2004 Austin City Limits Music Festival:
Reports From the Scene

Sunday, Sept. 19 — Evening Report

Crowds a hassle for some, excitement for others

Mark Ferguson says he could use a traffic helicopter.

The 42-year-old college administrator from Baltimore loves the music at the Austin City Limits festival and finds the people friendly. But with three days of sunny weather, as opposed to last year's rains, the crowds have made it no easy task to walk across Zilker Park.

"Last year was a great size," he said. "There were a lot of people, but the lines weren't horrific and you could find a place to see every band."

Others don't mind as much.

"It kind of lends an excitement to it when you see this sea of people moving," said Chriss Echlin, 48, from Lampasas.

On the heels of Saturday's sellout crowd of 75,000 people, festival organizers estimated at least 70,000 people came through the gates Sunday.

Frank Urias, district commander for Austin-Travis County EMS, said Sunday evening that the only person taken to the hospital was a food vendor who nearly lost a finger in a meat slicer. Other than that, medical staff had worked on about 100 minor cuts and bruises by 7 p.m., and they had treated 63 people for heat-related problems.

Over the same time Saturday, there had been more than 100 heat-related patients.

"We had a little bit of cloud coverage and there was a steady breeze throughout the day," he said.

Try telling that to Mandy Francisco.

"We figured it was going to be really hot, and this is really hot," said Francisco, who lives in upstate New York.

She said she goes to music festivals all the time, and she described this one as one of the cleanest she's seen.

"There's not trash everywhere," she said. "Last night there was stuff around everybody, but people were picking it up right away."

— Jason Embry

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main

Sunday, Sept. 19 — Afternoon Report

Problems with crowd size

Scenes from another hot, packed day at the fest:

Mary Dickson, a 24-year-old middle school teacher from Houston, was here to see indie rock acts such as Spoon and Wilco. Dickson said she could deal with the heat or the crowd, but the combination was rough going.

"The amount of people and the heat was tough," Dickson said. "It's great to see that it is doing so well, but it was too many people for the heat."

Jason Thomas, 30, and Steve Grad, 28, came all the way from Boulder, Colo., for the festival. They proclaimed the sound "awesome" but were very displeased with the festival's exit strategy.

"We left at the very end (Saturday night)," Grad said, between bites of a wrap. "Trey (Anastasio) was playing his last song, and we and, like, 15,000 other people were told 'Shuttles to the right, taxis on the left.' We walked towards the shuttles and were told a gate was closed and we had to go all the way around."

Thomas added his group just ended up walking back to their car. "It ruined our night."

"You should have some sort of minimal entertainment if you're going to make people wait like that," Grad said. "Pay a local DJ to spin out there. Also, they should run shuttles to the bars downtown for people who want to keep partying. And somebody should be selling Red Bull."

UT law student Jenny Stewart, 24, said the bus line was stacked deep when she left the park after Sheryl Crow's set.

"So we just walked to Sixth Street," she said.

Some people figured out ways to beat the traffic. Simone Montemorra, 31, parked in the Lake Austin neighborhood. 'We just walked out the back and left," she said. "It was very easy."

Festival organized Charlie Jones acknowledged the trouble with the traffic.

"We know there were problems with the exiting process, and we will make changes next year," Jones said Sunday afternoon. "One problem was having two bands with similar demographics (the Pixies and Trey Anastasio) exiting at the end of the evening at the same time. Tonight, the Cingular stage will be dark and only the SBC stage will be live. Maybe next year we'll make some scheduling changes and maybe have only one stage going at night."

Jones denied rumors that festival organizers were hoping to raise the capacity for next year's festival.

"I would be the first person to know about something like that and I never heard that. We're conscious about the experience people have here. Obviously, the park can hold more people, but 75,000 is the number we're set on. We want to be here 20 years from now."

Jones added that as of 2:30 p.m., the festival had about 2,000 tickets remaining for Sunday.

Singer-songwriter Jack Johnson said the lineup on his stage (the SBC stage) was the best he'd ever played on, with the Roots on before him and Wilco and Ben Harper on after him.

