Award salutes Lickona's career

After 30 years at 'ACL' helm, a lifetime achievement honor

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, September 22, 2008

NASHVILLE — Having produced KLRU's "Austin City Limits" for the past 30 years, Terry Lickona helped establish Austin as Nashville's maverick cousin. On Thursday night at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, the Mother Church of country music, Lickona received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, an organization formed nine years ago to recognize the singer-songwriter style of roots music popularized by such Austin-connected artists as Joe Ely, Lucinda Williams and Lyle Lovett.

Also honored were Austin-based artist Hayes Carll with the Song of the Year award for "She Left Me For Jesus." Robert Plant and Alison Krauss won Album of the Year for "Raising Sand," produced by Fort Worth native T-Bone Burnett. Levon Helm, in the midst of a comeback from throat cancer, was named Artist of the Year. Austin native Nanci Griffith won the trailblazer award.

After coming out to a standing ovation, Lickona thanked the 800-plus artists who have graced the "ACL" stage.

"What do they all have in common?" he asked after naming a couple dozen. "Integrity — their integrity and talent have been the hallmarks of the show."

It could be said that the Americana Music awards, held during a conference of about 1,500 attendees, is Nashville's annual salute to the Texas way of making music: less for mainstream commercial concerns than to create songs that resonate with an honesty of emotion. Austinites Ely and Alejandro Escovedo have won lifetime achievement awards in previous years and the previous Album of the Year winners were Patty Griffin (2007) and James McMurtry (2006).

The music conference is much smaller than South by Southwest, with only about 60 showcase slots (compared with nearly 2,000 at SXSW) and less than 10 percent of the number of badge-wearers. But longtime SXSW attendee Cary Baker, a publicist from Los Angeles, says the relaxed pace at the Americana Music conference makes it conducive to doing business. "It's like South By without all the emo," he said, referring to the screaming guitar bands that engulf Austin every mid-March. It was also SXSW without the crowd.

The pace seemed to fit the mild-mannered Lickona, who was greeted warmly by all as he made his way through the lobby of the Renaissance Nashville, the conference host hotel. This was clearly his scene.

"Without Terry, I don't think the TV show would still be around," said Robert Earl Keen, who first appeared on the show in 1989. "Artists love to play 'ACL' because Terry pays attention to what they need. It's much more relaxing than any other TV show."

As the 2005- 2007 national chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the folks who bring you the Grammys, Lickona presided over several lifetime achievement awards to legendary octogenarians, so he said his career nod is ironic. " 'Austin City Limits' is on the verge of doing so many great new things," he said. The 2003 National Medal of the Arts honor for "Austin City Limits," the first ever given to a television show, was also great, but, Lickona said, "I'm looking more to the future than the past."

In early 2011, "ACL" plans to move into its new studio on Second Street, which will have a capacity of 2,200, almost seven times the capacity of the current studio on the University of Texas campus. On the nights when there aren't tapings, the soundstage will turn into a House of Blues-like nightclub, booked by concert giant Live Nation. "There won't be another venue like it in the country," Lickona said of the studio/club with the capability to tape live performances seven nights a week. "The cameras will be a permanent fixed installation" of the club, he said.

"We hope we can partner up with Live Nation to do some other things," Lickona said, adding that a new TV series, in addition to "ACL," could be in the offing. "We could have live streaming on the Internet. The possibilities are very exciting."

Live Nation competitor C3 Presents, which produces the Austin City Limits Music Festival, is in the final year of a five-year contract to co-produce the namesake TV show. C3 has decided not to renew the contract, to better concentrate on its growing festival and concert business. It's expected that Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the world, will take over from C3, though Lickona said a deal is still in the works.

Lickona credits ACL Fest, the seventh annual version of which takes place at Zilker Park from Sept. 26-28, with "breathing new life into the brand" and expanding the range of musical styles that fit under the "ACL" umbrella.

A native of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., who moved to Austin in 1974, Lickona took over as producer of "ACL" in 1978, the fourth season, and immediately shook up the wall-to-wall "progressive country" lineup by booking such acts as Tom Waits and psychedelic accordion wiz Steve "Esteban" Jordan. "I took some heat," he said, "but I knew we couldn't survive by recycling the same acts."

The low point in the show's history was season 26, Lickona recalled, when main sponsor Agillion went under and KLRU had to scramble for funding through a bank loan. The "Austin City Limits" name and all rights to its programming is owned by KLRU.

"We've never been stronger than we are right now," said Lickona, whose contract to produce "Austin City Limits," through his Lickonavision company, has always been year-to-year. "There's so many exciting things in the pipeline. I just hope I'm here to see it all."

mcorcoran@statesman.com