps of small sounds rubbing against a dramatic groove like gravel flying off a truck on a dirt road. “King” rolled into “Wolves” for the set’s jammiest phase; all that was missing was a hacky sack and some guy juggling Devil’s sticks.
“Upward Over the Mountain,” lo-fi and heart-rendingly spare in its original form was given an almost jaunty makeover that shouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did. Beam returned to his acoustic duo for “Trapeze Swinger” his most Dylanish ramble. A three song encore was an unexpected bonus, but everyone was already charmed into submission.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival, Reviews
August 13, 2008
ACL aftershows!
The Austin City Limits Music Festival is Sept. 26-28 at Zilker Park. And, as always, plenty of the acts will play after-shows (or in the cases of Manu Chao and David Byrne, before-shows). Here’s the list (tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday through C3 Presents at Frontgate Tickets):
Stubb’s BBQ (801 Red River St.):
Sept. 25
Manu Chao
Doors 7p.m., show 8 p.m.
$35
Sept. 26
Gnarls Barkley and CSS
Doors 8 p.m., show 9 p.m.
$27 adv/ $30 dos
Sept. 27
Mike Farris gospel brunch
Doors at 11 a.m., Brunch at 11:30 a.m.
Call 512-480-8341 to make reservations and purchase tickets.
$30, $40
Sept. 27 (outdoors)
Butthole Surfers w/ The Kills
Doors 7 p.m., Show 8 p.m.
$30 adv/ $33 dos
Sept. 27 (indoors)
Mugison
Doors 11:30pm, show midnight
$15
Sept. 28
The Black Keys w/ The Black Angels & Jessica Lea Mayfield
Doors at 7 p.m., Show at 7:30 p.m.
$25 adv/ $25 dos
La Zona Rosa (612 West Fourth St.)
Sept. 26
G. Love & Special Sauce
Doors at 10 p.m., Show at 11 p.m.
$25 adv/ $27 dos
Sept. 28
Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis and M. Ward
Doors at 9 p.m., Show at 10 p.m.
$30
The Parish (214 E. Sixth St.)
Sept. 26
Jamie Lidell w/ Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears
Doors at 10 p.m., show at 11 p.m.
$20
The Paramount Theatre (713 Congress Ave.)
Sept. 25
David Byrne - Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno
Doors at 7:30 p.m., Show 8:30 p.m.
$50, $55
Sept. 27
The Swell Season w/ Bill Callahan
Doors at 7:30 p.m., Show at 8:30 p.m.
$35, $42.50
Emo’s (603 Red River St.)
Sept. 26 (outdoors)
Drive By Truckers w/ Shooter Jennings
Doors at 10 p.m., Show at 10:30 p.m.
$20 adv/ $22 dos
Sept. 26 (indoors)
Heartless Bastards w/ Dead Confederate & Wax Fang
Doors at 10 p.m., Show at 10:30 p.m.
$15 adv/ $17 dos
Sept. 26, 27 (Emos Lounge)
Car Stereo Wars
Doors at 10 p.m., show 11 p.m.
$8 adv/ $10 dos
Sept. 27 (outdoors)
Okkervil River w/ Man Man & Crooked Fingers
Doors at 10 p.m., show 10:30 p.m.
$15 adv/ $17 dos
Sept. 27 (indoors)
Jose Gonzalez w/ Neva Dinova & McCarthy Trenching
Doors at 10 p.m., show 10:30 p.m.
$18 adv/ $20 dos
Antone’s (213 West 5th St.)
Sept. 27
Jakob Dylan and The Gold Mountain Rebels w/ Back Door Slam
Doors at 10 p.m., Show at 10:30 p.m.
$23 adv, $25 dos
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
August 11, 2008
ACL Fest: Meet the Bands - The Band of Heathens
As this summer of blistering heat drags along with no end in sight, the September sweatfest that is ACL Fest creeps ever closer. Once again, we’ve sent out an email questionaire to artists playing the festival to help you get to know them a little better.
Artist:The Band of Heathens
Hometown: Austin
MySpace: myspace.com/thebandofheathens
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat? Will it cramp your onstage style?
Ed Jurdi, Heathen: We’ve already cramped our onstage style with the finest out of style clothing and accessories available so we’ve rendered the heat issue null and void. Although, we’ve issued a band edict to no longer wear flip-flops on stage, but I think we’ve already had several cases of mutiny on the bunion.
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, The Raconteurs, Iron and Wine, Beck, Patty Griffin, Robert Earl Keen, Gillian Welch, M Ward, Dan Dyer, Drive By Truckers, Galactic and too many others to list.
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
Al Green- “Lay it Down” (On iTunes) Jerrry Garcia- “Garcia” (At Waterloo, an actual CD)
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
Little bags of goodies. They have lots of Airborne and Emergen-C in them.
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, T-Bone Walker.
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Princess Grace of Monaco was pretty spectacular even when she was just plain old Grace Kelly
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
The Entire Medley on side two of “Abbey Road,” starting with “Sun King” and ending with “The End.” That’s really just one great (expletive) song.
What’s the one thing everyone should do before leaving Austin?
Go see Heybale at The Continental (on the last Sunday of the month if possible) it will blow your mind. Everytime.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
ACL Fest: Meet the Bands - Mike Farris
Artist: Mike Farris
Hometown: Nashville, TN
MySpace: myspace.com/mikefarrismusic
Music Source: How do you plan to cope with Austin summer heat? Will it cramp your onstage style?
Mike Farris: The hotter the better! Actually, it’ll be nice weather for us Nashvillians. We are having unbearable humidity right now.
What other bands are you looking forward to seeing at the festival?
Beck, Allison and Robert, Raconteurs, Black Keys, Drive By Truckers, Spiritualized, Rodney Crowell, Foo Fighters
What’s the last CD you paid full price for?
Lee Dorsey “Freedom For The Funk”
What’s the one thing you can’t live without on your tour bus/van?
My “Nacho Libre” action figure
When you think of Texas music, who or what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Well, Stevie Ray, Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon first, because I was fortunate enough to work with Tommy and Chris for a while and we continue to be friends and I always look forward to seeing them when I’m around. The music kiosk in the airport. I was blown away by that the first time I saw it, because it’s huge and they sell Texas artists EXCLUSIVELY! Not many other states could bolster so many great records. Texas and New Orleans are the last hold outs for real, true regional music in America, but because of the state of radio and music in general, I feel like all that’s about to change. Also, you guys have one of THE best radio stations in America in KGSR. What makes it so special is that the music they play fits the feel of Texas. It’s what I want to hear when I’m in town.