"There are a couple of festivals around the country that have a really good vibe every year," Johnson added. "This is definitely one of them."

Texas Music Office director Casey Monahan thought the festival's funniest on-stage momen belonged to local songwriter J.T. Van Zant, son of the legendary Texas songwriter Townes Van Zant.

Riding the rails is a larger part of folkie mythology, and Van Zant thought he'd make a crack about it.

"J.T. said, 'yeah, I used to ride the trains,' " Monahan said. Van Zant paused, gesturing to Zilker Park. "'They were right around here,'" referring, of course, to the kiddie trains that once ran in the park. (OK, maybe you had to be there.)

— Joe Gross

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main

Sunday, Sept. 19 — Early Report

Why not use the whole park?

It's gotten too big, too soon. In its third year, the Austin City Limits Music Festival was bursting at the seams with crowds of 70,000 to 75,000 a day (not counting the world's largest guest list) squeezing and craning and squinting out stage views from as far away as Barry Bonds can hit a baseball. Add 100 degree days and, well, I'm guessing quite a few of those 75,000 people had a less than delightful time.

If you're like me, here's how the experience went: the first day was greeted with trepidation. How am I gonna get there? How am I gonna get home? Will I be able to withstand the heat, especially with all the walking I'm going to do? Why couldn't I be a movie critic?

All those thoughts went through your mind in the morning, but day one ended up being a lot of fun. The heat was brutal, but after seeing soul legend Solomon Burke in a three-piece suit, challenging the midday sun with only his voice and a tuxedo-clad 13-piece band, you felt like a wimp. You marveled at the scope of the festival — the equipment, the manpower, the array of talent, the unending hordes — and toasted CSE's ability to pull it off again.

Then, like me, you'd probably had enough of this whole dang thing by about 3 p.m. Saturday. You even left before the Pixies, the one band you wanted to see, because the crowds and the heat finally got to you and made you realize that sitting at home in your underwear watching Auburn vs. LSU is paradise. On paper, this was perhaps the greatest music festival ever booked. But you could put the paper in the oven and arrange a bag of tater tots on top of it for how it played out.

On Sunday, spiritually recharged by a day of watching football, you returned to Zilker and had a couple of good hours before you got swallowed up again by this mini-city of umbrella chairs and shirtless guys and teenagers who couldn't care less about the music but showed up because the worst thing that can happen to a high schooler is for something awesome to occur and them being the only one of their clique to not be there.

In the end, the hassles and the magic canceled each other out.

So what happens next year to make this fest more manageable, like the first two years? Does Charles Attal book fewer big names? Do organizers raise ticket prices precipitously? Do the organizers go ahead and schedule the fest to coincide with a home football game?

No and no. Since "scaling back" is not in the CSE vocabulary, what the ACL Fest needs to do is expand to the other side of Barton Springs Road, where a huge, barren field sat completely without purpose, except to park a few cars and land a couple helicopters, this past weekend. This field could hold at least two stages, drawing 20,000 to 30,000 fans from the main area. Everybody would be able to get closer to the stages. The percentage of happy festers would rise.

During the first year of the ACL Fest, it didn't seem possible that the Zilker Park soccer fields would prove to be too small to accommodate the crowds in just two years. But that's what happened this weekend.

Luckily, the answer sits just across the street.

— Michael Corcoran

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main

Saturday, Sept. 18 — Evening Report

Hurricane dodging and free advice

What would you do if a hurricane forced you to evacuate your town?

Take an 18-hour road trip to go to the Austin City Limits Music Festival, of course. That's what Mike Kuczynski and eight of his friends from Tulane University did when they heard Hurricane Ivan might be headed to New Orleans.

"My Dad told me to put it all on the card," said Kuczynski, 21.

Like many at this year's festival, the group ran into an unexpected snag when the show sold out and a few of the guys didn't have tickets.

"How do you sell out a festival?" asked 22-year-old Will Seemann, who thought he wouldn't have any problems buying a ticket today. "I didn't even think twice about it. I guess it's really blowing up."

