Behind the stage at ACL Fest: how the music and the show come together

While you were sleeping, Phish delivered virtually its entire touring spectacle to Zilker Park.

The video, lighting, audio equipment and other gear were loaded onto the Budweiser stage overnight Thursday to create the sort of show you might see if you were going to a regular Phish concert instead of a two-hour festival set. The noted jam band is tonight's headliner at the three-day Austin City Limits Music Festival, which opens today.

At 10 tonight, after Phish and the four earlier acts on that stage are done and the crowd is heading home, the crew will start striking Phish's equipment, finishing about 1:30 a.m. Staff will then start to set the stage for Saturday night headliner, Muse, a band known for its elaborate laser show. A crew from ACL producers C3 Presents will build Muse's lights and video consoles to the band's specifications.

By the time the sun comes up Saturday morning, Muse and its crew should have arrived from Oklahoma City and will have a sound check and make sure all the lights and video work for each song, essentially running a rehearsal in Zilker's morning light.

When Muse leaves the stage Saturday night, the whole process begins again for Sunday's headliner, the Eagles.

This hectic scene will play out to varying degrees at ACL's seven other stages all weekend, as well.

The primary difference between a music festival and a show in a club, theater or arena is that you have to build everything, and it has to work like it's always been there. This sounds obvious, but a million small details need to be considered - from accessibility for the disabled to caring for Zilker's turf.

The modern American music festival circuit is only about 9 years old, the same age as ACL. In that time, production values have skyrocketed at every major fest.

For ACL's first few years, bands came to Austin and played on stages provided by C3 Presents, which also provided their sound system and lights. Acts brought their own instruments, their own onstage equipment such as amps or drums, and that was about it.

Now, headlining acts at festivals such as Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tenn.; Coachella in Indio, Calif.; Lollapalooza in Chicago (also produced by C3); and ACL want to present the same show you would get if you saw that act alone, so they bring it to ACL.

The responsibility for making the music run on time at ACL falls on two sets of shoulders: C3 production director Dirk Stalnecker and ACL Fest production manager Chris Sorlie.

Both Stalnecker and Sorlie rose up through the rock 'n' roll ranks.

Stalnecker was high school pals with the folks who formed the band Blues Traveler. "When I got out of college, they asked me to come work for them," Stalnecker said. "I would stay home and they would tour, and I would call the Days Inn and make sure they had the rooms ready for the band."

He went on to work on Blues Traveler's HORDE festival tour, where he met Sorlie in the early 1990s. Stalnecker managed Widespread Panic's tours for years, but he's been with the ACL festival since its beginning.

Sorlie worked for various production companies before working with ACL as a stage manager in 2003. He's served as production manager for the past six festivals, overseeing what Stalnecker calls "all things rock 'n' roll: staging, sound, lighting."

Stalnecker is with C3 full time, but Sorlie is an independent contractor. With ACL, Stalnecker concentrates on the big picture, such as emergency planning, city negotiations and meeting with neighborhood groups. Sorlie focuses on the day-to-day production.

"A lot of the people in our business who work the festival circuit travel 10 months out of the year," C3 co-founder Charlie Jones said. "It's like the movie business - once you get to the top of the game, you move around. Sorlie's as knowledgeable as they come."

Zilker Park is unusually well-shaped for a music festival. "There is a lower tier of stages (anchored by the Budweiser stage) and an upper tier (anchored by the AMD stage). Rock Island and the Austin Ventures stage is in the middle. There's a working road around the whole thing and a lake to act as a natural perimeter," Jones said.