Do you have a celebrity crush you’re willing to reveal?
Jimmy Vaughan’s hair. Does that count?
What’s the one song you’ve always wanted to cover but never have?
“You’re The Best That Ever Happened To Me” by Gladys and the Pips
What’s the one thing everyone should do before leaving Austin?
Stay
(Photo courtesy of myspace.com/mikefarrismusic.)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
August 5, 2008
Byrne to play Paramount before ACL
David Byrne will play the Paramount Theatre on Thursday, Sept. 25, the day before his set at ACL Fest. The show has not been officially announced and is not shown on the Paramount website, but Billboard revealed the date when listing the upcoming North American tour. ACL promoters C3 Presents usually hold off announcing the club and theater shows until they’ve just about sold out their sweatfest, hoping, in this case, diehard Talking Heads fans will spring for $80 single day tickets before they realize they could see their man in an air conditioned theater for less.
Byrne’s new collaboration with Brian Eno, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today,” will be released Aug. 18.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
July 25, 2008
ACL Fest three-day passes sell out
Single day tickets for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are still available, but C3 Presents announced today that ACL Fest $170 three-day passes have sold out. Single day tix are $80.
Headlined by Foo Fighters, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Beck, Manu Chao and David Byrne, the fest takes place September 26-28 in Zilker Park.
Travel packages, which combine hotel rooms with a 3-day pass, are still available through the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
July 16, 2008
ACL aftershows
An alert reader has found some ACL Fest aftershows on the Internet:
* Drive-By Truckers w/ Shooter Jennings Friday Sept. 26 Emo’s
* Jamie Lidell w/ Black Joe Lewis Sept. 26 at the Parish
* Black Keys and Black Angels are playing Stubb’s Sunday Sept. 28
*Conor Obserst, Jenny Lewis, M. Ward Sept. 28 at La Zona Rosa
Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. at Frontgate Tickets outlets and online at www.frontgatetickets.com.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
July 7, 2008
Beck's 'Guilt' found mostly in apparent apathy
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Beck
‘Modern Guilt’
(Interscope)
About 10 years ago, Beck seemed to be the voice of the past, present and future all at once, the voice of a generation that couldn’t be bothered to have one.
Today? Not so much.
Back then, Beck was our most winning loser, the sleepy-eyed Los Angeles man-child who could make the most ironic musical gestures sound frank (or at least confuse the two to the point where we didn’t care). Whose muse, fearing no genre or form, seemed to go anywhere. Who made it seem like music that could go anywhere was the only music that mattered.
These days, Beck sounds sluggish where he once sounded vibrant, subdued where he once sounded energized. He enlisted producer du jour Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley and a bunch more) to helm “Modern Guilt,” but Danger seems like more of an enabler, letting Beck mosey around even when the beat picks up. The album clocks in at a mere 33 minutes (and consider a point added for that), but it drags anyway. “I’m tired of people who just want to be pleased,” he sings on “Volcano,” but it comes off sounding more like “I’m tired of people,” which is not a good sign for a guy who once sounded energized by everything around him.
He even gets a little snippy with us. “Walls” chastises his fellow Americans: “You treat distraction like it’s a religion,” he sings. From whom do you think we learned that trick, buddy?
Much of “Modern Guilt” goes for a watery psychedelia but ends up soggy. “Gamma Ray” evokes loosey-goosey garage pop but ends up loggy. “Chemtrails” looks at the L.A. sky’s pollution-tipped beauty but just seems smoggy. There’s a haze here he just can’t shake.
See, around 2000, he and his girlfriend, designer Leigh Limon, split up; nothing has been quite the same since. His 2002 album, “Sea Change,” is one of the decade’s most emotionally exhausting break-up records, an almost-comatose lament that’s perfect by which to Google old flames. He got religion, got married within his childhood faith (he and his wife, actress Marissa Ribisi, are second-generation Scientologists) and had a couple of kids. He even made a few more records, “Guero” in ‘05 and “The Information” in ‘06. They were OK. Good, actually. Well, “Guero” was, wasn’t it? It seems forever ago, but it wasn’t even four years ago.
Maybe it’s because the old stuff still sounds more alive, not tired of people but engaged by them.
In short, he became an adult. And “Modern Guilt” aims for an adult depth of feeling, but being an adult doesn’t mean giving up on the world. If anything, it should make you redouble your efforts to make it what you want it to be.
Which makes you wonder: Does the guilt come from no longer sounding modern?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival, Reviews
July 1, 2008
ACL Fest Sound and Jury Contest open for business
Your band looking for a way to play the Austin City Limits Music Festival? The terribly punny ACL Fest Sound and the Jury Competition is now accepting applications.
After a two and a half month bracket competition that’s equal parts juried talent search and online popularity contest, five finalists will be selected to travel to Austin for a musical standoff at Antone’s on September 24. Each finalist will receive tickets to the ACL fest and a travel stipend and a feature on DellLounge.com. The grand prize winner will also receive hotel accomodations, a Dell Studio 15 laptop, artist passes for the festival and a 45 minute spot on the Dell Stage on day one of the fest. Sure, 11:45 a.m. on the first day of the festival isn’t a great time slot, but for an up-and-comer looking for the proverbial foot in the door to the rapidly expanding megafest, it’s not a bad gig.
Application deadline is August 22, 2008.
(Pictured, Brandon Kinder, lead singer of the Abilene, Texas band Homer Hiccolm and the Rocketboys who won last year’s competition. Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
June 26, 2008
Prettyman leads Lady Bird Lake cleanup
“Madly” from the new LP “Hello…x”
California singer songwriter Tristan Prettyman brings the 2nd annual Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project to the shores of Lady Bird Lake Saturday July 12. Pitch in to help clean up from 10 a.m. to noon and you’ll be treated to a free concert by the former model/ surfer at Opal Divine’s Penn Field location (3601 S. Congress Ave.) at 7 p.m.
Prettyman returns to Austin in September to play the ACL Fest.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
June 6, 2008
ACL 2008, according to you
- ACL Fest Hot or not, cast your votes!