Seemann, who ended up scoring a ticket, wasn't the only one scouring the crowd for extras this afternoon. Scalpers were doing brisk business, but the demand far outweighed the supply.

Kuczynski groused that he saw people trying to sell tickets for $80 or $100.

Inside the gates, everything about today's show was stepped up a notch from Friday. The heat seemed a little hotter, the crowd a little thicker and the lines for everything from food to cash machines a little bit longer.

At 3:30 p.m., about 80 people had already made their way to the medical tent for various maladies, 40 of them heat related, said Tannifer Ayres of the Southwest Emergency Action Team.

"We've just been slammed with heat," she said. "And a ridiculous amount of Band-Aids."

Several people slipped and fell, causing ankle injuries and cuts that required stitches, she said. Two were transported to the hospital, one with an elbow fracture and the other with a head injury.

"Hydrate and wear good shoes. That's my advice," said Ayres.

For those trying to hook up with friends, the airwaves were jammed with signals and calls disappeared into thin air. Even if cellular contact was made, there was no guarantee of finding anyone in the ocean of people. At 6 p.m. the impeccably tanned and alternatively clothed throng bouncing along to the music of Modest Mouse was woven so tightly that movement to beer tents and bathrooms dwindled to a single file line.

Despite the numbers, festival goers were remarkably well-behaved, said Lt. Randy Pasley with the Austin Police Department.

At 5 p.m., police had not arrested any revelers and did not anticipate problems later that night.

"It could have been a lot worse," said Alexses Fitzgerald, a 24-year-old graduate student from Houston who described herself as a professional partygoer. "Everything moves really quickly."

Jeff McAdams and Rod Napier decided not to deal with the crowds. The two former Air Force buddies sat outside the festival in folding chairs dispensing free advice and taking people's pictures next to a giant, inflatable polar bear.

"We're doing our part to keep Austin weird," said Napier. Of those who wandered up to take advantage of the "Free Advice" sign, most wanted to know how to get a ticket or a date.

Clint Jarrett, a scruffy-faced 23-year-old from Houston, wanted some guidance with the latter.

Napier had a ready answer: "Shave and be confident."

— Melissa Ludwig

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main

Saturday, Sept. 18 — Afternoon Report

ACLing the day

This is the year "ACL" became a verb. Did you ACL last night? Me, too, but I'm just ACLing half a day today to save up for Sunday. Such is the overwhelming experience of embracing the heat, braving the crowds and working those calf and thigh muscles to see an incredible array of talent. 'Scuse me while I ACL some more.

This third year of the ACL Fest has been a marvel of booking and scheduling, mixing acts on the cusp of making it, such as Ray LaMontagne, Donavon Frankenreiter and The Killers, with the old KGSR faves and groove-oriented jambands. Then there were the special sets, such as Soloman Burke's soul jamboree on Friday afternoon. Sitting on a throne (rented from a San Antonio furniture store), in a red three-piece suit, with the burning sun right in his face, this greatest male soul voice of all time hadn't lost a thing. Burke made everyone whining about the heat feel like wimps. It was the "oh my God!" set of the fest so far.

Cell phones seemed to be working within the festival grounds a lot better this year. But this is one problem I wish organizers had been slow to fix. Let's face it, in a gathering of 75,000 people, many of whom just came to see Dashboard Confessional and hang out, you're going to have at least 30,000 who would rather talk on the phone. Besides having the music disrupted by rude folks screaming into their Nokias, a lack of cellular contact could've helped to bring back the glory days of the big rock fests, when you had to actually look for your friends (some harder than others) instead of just calling them up and saying that you're standing right in front of the Maudie's booth.

Imagine if they had cellphones back at Woodstock: "Hey, Moonwillow, it's Friar Dax. I looked for you during the Who, but you must've been tripping. Anyway, remember that hamburger shack that was set on fire last night? I'm about 10 yards to the left. If you see a fat, naked guy with "NO WAR" written on him in red, you've gone too far."

