Austin City Limits Festival is, what I consider, part of the big 4. Along with Bonnaroo, Coachella, and Lollapalooza, they compromise the biggest and some of the best festivals in the US. The downside of these festivals is that you’re confined to an area with over 50,000 of your closet friends. The upside is that, with so many people buying tickets, you get over 100 bands, some of them being among the best live bands out there.
Austin, Texas is the “live music capitol of the world” and I doubt there’s anyone that ranks a close second. They’re home to the legendary Austin City Limits television show, South by Southwest, and over a hundred live music venues (some of ’em just a bar with bands). What some people might not realize is that all this music can’t survive without the fanatical support from the people of Austin. It’s great to know that even in a town that sees so many shows that tens of thousands of people still come out to Zilker Park for three full days of concerts during ACL.
My adventure this year began in Portland, Oregon five days before we were supposed to be in Austin. MusicFest Northwest was happening and we were persuaded to sling some cream up there. My only hesitation with doing Musicfest was that we had already committed to being in Austin which meant we had a 2400 mile drive with Bessie and her offspring Bessita. Not to mention a pitstop in LA for my birthday party with Art Brut, which left me with a horrible hangover for the drive east. The following morning I picked up James and we made it to Tucson for the night where we crashed at Mary’s place. The next day we knew we had a crazy haul so we got out early and drove 14 hours and arrived at John’s house around 1 in the morning.
With only a handful of hours of sleep we loaded up Bessita with as much cream as we possibly fit then picked up some Chick-fil-a and made our way to the festival grounds. The setup backstage was pretty similar to last year and I knew there was no way we’d have enough cream on board, even with reloading every day. Amy’s Ice Cream was able to help out with some cream on Saturday and James took control of most of the scooping. Steph was also on board to help and Matthias was shooting photos and filming some for an upcoming documentary on ICM that we’ll be featuring here soon. Our photo crew was all-star status. Craig and Chad were on board for all three days and Mary and Tom split time to avoid getting burnt out in the hot hot Texas sun.
The lineup for 2007 was packed with some of the best live bands performing today, including Bjork, Wilco, Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket, Muse, and festival headliner Bob Dylan. I generally find myself wanting to check out most of the smaller, up-and-coming artists that play during the day but it ended up I got to catch a large chunk of most of the bands listed above and they sounded great. Last year, on the main stage, the volume for Tom Petty’s set was turned down so much you couldn’t even hear him. This year, Bjork, MUSE, and Dylan all sounded spectacular from the front left side. The other highlight was watching home town heroes, Ghostland Observatory’s break-out set. They played right before Dylan on the far stage after the sun went down and there were over 15,000 people in attendance as the dance party and laser show got underway.
As bummed as I was that we ran out of cream earlier than I would’ve liked, I did get to see a bunch more music than normal, and… it’s probably the last fest we do with Bessita so next year we’ll be driving down our new Bessie which’ll hold five times as much creams as Bessita.
Some of the best news of the trip was that Colibri and I were going to be pitstopping in Tucson on the way back for the Animal Collective show. I also stuck around another day to see The New Pornographers at the same venue, The Rialto. I love seeing shows outside of Los Angeles. It’s different and people are generally more into shows because they’ve all bought tix. Maybe we’ll be like snowbirds and relocate to Tucson when not on the road during the summer. hmmmmm…….