- Daily ACL schedules: Friday | Saturday | Sunday
- Full ACL 2008 lineup | More ACL
When the schedule grids for the Austin City Limits Music Festival were released last week, we decided to take the pulse of fans in a fun, if completely unscientific, way. Our version of a “hot or not” poll features 105 of the bands scheduled (or in the case of Duffy, previously scheduled) to play the festival Sept. 26-28 at Zilker Park. In place of “hot or not,” voters can click on “Can’t wait” or “I’ll pass” for each act. (We’ve since removed Duffy, who was around a 40 percent positive rating before she canceled.)
The main thing we learned: People online are a tough crowd. Few acts made it past the 50 percent mark in the “can’t wait” category.
Trends as of press time:
You love:
Beck. 70 percent ‘can’t wait’ to see him.
Next best:
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and the Raconteurs at 60/40 (perhaps showing no grudges against Jack White for last year’s White Stripes cancellation)
Highest rated local band:
South Austin Jug Band at 55 percent ‘can’t wait’
Stuck in the middle:
A bunch of bands are at 50/50, including headliners the Foo Fighters, John Fogerty, David Byrne, Iron & Wine, Erykah Badu, SXSW buzz band Vampire Weekend and Alejandro Escovedo.
Only 25 percent want to see:
CSS, which music writer Joe Gross says is just wrong.
Also just wrong:
A sampling of great acts below 50 percent in the ‘can’t wait’ category — Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (see a concert review on Page 10), Gogol Bordello, Patty Griffin, Manu Chau (stuck at 30 percent!), M. Ward, White Denim, the Swell Season (they’re Oscar winners!), Antibalas and the Jones Family Singers.
(Photo courtesy of myspace.com/beck)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
June 5, 2008
Duffy cAnCeLs
She’s been called this year’s Amy Winehouse and true to form, retro soul singer Duffy has apparently followed her SXSW whirlwind by canceling a date at the ACL Fest. Taylor’s number one Duffy fan Tom Ordon noticed that although the 23-year-old Welsh singer was on the ACL grid when it was released Tuesday, she was no longer listed a couple days later. An inquiry to promoter C3 Presents was answered with this email response: “Unfortunately due to touring conflicts, she has had to cancel a run of dates that included the ACL play.”
The Fratellis have been added to replace Duffy, which KGSR playfully acknowleged Friday morning by playing the Fratellis live version of “Mercy.”.
Maybe word got to Duffy that Austin in September is a bit like Hades in the springtime, when it sizzles. You may recall the singer remarked that she’d never experienced anything like the heat when she played SXSW in March.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
June 3, 2008
ACL grids are out
ACL Fest released the schedule grids for this year’s festival this morning.
The Mars Volta plays the 8:15 p.m. slot on the AMD stage while Manu Chao headlines in the 8:30 p.m. AT&T stage spot on Friday. On Saturday, Robert Plant and Allison Krauss hold down the 8:15 p.m. AMD stage slot while Beck headlines on the AT&T stage, and the Foo Fighters will close out the fest, headlining on the AT&T stage at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday.
We’ll continue to parse through various schedule conflicts throughout the day, and music critic Joe Gross will be hosting a live chat today at 2 p.m. to discuss the schedule. Tune in to join the conversation.
Daily schedules: Friday | Saturday | Sunday
More ACL
Permalink | Comments (31) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
June 2, 2008
Let's talk about ACL - join our live chat at 2 p.m. Tuesday
The day-by-day schedule for the Austin City Limits Music Festival will be out Tuesday morning. We’ll give you a few hours to digest and dissect, before our live chat with music writer Joe Gross at 2 p.m.
You can comment on the lineup, the schedule and pretty much all things ACL in our comments section below. Log on at 2 p.m. to join the live discussion.
This year’s festival is Sept. 26-28 at Zilker Park.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival, Music, Reviews
ACL single-day tix on sale Tuesday
The Austin City Limits Music Festival schedule grid, for Sept. 26-28, will be available online Tuesday morning. Single day tickets will go on sale at the same time for $80. Three-day passes are still available for $170, which includes service charges.
There have been additions to the lineup, including Old ’97s, Blues Traveler, Adele, Rodney Crowell, Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet featuring Bela Fleck, Dan Dyer, the Black & White Years, Mugison, and the M’s. C3 Presents is also hosting Les Freres Guisse from Dakar, Senegal. The group is sponsored by a Senegalese non-profit which prepares African youth to become global citizens.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
May 7, 2008
ACL grid update: New release date is June 3
The release of daily grids for the daily Austin City Limits music schedule has been pushed from May 13 to June 3, according to Austin-based C3 Presents. Stay tuned …
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
May 5, 2008
Update: ACL Fest grid, single-day tickets coming June 3
Still debating whether or not to shell out $170 for a 3-day pass for ACL Fest 2008? If you’re on the fence about the overall lineup, the full festival schedule will be released May 13 June 3, which is the same day that single-day tickets will go on sale. Of course, there’s a chance 3-day passes will be sold out at that point.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
April 15, 2008
More rock, less Dylan for this year's Zilker Park music orgy
- Photos: 2008 ACL Fest lineup
- Sound off: What do you think of this year’s lineup?
- The M.O.: What to look for at this year’s fest
- Full 2008 lineup
Let the blogging commence.
The 141-act Austin City Limits Music Festival lineup was released today, about three weeks earlier than last year. (The festival, however, is later in September — Sept. 26-28 — than last year.)
Instead of a somnolent, controversial set from last year’s closer Bob Dylan, high-octane alt-rock veterans Foo Fighters are likely to headline the coveted last slot on Sunday.
KGSR fans will look forward to singing along with the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss duo, as well as John Fogerty and Beck.
None of these acts has played ACL Fest before.
Along with Manu Chao, David Byrne, the Mars Volta and Gnarls Barkley, all the above plan to throw down at the seventh annual festival, which is scheduled to once again occupy Zilker Park for three days.
“Every year we try to keep it as eclectic as possible and true to what the TV show is all about,” ACL Fest producer Charles Attal said.
This means a titrated mix of big names (see above), Austin favorites (Drive-By Truckers, G. Love and Special Sauce), Austin-based acts (Patty Griffin, Alejandro Escovedo, White Denim, Asleep at the Wheel, the last of whom have played all seven ACL fests), hipster buzz acts (Vampire Weekend, Duffy, Man Man) and vets with new albums out (Spiritualized, Beck). Yes, the recently released 10th anniversary version of Beck’s “Odelay” means he fits into this last category. You are that old.