The festival officially sold out at 1 p.m. Saturday. When word got to top dogs Charles Attal and Charlie Jones, they were standing in the wings during the Soundtrack of Our Lives. After high fives all around, the duo left for the traditional tequila shots that CSE principals chug to mark such momentous occasions.

A group of about 40 music fans from Sweden made their own tour T-shirt, with all the stops on their U.S. music quest silkscreened on the back. From the looks of their schedule, which kicked off at the ACL Fest, these Swedes have accumulated a lot of vacation time.

The Wailers were upgraded to one of the two main stages Saturday when G. Love and Special Sauce had an airport delay and switched to The Wailers' later slot.

Doyle Bramhall II jammed with Sheryl Crow on Friday and later that night, the Tour De France queen returned the favor, joining the Arc Angels at the Continental. Actually, it was the Angels who did the biggest favor. Crow was supposed to play a secret show at the Continental, but changed her mind for an undisclosed reason, and recruited an Arc Angels reunion with just a day's notice.

Promoter Charlie Jones says the times of the night's big headliners are often staggered by about 15 minutes so that everyone doesn't leave at the same time. So he was a little worried when the lines for shuttle buses stretched about a quarter mile down Barton Springs Road on Friday at the 10 p.m. curfew.

"In 45 minutes, everyone was gone," he says. "The buses worked great this year." This afternoon, Jones said he was pleased with how smoothly everything seemed to be going. (The heat was out of CSE's control.) "With more people come more expectations," he said, "and more work."

(Friday night, reporters observed that the cab station turned into mass confusion, with 2 1/2 hour waits for a taxi.)

Jones refers to the ACL badge distribution as "the world's largest guest list" and that may not be an exaggeration. Laminates outnumbered yellow Live Strong bracelets, with more than 4,000 hanging around the necks of artists, crew members, sponsors and seemingly everyone Charles Attal has ever met. There's only one greater collection of names on paper in this town: It's called the phone book. With so many entities involved in pulling this thing off, the huge "pest list" is unavoidable.

But CSE has done quite a few things to curb the widespread badge-swapping of past campaigns. Those with VIP passes now must have accompanying wristbands. And since about 90 percent of the "Artist" badges went to non-artists — although there is a certain art to serving the perfect latte or calling Bill Stapleton's name to proceed to the first tee — the access was greatly reduced.

Here's an interview Bob Schneider wouldn't have done with a local radio station. When hosts of a New York station, hunkered into a corner of the media trailer, asked the local musician if he sometimes felt overwhelmed to be playing in a town with so many other musicians, Schneider answered, "No, because most of them suck."

— Michael Corcoran

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main

Saturday, Sept. 18 — Early Report

TVs, Greencards draw the earlybirds

While far from the 70,000 fans that packed Zilker Park Friday night to see Los Lonely Boys and Sheryl Crow, plenty of Austin City Limits Music Festival early birds arrived at Zilker Park Saturday morning, hoping to beat the heat and plant their chairs in some shade.

Some early arrivals headed straight for the shade of the Capital Metro Stage (which is covered by a tent) to check out local gospel act Warrior, who sang about "Dr. Jesus." ("He still makes house calls!")

But the biggest noonday crowd was around the BMI stage, watching Australian bluegrass act The Greencards.

A small but enthusiastic crowd beat the heat by gathering in the SBC tent, watching the TCU/TECH game on two large television screens.

Michael Barrett, a 42-year old software engineer and TCU graduate from Fort Worth, came down early Saturday to stake out both a place in the shade and a spot on the couch. He and his three friends were thrilled when they saw the giant TVs.

"We knew from the set-up yesterday that we would be able to watch the game," Barrett said, fiddling with his TCU ballcap and keeping one eye on the screen.

But he admits he's mostly here for the music.

"We've been here every year since it started," Barrett said. "We wouldn't miss it."

While the midday sun didn't feel quite as brutal as it did Friday, when the heat index hit 104 degrees, officials were expecting temps to hit the mid-90s with a heat index of slightly over 100 degrees.

