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ACL 2008: Saturday
October 3, 2009
Scene report: Fans prepared for the rain
The perfect day was followed by the imperfect storm. The drizzle hit today just after the gates opened at 11 a.m. and by the sea of raincoats, ponchos and umbrellas pouring down Barton Springs Road, absolutely no one was surprised. “Rain or shine” means the show goes on and nothing’s changed because of the weather except that there’s water in the air.
Where irrigation has been a problem in years past, as 65,000 pairs of feet on the parched fields kicked up dust, the concern today could be drainage, if the predicted three inches of rain fall.
One schedule change tomorrow finds Brett Dennen swapping time slots with State Radio because Dennen has a plane to catch. Brett now plays at 3:30 p.m. on the Austin Ventures stage, with State Radio following at 4:45 p.m.
Gotta go, Deer Tick is covering Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner Blues”!
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September 28, 2008
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.
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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.”
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ACL review: Beck
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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.
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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.
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ACL review: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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ACL review: Drive-By Truckers
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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.”
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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.
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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).
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ACL review: John Fogerty
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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.
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ACL video: Electric Touch interview
Our Deborah Sengupta-Stith talks with Electric Touch before their performance Saturday at the Austin City Limits Music Festival:
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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ACL video: Bavu Blakes interview
Our Deborah Sengupta-Stith interviews Bavu Blakes after his performance Saturday at the Austin City Limits Music Festival:
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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ACL review: Fleet Foxes
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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