Fans shouldn’t expect too much high-wattage crossover with Lollapalooza, which Attal’s company C3 Presents also books. Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails and Kanye West are all slated to play the storied fest, which takes place Aug. 1-3 in Chicago’s Grant Park.
“They’re two totally different shows, and I’m pleased with how they separated themselves this year,” Attal said, referring to the routing issues that often dictate festival stops for bands. “Lollapalooza was born out of more of an alternative rock show. We try to stay true to that and to the spirit of the ACL show at Zilker.”
That said, the two have a fair amount of crossover about midlist. The Raconteurs are the biggest band playing both, but fans can also see sets at Zilker and Grant from such midlisters as Gnarls Barkley, blues mutants the Black Keys, G. Love, soul survivors Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and Austin darlings Okkervil River, among others. (Austin faves Wilco are playing Lollapalooza but not ACL.)
Then again, “the spirit of the TV show” means ACL Fest is traditionally packed with the sort of bands that could credibly walk over from the main stage to knock out a set on the TV show. Attal says some ACL Fest acts will tape episodes of the show, but plans have not yet been finalized.
Attal would not say how the day-by-day schedule will look but did offer hints here and there. David Byrne will likely draw on Talking Heads material for much of his set. The Mars Volta, famous for sets the lengths of HBO mini-series, will close out a stage one night, which will allow them to stretch out.
The hip-hop and R&B quotient feels a little more high-wattage this year. The aforementioned Gnarls Barkley just released a new album, and the new joint from R&B oddball (and Dallas native) Erykah Badu is garnering great notices. Other hip-hop acts include Austin rap titan Bavu Blakes and West Coast rap lifer Del the Funky Homosapien.
Attal also declined to say which bands would play the coveted ACL aftershows at Stubb’s and elsewhere, gigs that have become as much a part of the festival experience as the Zilker show itself and bolstered the ACL Fest’s status as an autumnal version of SXSW.
(Photos: Foo Fighters - ASSOCIATED PRESS, Beck - Autumn de Wilde, Erykah Badu - Brian K. Diggs AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Watch Tuesday’s Austin360.com Music Minute
Permalink | Comments (23) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
Full 2008 ACL lineup
- Interactive: Pick your favorite ACL acts
- Feature: : More rock, less Dylan for this year’s Zilker Park music orgy
- Full coverage
- Foo Fighters
- Spiritualized
- Colour Revolt
- Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
- Drive-By Truckers
- Five Times August
- Beck
- Ingrid Michaelson
- Langhorne Slim
- Manu Chao
- Stars
- Sybris
- John Fogerty
- Alejandro Escovedo
- Blues Traveler
- Old 97’s
- Adele
- Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet featuring Bela Fleck
- Rodney Crowell
- Dan Dyer
- The Black & White Years
- Mugison
- The M’s
- Les Freres Guisse
- Eli ‘Paper Boy’ Reed and the True Loves
- David Byrne
- Jose Gonzales
- Bavu Blakes and the Extra Plairs
- The Raconteurs
- CSS
- AA Bondy
- The Mars Volta
- Del the Funky Homosapien
- Christopher Denny
- Gnarls Barkley
- Man Man
- Mike Farris
- Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band
- Jamie Lidell
- The Lee Boys
- N.E.R.D
- MGMT
- South Austin Jug Band
- Erykah Badu
- What Made Milwaukee Famous
- American Bang
- Robert Earl Keen
- Jenny Lewis
- Massacoustics
- Patty Griffin
- M. Ward
- Belleville Outfit
- Tegan and Sara
- Asleep at the Wheel
- We Go to 11
- Iron and Wine
- Mason Jennings
- Band of Heathens
- G. Love and Special Sauce
- Heartless Bastards
- City and Colour
- Neko Case
- Antibalas
- Sunny Sweeney
- Band of Horses
- The Nachito Herrera All Stars
- Elizabeth Wills
- The Swell Season
- Shooter Jennings
- Automata
- Silversun Pickups
- Xavier Rudd
- Bonnie Bishop
- Gogol Bordello
- Yeasayer
- Ben Sollee
- Gillian Welch
- Octopus Project
- Ben Cylus
- Eli Young Band
- Joe Bonamassa
- The Concert Supremes
- The Black Keys
- The Kills
- River City Christionettes
- Against Me!
- White Denim
- Shields of Faith
- Jakob Dylan and the Gold
- Mountain Rebels
- Louis XIV
- The Jones Family Singers
- Okkervil River
- Delta Spirit
- Nakia and His Southern Cousins
- Galactic
- Mates of State
- Brotherly Luv
- Kevin Fowler
- Nicole Atkins and the Sea
- The Hensley Ensemble
- Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
- Electric Touch
- School of Rock
- Hot Chip
- Black Joe Lewis and the Honey Bears
- Jambo
- Vampire Weekend
- Back Door Slam
- Q Brothers
- Slightly Stoopid
- Tristan Prettyman
- Buck Howdy with BB
- The Strange Boys
- Uncle Rock
- Flyleaf
- Ryan Bingham
- Big Don
- Roky Erickson
- Scott Biram
- Mr. RAY
- Yonder Mountain String Band
- The Freddy Jones Band
- The Jimmies
Permalink | Comments (132) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
April 7, 2008
Guess the ACL performers
Deborah Cannon AMERICAN-STATESMAN
C3 Presents has released ACL Fest lineup clues in the form of this mash-up by Car Stereo (Wars). OK, I got Duffy right off the bat, and I hear some Joe Jackson in there. Austin360’s Deborah Sengupta Stith meanwhile has ID’d Gnarls Barkley, Jamie Lidell, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, N.E.R.D. and Antibalas. Our boy The M.O. heard some Hot Chip, Raconteurs and CSS in there, and Peter Mongillo and M.O. agree they hear an Okkervil River riff.
Other acts building consensus on the Internet include Silversun Pickups, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Neko Case, Man Man.
Who else do you hear?
Permalink | Comments (19) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
The Lollapalooza 2008 lineup is here.
Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Kanye West, Wilco, the Raconteurs, Love and Rockets (!?), Gnarls Barkley, Bloc Party, Black Keys, Flogging Molly, Explosions in the Sky, Lupe Fiasco and a whole mess more will be playing Aug. 1 to 3 at this year’s blowout in Grant Park in lovely downtown Chicago.
Like last year, it’s a mix of ’90s modern rock nostalgia (RATM, NIN, L&R), crossover hip-hop (Kanye, Lupe and Spank Rock way down in the bill), guitar explorers for 30-somethings (Explosions, Wilco, Stephen Malkmus) and folks who have albums to push (Black Keys, Raconteurs).
And Radiohead.
Not too shabby.
Here’s the full lineup. (The link for the poster has the whole shebang.)
The 2008 Austin City Limits Music festival line-up will be released next week. Expect a little crossover, but not much.
(File photo of Thom Yorke of Radiohead)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
March 24, 2008
Exclusive!!! ACL Fest poster!!! (It's a fake)
Imagine getting this in a mysterious e-mail on Easter Sunday, three weeks before the official ACL Fest lineup announcement. The person who sent it claimed to be an employee at C3 Presents, who saw it on a screen he was passing, so he e-mailed a copy to himself and, later, to Austin Music Source. We all got pretty excited, but then C3’s Charles Attal said it was a fake. What’s he gonna say? “Yep, you guys got the real poster? Might as well cancel that April 15 announcement.”
But after checking with some of the names on the poster, including Bruce Robison and Slaid Cleaves, it turns out the whole thing is a hoax. Neither Robison, billed as playing with brother Charlie, or Cleaves are booked for ACL.
But what a fake fest this jokester put together. Especially the superstar jam (it’s in small type) featuring Robert Plant, Thom Yorke, Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus. Sometimes you want to believe something so much, you look over the obvious inaccuracies. Like why would Raconteurs be so high on the bill and Feist, Al Green and John Fogerty be so low?
Tell us: What other signs are there that this poster is a fake?
Update: Turns out, as Eddi pointed out in our comments, that the “C3 employee” who e-mailed this to us got it from the fans on the ACL boards at austincitylimits.com. More details here.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival, Music
March 19, 2008
ACL lineup to be announced April 15
C3 Presents booker Charles Attal says the lineup for the 7th annual Austin City Limits Festival will be announced April 15, almost a month earlier than last year. Tickets will not go up then; they’re already selling at a top tier of $170 for all three days, Sept. 26- 28.
Let the unusually quiet rumor mill begin.
Got any hunches or inside info on who’ll be playing Zilker Park? Personally, I’ve got a feeling about Pearl Jam or Neil Young headlining this year. Radiohead, on the other hand, probably costs too much for a fest that has had no problem selling out and has already reached its top price. And please don’t start any Led Zeppelin rumors. That’s just not going to happen.
From the ranks of the latest SXSW, I can see the Cool Kids, Carbon/Silicon, Vampire Weekend, Santogold, the Heavy, Bon Ivor and Brothers & Sisters stepping up onto the next rung.
And I’m especially hoping Attal finally books the Campbell Brothers, the great sacred steel band that showed ACL perennial Robert Randolph the ropes, yet has never played in the state of Texas.
Permalink | Comments (32) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival
February 13, 2008
Radiohead, C3 and you.
So, here’s what we know:
Radiohead is coming to Houston and Dallas, but not Austin.
Chicago Sun-Times pop critic Jim DeRogatis broke the news this afternoon that the Chicago Park District board of commissioners is about to approve a five-year, $50-million deal allowing Austin-based C3 Presents and national venue managers SMG to manage Soldier Field.
Radiohead says on their site that a Chicago date is in the offing, but no word if they are headlining Lollapalooza (also a C3 product) or, say, playing Soldier Field.
Permalink | | Categories: ACL Festival
October 16, 2007
Ghostland on Conan tonight
Reminder - Stay up or set your DVRs. Austin’s Ghostland Observatory plays on Conan O’Brien’s show tonight. They’ll perform “Sad Sad City” according to O’Brien’s site.
“Late Night with Conan O’Brien” airs at 11:35 p.m. on NBC, KXAN Channel 36.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: ACL Festival
September 26, 2007
Roky to tape ACL set
After Roky Erickson’s triumphant return to performing with a three-song set at SXSW 2005, he was asked what he wanted to happen next. The psychedelic rock pioneer answered that he wanted to be on TV again, specifically “Austin City Limits.” Well, that’s about to become a reality. “ACL” producer Terry Lickona has booked an appearance by Erickson for early to mid-November, with the final date to be firmed up when a couple of special guests check their schedules for openings.
“It’ll be the last taping of the season, so it should be special,” said Lickona, who added that Roky sent word through his manager that he’s besides himself about the dream gig.
“I had read in the Statesman that Roky’s goal was to play ‘ACL’ and when I saw him at the Paramount (in July), that show gave me the confidence to book him,” Lickona said. Only problem was that the 33rd season, currently in production, didn’t have any openings. But then Erykah Badu’s album was delayed and she dropped out, making room for the Rok. Lickona said the Erickson program will air in January.
In other big “ACL” news, C3 Presents, which has exec-produced the show for five years (under its old CSE moniker the first four), has decided to not renew its contract after the end of this season (which begins airing Oct. 6 with Norah Jones.) “They’ve decided to concentrate on producing festivals,” Lickona said. C3 just signed a ten-year deal to license the “Austin City Limits” name for the annual festival at Zilker Park in September.
More on Roky Erickson
- Photos: Roky Erickson then and now
- Interactive: The essential Roky Erickson
- Video: Roky at the Hultsfred Festival in Sweden
- Under the influence of Roky Erickson
- The best tribute album ever made
- A psychedelic look back
- The Fall and Rise of Roky Erickson
- Rock 'n' roll comeback
- Roky Erickson's 60th birthday party
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: ACL Festival
It's never too early to think ACL 2008
If you’re an e-mail subscriber to the official Austin City Limits Music Festival site, you already know that early-bird tickets went on sale today for 2008’s incarnation. The general public might also be interested to know that next year’s festival dates are Sept. 26-28, according to the Web site.