Different day, same message: Drink lots of water.

Austin Emergency Medical Services Commander Frank Urias said that he was pleased with how efficiently emergency services worked at Zilker Park, with teams heading out in golf-cart-like trucks to pick up the sick. There are two ambulances on site at Zilker to transport medical emergencies to the hospital. Urias confirmed that there were nine transports on Friday: four heat related, two foot injuries and three medical. There were no fatalities.

Saturday morning, the retail establishments camped out at the festivals were looking forward to another busy day. As usual, there was already a line at the Texas Headgear store. The sun created a bull market for straw cowboys hats.

"Last year we had two stalls," said Texas Headgear owner Troy Wright. "This year I only have one, but on Friday we did 33 percent more business than last year's two stalls combined."

— Joe Gross

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main

Friday, Sept. 17 — Evening Report

It's a party inside the festival grounds and out

In its third year, the Austin City Limits Music Festival has extended its influence far beyond the borders of Zilker Park.

It was evident in the impenetrable snarl of traffic around Waterloo Park, where busloads of festival-goers departed every few minutes.

It also was evident in the thick line of shorts-and-sandals clad people who swarmed down Barton Springs Road Friday afternoon, trying to reach what has become one of the city's musical meccas.

And it was very evident in the early crowd of nearly 30,000 who flashed skin, tattoos, interesting piercings and a willingness to endure heat and dehydration to see musical acts from around the world.

As people marched down Barton Springs Road, hawkers, vendors and even political causes competed for their attention. Incense, glass pipes, hemp clothing, vodka shots, miniature horses — all could be had for a price.

Helen Lang, a volunteer with Hearts and Hooves, an Austin organization that sends miniature "therapy horses" to hospitals, stood in front of the Shady Grove restaurant with Frankie, a miniature horse who was busy munching grass.

"I thought, 'we're going to have a lot of people come by'," Lang said of the decision to hold a fund-raiser during the festival. She said she wasn't going to attend the festival. One-day passes were still available, although three-day passes were sold out, said festival spokeswoman Sarah Russ.

"How much would we have to pay to get Frankie in?" she laughed.

Down the street, others raised money for a very different cause. Elizabeth Hartman, a volunteer with Austin for Kerry, sold buttons and bumper stickers with political zeal. Hartman said the reception from festival-goers had been overwhelmingly positive, as she had expected.

"These people are our base," she said.

She also described the Democratic Party as the most "rocking" political party.

"We're the party of inclusion," she said, laughing.

No representatives from the Republican Party could be found on scene.

Inside the festival grounds, last year's long bathroom lines had diminished considerably. Festival organizers had also redesigned the food court to make it more accessible.

Jesper Laursen, 26, a graduate exchange student at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, said he came because he heard this was one of Austin's premier musical events. However, he pointed out a key difference between ACL and festivals in his native Denmark.

"There aren't any really big bands here," he said.

Austinite Dan Barr, 24, disagreed. His main draws? The Pixies and Phish vocalist Trey Anastasio.

"The whole thing seems really great," he said. "Well organized."

— Anita Powell

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main

Friday, Sept. 17 — Afternoon Report

The heat goes on

Oppressive heat would not deter Ismael Retana — who said she moved to Austin largely because of the Austin City Limits Music Festival — nor thousands of others who poured into Zilker Park and hooted for their favorite bands.

Last year, Retana, 25, quit his job rather than miss the festival. This year, there's no need, since he doesn't happen to have a job.

In case you haven't heard, it's hot out here, and it's a constant battle to stay hydrated.

"I can't stress enough… alcohol is not a hydrator," said festival medic Tannifer Ayres.

Retana arrived with a gallon jug of water in hand, but a gallon seemed unreasonable to the gatekeepers, who confiscated it. Bring water, but don't get cute.

At times, a kind cloud takes pity on us and diffuses the infernal heat for a moment or two, but then it's back to sweat city. As of 3:30 p.m., about 50 people had been treated for heat-related illnesses, and one was rushed to the hospital with symptoms of heat exhaustion or stroke.