So, not too early to buy tickets (if you’re one of the lucky ones), but way too early to complain about the lineup.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: ACL Festival
September 18, 2007
ACL taping: Bloc Party
Late Monday evening — only one day after the boys in Bloc Party performed in a Zilker Park heat index that skyrocketed above 110 degrees on the gi-normous AT&T stage during the ACL Music Festival — the South London post-punk band taped a set for the “Austin City Limits” television show’s 33rd season. (Read our review of the band’s festival set here.)
Hundreds of University of Texas students and other Austinites in-the-know were lined up around to block hoping to gain entrance to the show. Unfortunately the studio’s capacity could not admit even half of the Bloc Party fans, a group that appears to be growing with the release of the band’s progressive 2007 sophomore album, “A Weekend In The City.”
“I luuuuvvvv television,” said the band’s firestarter frontman Kele Okereke in his thick British accent after their first take, “Song For Clay.” The air-conditioned environs of the Austin City Limits soundstage made a perfect theater for the up-and-coming indie rock band that had asked for patience the day before during the heat of the afternoon because “we are from a cold, wet island … we’re not used to this (Texas sun).”
And Okereke’s love was reciprocated. Guitarist Russell Lissack, bassist Gordon Moakes, drummer Matt Tong and Okereke killed once they shook off the butterflies in their stomach, which came out as a couple of false starts on songs from their debut “Silent Alarm,” songs that the band has been playing almost every day for the past three years.
“Waiting For The 7.18” emerged as one of their strongest cuts from last year’s “A Weekend in the City”; the song highlighted Bloc Party’s unique ability to make danceable anthems from math-rock, 7/8 time signatures and Tong’s bloody-brilliant syncopated backbeats.
“This Modern Love” and “So Here We Are” transcended the recorded versions and became almost spiritual in their melancholy deconstruction of 21st century love. And by the time the band played their coup de grace, “Like Eating Glass,” the typically reserved studio audience was on its feet dancing to the ever jagged guitar crunch.
“Ever since I saw these guys during South by Southwest at Stubb’s a few years ago, I knew we had to get them in here,” said ACL producer Terry Lickona. “It took a little while, but we finally did it!”
Although the ACL television show wasn’t able to nab the video-shy Bob Dylan, other tapings over the weekend included Crowded House, Arcade Fire, Wilco and Regina Spektor. Lucinda Williams will tape a segment tonight. Good luck getting tickets as the ever-elusive radio station ticket-drop announcement was made last week.
Bloc Party’s set list
ACL taping, Monday, Sept. 17
“Song For Clay (Disappear Here)”
“Positive Tension”
“Hunting For Witches”
“Waiting For The 7.18”
“Banquet”
“This Modern Love”
“The Prayer”
“Uniform”
“So Here We Are”
“Like Eating Glass”
“Sunday”
“Helicopter”
Encore: “She’s Hearing Voices
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: ACL Festival
September 17, 2007
ACL after-show: the Black Angels
With Rodrigo y Gabriela unable to make their scheduled their ACL after show at Antone’s on Saturday night, it fell to Austin’s resident psychedelic rock collective the Black Angels to pick up the slack. Antone’s announced the “secret” line-up Friday afternoon, with the Athens, Ga.-based quintet Blue Flashing Light in the opening slot after a strong showing in the Sound and the Jury contest and recent Dallas transplants the Strange Boys the middle slot.
Singer Alex Maas kicked off the Angels’ acid trip of a set with a guttural scream and blast of his guitar sending the rest of the band spiraling down the sonic rabbit hole. The band’s live set is a faithful representation of the bass-heavy, slow burn found on their debut CD “Passover,” a sound made to be absorbed by the gyrating throng of a stadium-sized crowd. Saturday’s modest, festival-weary crowd was split between the dedicated fans packed in close to the stage and the curious onlookers drawn in from the street by the hypnotic drone of “Better Off Alone” and “Black Grease.”
Despite critical acclaim from extensive touring both in the United States and abroad, the Angels are still something of an oddity in their own back yard. In a town that abides every indie-rock fancy that streams out of the garage, Austin’s hipsters are equally confused and captivated by the band’s Can-meets-Velvet Underground sound.
With the Angels, songs bleed into one another, spacey guitar solos extend already lengthy jams and Maas’ reverb soaked vocals blend with the ubiquitous organ drone creating a wall of sound that would make Phil Spector proud. Underneath it all is Stephanie Bailey’s tribal drumming, a rumble of tom-toms punctuated by the occasional crash cymbal. You can’t quite dance to the Black Angels, but you can’t sit still either.
The band’s set was the perfect counterpoint to a day spent bouncing along to the high-energy festival rock of bands like the Artic Monkeys and Muse. After a long day at ACL, it was refreshing just to turn on, tune in and drop out.
Permalink | | Categories: ACL Festival
ACL after-show: Queens of the Stone Age
When hard, unforgiving stoner rockers Queens of the Stone Age walked out on stage Saturday night at La Zona Rosa for their soldout ACL aftershow and hit that first chord, an anvil of sound came out of the speakers, and the venue came alive. Devil horns went up — some with ACL wrist bands, some without — as if everyone knew what was coming.
A wall of distortion and screeching guitars shook skulls as the band sped through riffs from under elaborate chandeliers above each band member that sent a shaft of light down on them like the beam of light just before an alien abduction.
Going strong for 10 years — since singer/guitarist Josh Homme left Kyuss after that band’s breakup — Queens show no signs of slowing. The crowd favorite “Feel Good Hit of the Summer” had everyone chanting to the addictive chorus “nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol” during an exploding marching beat and a searing solo. “My favorite list in the world,” Homme admitted to the crowd.
Before dedicating a song with a particularly thick and numbing bass line to local legend Roky Erickson, Queens jumped into an unrelenting guitar attack on “3’s & 7’s” off their just-released “Era Vulgaris.” Most of the crowd had already committed it to memory.
The beard-friendly Howlin’ Rain went on just before Queens with guitar jamming and keyboard slaps and slides in a slightly psychedelic fuzzy rock way. Dax Riggs (from Acid Bath) and his backing band the Blood Kings opened up with filling, muddy blues/rock vocals packed into every corner of the songs’ soulful, power-chord rock.
Permalink | | Categories: ACL Festival
ACL: Bloc Party
South London indie rock/post-punk band Bloc Party — singer/guitarist Kele Okereke, guitarist Russell Lissack, bassist Gordon Moakes and drummer Matt Tong — seem to be in the good graces of the gods of rock ‘n’ roll. Their first ACL show two years ago turned into an evening scene stealer that ended up being the largest audience they’d played to up to that point. This year’s performance was equally graced as the band’s audience swelled to what appeared to be more than 30,000 people as they raced through the most danceable songs from the two critically acclaimed albums, “Silent Alarm” and “A Weekend In The City.”
Bloc Party’s sound mix suffered from the lack of a sound check until their third song, the new wave/no wave “Hunting For Witches.” Like all good bandleaders, Okereke kept on smiling with his bravest face, amping up the audience’s disposition with comic between-song banter until his band’s mix was clear and strong enough to do all the talking.
Okereke and band definitely played to their strengths; they didn’t waste any time with ballads or down tempo draggers. “Song For Clay (Disappear Here)” and “Waiting For The 7.18” proved to be the strongest audience pleasers of all their new songs. And then the diehard fans packed in like sardines near the front of the stage appeared to almost spontaneously combust when the band played their older hits, “This Modern Love,” “Positive Tension” and their tour de force anthem, “Like Eating Glass.”
Since I initially heard their debut album “Silent Alarm,” I’ve been preaching to anyone who will listen that Bloc Party have the potential to be this decade’s best British rock band, as the Clash and the Police were in previous years. And after this year’s ACL set, I have a feeling that there are several thousand other fans testifying about the euphoria-inducing power of Bloc Party’s gifted musical graces.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: ACL Festival
ACL: My Morning Jacket
During My Morning Jacket’s 6:30 p.m. Sunday, AT&T stage set, they finally made me a believer in their big-as-thunder brand of Southern rock. For years I’d yawned when friends tried to turn me on to their various albums, but there was something undeniably powerful about their ACL performance.
My Morning Jacket — singer/guitarist Jim James, bassist “Two-Tone” Tommy, drummer Patrick Hallahan, guitarist/pedal steel guitarist/saxophonist/vocalist Carl Broemel and keyboardist Bo Koster — performed in front of an enormous, kitschy painting of a tropical island; their show also came complete with beautiful Polynesian-looking women standing at various points on the stage, holding pineapples toward the sky.
Frontman James (someone please write in and confirm for me that was indeed a bleach blond wig he was wearing) was in amazing form. His vocal performance possessed all the right dynamic variation and moxie. And his backing band of brothers played so tight they made many of the bands at ACL seem restrained and less powerful.
“One Big Holiday” and “Anytime” sounded even larger than they do on the band’s recent double-live album, “Okonokos.” But it was the crestfallen acoustic ballad “Golden” that took me right over the top of the fence and made me a My Morning Jacket disciple. James’ rendition of the song was utterly heartbreaking and poetic without being overwrought.
Don’t be surprised if My Morning Jacket becomes an ACL Festival regular. Their voluminous rock ‘n’ roll was born to played in arenas and festivals.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: ACL Festival
September 16, 2007
ACL: Bob Dylan
“I respect him and all, but he sounds like a dying goat.” — overheard in the crowd at ACL.
Sunday night, 10:15, the Austin City Limits Music Festival over and done with, and all one can think is, “Well, that was unfortunate.”
Where to start?
The “evil old dude” voice, enjoyable (to some of us) in an intimate setting yet totally baffling to the casual fan? The giant screen that never showed close-ups or even panned over to musicians taking solos? The nuanced music, so completely inappropriate to a field of thousands who responded by, well, leaving in droves (As a colleague put it, “Getting up front was like fighting the tide.”)
Things looked and sounded grim from the first song, the awful crowd pleaser “Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35.”
The mix was muddy, and it was impossible to tell what was going on if you were in the back, thanks to a giant screen that switched between a full band shot and a half-band shot of Dylan’s side. A lack of close-ups was bad enough, but not panning over to the mighty Denny Freeman while he took any of his gorgeous solos was just rude.
It’s this simple: People started leaving two songs in because they couldn’t see the band. That’s not exactly good customer relations from Dylan’s camp.
Even if you’re charitable about his voice, this music just isn’t built for the big finish. “It Ain’t Me Babe,” fun at Stubb’s, sounded flat and pat from a distance. “Spirit on the Water,” moving in a smaller setting, was a snooze at Zilker.
The band was excellent, of course. These guys are rock solid, and Freeman is a wonder.
The gripping “Levee’s Gonna Break” and the nasty groove on “Things Have Changed” injected much-needed energy. “Highway 61” showed a little burn, and the journalist kiss-off “Ballad of a Thin Man” was appropriately sharp.
But too often, they sounded like what they looked like: a quaint dance band, displaced in time. It’s sad when you hear the amazingly mean “Like a Rolling Stone” and wonder whether Dylan knows how completely “Now you don’t look so proud” applies to himself. Hey, man, you wanna come back and do five nights at the Paramount, you have my money. You wanna come back to Stubb’s, I’ll give you a chance. But in a field at ACL? Never again.
(Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (104) | Categories: ACL Festival
ACL: The Decemberists
The poetic “The Crane Wife 3” kicked off the Decemberists super-rocking show during the 7:30 p.m. sunset slot on the Dell stage with more vigor than to be expected from band that can be so sedate on record.
The audience grew and grew to the point that even the band’s die-hard fans were shocked that so many people were gathering together to watch the soft-spoken, hyper-literate and erstwhile indie rock band.
Undaunted by the sounds of Ghostland Observatory’s dance party bleeding over the hill, the Decemberists of Portland, Ore., played the majority of their 2006 Capitol Records release, “The Crane Wife” including the would-be-a-hit-in-a-perfect-world, “O Valencia” and a sampling of their older and more accessible songs.
The Decemberists — lead singer/guitarist Colin Meloy, guitarist Chris Funk, keyboardist, multi-instrumentalist Jenny Conlee, bassist Nate Query and drummer Jon Moen — were nothing short of spectacular in the festival environment. Meloy appeared completely at ease with their Dell stage headlining performance. Feet firmly planted on center stage, Meloy displayed poise in his vocal performance and prowess on his guitar. With more perforamances like this one, don’t be surprised if the band transcends the indie rock genre and becomes known as a rock ‘n’ roll band for the masses.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: ACL Festival
ACL: Ghostland Observatory
Laser shows are usually overrated, like fireworks displays and Quentin Tarrantino movies, but it was cool to see Ghostland Observatory sink their ACL guarantee into a light show that celebrated the year they’ve had.