Apart from them, perhaps, everyone seems to think the heat is a small price to pay for great live music. Attendees are generally quite pleased with how smoothly the festival is running, and how laid-back the attitudes are. (You can take your beer anywhere!)

Of course, everyone is delighted with the lineup of artists.

"I saw the lineup and I really thought it was a joke," marveled Jenny Adrich, 27, from Seattle. "All my favorite bands in one place, for so cheap."

Adrich and two friends said they were very pleased at the reasonable price of everything, especially beer and water. At $2 for a bottle of Aquafina, no one was getting gouged. All three stated their intentions to buy one of those straw cowboy hats. Yes, the hats are back from last year's fest, and they've been multiplying all day. At the SoCo Art Market, Texas Headwear is doing very brisk business in them, for $15 a pop.

But the hottest accessory is a battery-operated, hand-held misting fan. You have to obtain a promotional coupon from an SBC rep in the park, and then you can exchange it for a fan in the SBC tent. Inside the SBC tent, people are checking their e-mail, watching golf on TV, anything to be inside for a few blessed minutes.

If you couldn't score an SBC mister, another smart-looking accessory is a paper fan, as is an umbrella, opened for shade, sweet shade. There are tight masses of people huddled under any patch of shade, and in front of the large mist machines.

Oh, and in front of the stages too. There's tension building between the chair people and the standers. The chair people feel that by lugging a chair around all day, they've earned the right to an unobstructed view. The standers think the chair people need to get over it; this is a festival.

It's a little surprising that there's no restriction on bringing 18-foot poles into the festival, but that's what a lot of groups have done, so they can find one another. Atop the poles are all manner of flags, piñatas, wind socks, balloons and paper lanterns. The freakiest among them have scarecrows that, dressed in "Keep Austin Weird" tees, look like Austin hippies about to be burned in effigy.

The most surreal sight had to be "the beach," a sandlot with beach umbrellas and Adirondack chairs. Two biker dudes sat there with their boots on, smoking cigars and keeping watch over a stroller.

The longest lines — and they're only 7 or 8 deep — are for snow cones and smoothies.

As the day goes on, fewer and fewer people are wearing shirts. Women are sporting bikini tops or improvising them out of rolled up tank tops. Men are sporting big naked beer bellies. Naturally, this is a casual affair, even by Austin standards.

"Today is church, and this is my Sunday best," 24-year-old Chris Leroy from San Francisco said of his Red Dog t-shirt, khaki shorts and flip-flops.

One brave soul wore maroon vinyl pants and a matching maroon shirt. Luckily the shirt was mesh; otherwise he might have been way, way too hot.

— Jean Scheidnes

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main

Friday, Sept. 17 — Early Report

It's hot. Bring water.

The big news Friday afternoon at the Austin City Limits Music Festival — the big red sun.

At noon, ambient temperature in Zilker Park was 97 degrees with a heat index of 104 degrees. As early as 11 a.m., shade trees had been staked out for Kacy Crowley's set on the BMI stage. The heat and lack of shade are a recipe for heat exhaustion, said emergency officials in the park.

"Last year it was beautiful," said Austin EMS commander Frank Urias. "It even sprinkled few times. This year is radically different. We are expecting a very busy weekend. People just aren't drinking enough water."

Plenty of water, however, appears to be available for sale at festival booths, and festival-goers are allowed to bring up to two factory-sealed plastic bottles of water with them.

Traffic backed up along Riverside Drive, Barton Springs Road and other approaches to the park long before the fest's 11:30 a.m. launching.

The Austin City Limits Music Festival had announced Friday morning that three-day tickets are no longer available. A limited number of single-day tickets remain for the popular festival. Single-day tickets can be purchased for $40 (includes service charge) at the Zilker Box Office, which opened at 10 a.m. today. Sales are cash only. For more information on the three-day festival, check out austin360.com/acl2004 .

— Joe Gross

Top of Page | ACL Fest 2004 Main