Last year’s ACL was a coming out for the Austin techo-rock sensations, Aaron Behrens, a pigtailed Dorothy to his Wizard of Oz, Thomas Turner. Since then they’ve become Austin’s biggest rock stars, so why not blow it all on a big hometown thank you. Even as ACL Fest moves away from local performers in favor of overseas hipsters and bearded songwriters from the northwest, it was great to see an Austin act put on perhaps the greatest show of all.
GLO still needs to make a great record, which may be iffy given that Behrens, although a go-go messiah onstage, possesses a screech that usually requires Jimmy Page-like guitar to pull off. And Turner’s time on drums, rather than behind his big board of thumping effects, shows that this band could move well in organic directions.
But for this one-year-old Austin success story, the future’s so bright, they gotta wear shades.
(Photo by Brian K. Diggs AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: ACL Festival
ACL: Wilco
Most voices start to deteriorate with age, but Jeff Tweedy’s has actually gotten much stronger, fuller, more assured and more versatile since Wilco’s early days. His band, which has gone through a number of lineup changes, has also gotten more accomplished, culminating in the tuneful and beautifully arranged “Sky Blue Sky.”
For me, the new album still somehow lacks the immediacy of Wilco’s debut, “A.M.” However, the band closed down the AMD stage with a brilliant set. It not only rocked hard, but was remarkable for the contrast between the mastery shown in endearing melodies, impeccable arrangements and beautiful lead and harmony vocals, and the sheer havoc that erupted around the margins.
The chief instigator of sonic madness was guitarist Nels Cline, who was mostly known only to fans of the avant-garde before joining first the Geraldine Fibbers and then Wilco. Tweedy’s soulful vocal on “Side with Seeds,” from “Sky Blue Sky,” got a blistering answer from Cline. Cline’s frenzied little squiggle on “Handshake Drugs” was the harbinger of a three-guitar blowout with Tweedy and Pat Sansone.
Cline is equally capable of sheer gorgeousness, as on the Neil Young-like solo that spun out on one of Tweedy’s prettiest new songs, “Impossible Germany.”
Tweedy looked alarmingly like Hank Williams Jr. when he first walked out on stage, sporting a scraggly beard, cowboy hat and shades. But the shades and hat came off, and he was low-key and engaging between songs, asking for a show of hands from everyone having a birthday after wishing happy birthday to one fan in the front, and joking about the piece of clothing serving as someone’s place-marker on a pole out in the field.
“Is that underwear?” Tweedy asked. “Is that green underwear? Did it start out as white?”
Tweedy introduced “Hate It Here” by clarifying “It’s not about Austin! We don’t hate Austin at all!” The R&B-flavored song has a lovely melody like Boz Scaggs might have written back in the ‘70s, but Cline periodically seized it and took it more in the direction of John Lennon in a dangerous mood. Sansone played music-hall keyboards that pulled against the country-funk boogie of “Walken,” while Cline tugged at it with edgy lap steel and Tweedy played a raw, percussive blues vamp worthy of R.L. Burnside.
The set had multiple peaks, but Wilco still managed to make the end a real climax with a searing “Casino Queen” (from “A.M.”) that recalled vintage Faces and a dazzling “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” (from “Being There”). Although those older songs marked the pinnacle, I left eager to hear more of the new songs played live.
(Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: ACL Festival
ACL: Bob Dylan early scene report
A dark sea of listeners swarmed the AT&T stage in Zilker Park on Sunday, as Bob Dylan opened his set with “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35.” Right away, crowds pushed forward because there were no zoom shots on the big screens, just group pictures, while the band sounded muddy from a distance. Nevertheless, a gravel-voiced Dylan, dressed in black and topped with a cowboy hat, sang “everybody must get stoned” to a delirious response.
Earlier in the day, rock-ribbed Dylan fans raced to secure the best spots by the stage as soon as the gates opened. One pregnant woman wore a T-shirt that read “Baby’s First Dylan Show.” Still, plenty of people poured out of the park only 30 minutes into the set, as they often do during the festival’s final acts, trying to beat the outgoing traffic.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: ACL Festival
ACL: Sunday field report from the M.O.
4:07 p.m. Maybe Common should have been on the bill from the start, his smooth, retro positivity and flow is a huge hit with a gigantic crowd at fest. He has the biggest wave of hands bouncing of the entire weekend. Wicked set.
4:13 p.m. Spotted Joe Gross and his neckerchife talking to KUT folks and sitting next to legendary Billy Joe Shaver, who has a purty lady perched on his lap. Only at ACL.
5:07 p.m. Crew of wet patrons just explained they returned from a trip to the Green Belt, a trip they say does the trick in beating the heat each day.
5:13 p.m. Not much love for Rose Hill Drive from Boulder. Appears to be smallest crowd for this time of day of the fest. Thousands of people are flocking by them, scurrying to stake out a spot for the Ghostland Observatory set.
5:20 p.m. Moment most resembling NOLA Jazz Fest: WaMu tent packed with chairs and busting at seams for Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
5:26 p.m. Beer lines shortest they have been all weekend at this time. People may be losing steam. Bloc party lead singer ended set with “keep Austin weird.” Playing to the crowd? Who knows?
5:31 p.m. Best line of day: stage music following Bloc Party was “We’ll Always Be Together” from “Grease,” which prompted one guy to say, “This song makes me want to kill myself.”
6:01 p.m. Amos Lee seems to be winning over a bunch of new fans with his young white man Chicago blues. Somewhat reminiscent of Blues Traveler or Ben Harper.
6:16 p.m. Just heard someone leaving Regina Spektor saying “I’m tired of Tori Amos.”
6:30 p.m. Chicago resident and alt-country pioneer Jeff Tweedy sporting a cowboy hat. Ha!
7:20 p.m. Some of the new ’70s-sounding tunes from Wilco seem to satiate those who bemoaned the lack of any jam bands at ACL this year.
7:25 p.m. Second Jazz Fest vibe: Wilco throwing a swingin’, nasty, funky New Orleans jam on new tune “Walken.”
7:49 p.m. Ghostland brings the crazy light show from their recent Hogg Auditorium show. People are drawn to the thudding piece of land on the northwest side of the stage which transforms into a gigantic outdoor dance pa