Austin Texas- Unbelievably Overwhelming; Day One

I just returned from the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Austin, Texas. My first trip to Texas and what better way to spend it than with three, 12-hour days of music in a row!
After telling her this was in fact my first trip to Austin, a beautiful young debutante named Ashley asked me during the Dirty Dozen Brass Band if I liked it so far . . . “How can you not like this!?!?”

I don’t think I have the time to write something about every single act I saw, so I’m going to hit the really high points for you. Ranking them seems silly, so I’ll go by the best (and worse in some cases) sets from each day.

Friday Sept. 25-
The day began at 11:45am with Bobby Bare Jr. This guys dad was a legendary songwriter in Nashville and now they’ve teamed up for a CD of ‘crooner’ songs. But BB Jr. plays swampy country funk with a bari-sax and lots of electric guitar. Even at 11:45 in the morning, this rocked. Have you ever heard three people harmonize on the word “Mother-Fucker?” I hadn’t.

Asleep At the Wheel-These guys were veterans when I started listening to Country Music, and they’re still going. This is western-swing like very few others are doing these days. So much so that they’ve done some sort of tribute to Bob Wills (Tex-Swing pioneer), I guess it’s a musical. But Asleep’s fiddle player, Jason Roberts, does a spot on Bob Wills impression, concluding “There’s not much fiddlin’ to it, but they’s a whole world of people who loves it!” I’m not sure if this is to be laughed at, but the lady who was signing the performance for the hearing-impared had her work cut out for her. She bobbed and bounced with the beats while playing air-fiddle during the solos, and I’m not sure if there IS a sign for “Yippee-Ki-Yo Ki-Ey”
One of their songs, I’m not sure which, contained a beautiful line that I’m going to keep for future reference should I ever try to lasso me a cow-girl of my own; “You’ve got a smile like an acre of sunflowers.”

Even though I was covering ACL for a Folk magazine (www.folkwax.com) I couldn’t resist seeing some of the ‘buzz’ bands that were here, firstly Kasabian. Hipsters with the wrong hair color in their pumas, and faded, ass-clutching wranglers gathered with anticipation. As soon as the British 5-piece came on stage the air filled with beach balls and weed smoke. 1:30 in the afternoon is the peak heat of the day, and these guys obviously had a hangover, but they got into their set eventually. One guitarist did nothing but make noise on the three high strings of his guitar, and he had an Omni-chord in front of him that I’m pretty sure never got touched. I was pissed! If you ever see something called an Omni-chord in your local pawn shop, buy that sucker! They’re endless amounts of musical instrument imitation fun.
Kasabian’s singer reminded me of the way Scott Weiland must’ve performed- striking the Christ-pose, standing on the drum riser, and swinging the microphone around. And when the singer wasn’t playing guitar, this old, bald, at least 60 year old man would come out and move the mic stand out of his way. I’m sorry, but no one is so good that they can’t move their own mic stand, much less make a geriatric stage hand do it. I didn’t hate these guys, maybe because they were only the third band I saw, and they had some Zep-heavy riffs at points, but I feel like another UK band, The Music, were doing this better about 4 years ago.

At 2:30pm the preverbial !@# hit the fan. Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule were definitely in my top three performances of the entire weekend. Mule’s regular keyboard player couldn’t make it but Haynes landed a pretty good replacement- John F-N Medeski! (Medesk, Martin & Wood folks, look them up) This guy is a raging banshi of the organ and to hear him and Haynes trading licks was out of this world. It goes to show that both these guys could jam with God and Satan and it would sound like Les Claypool. Its hard to go in-depth about jam-bands, but if I had to listen to any jam music (and I usually would choose ‘none’) it would definitely be Gov’t Mule. They did “Soulshine,” and “Slack Jawed Jezebel,” but the jamming was where it was at. Haynes and Medeski can do 10 minute solos any time they want. Had I paid for a ticket, this set would’ve been worth every penny.

After one of “Austin’s Best Burgers” and damn-near collapsing from heat-exhaustion (It was 107! A WV farm-boy ain’t used to that) I skipped Lucinda Williams for some much needed shade time. Then I headed to see Thievery Corporation. Now this is a band that keeps your attention. There were no less than nine people on the stage at one time. They had two percussionists, two turntable-ists, bass, sitar, and a three piece horn section. One singer sang in Spanish, one in Brazilian, and then three MC’s from Jamaica. The second song they did was their track off the Garden State Soundtrack. It was incredibly crispy live. The programmed beats that underscored every song can get old, but it will pull you in first. The Brazilian looked like a futuristic warrior princess, and it didn’t matter that no one could understand what she was singing, it was just so beautiful. They sang a song called “Marching the Hate Machines Into the Sun” as a closer, and it blew everyone away. This band had generated a buzz amongst both the older and younger crowd. It was a surprising mix of both. There was lots of pot-toking during this set as well. I would hate to be Blues Traveler, who played this stage next.

This is when I made a decision opposite the majority of Thievery fans; as I walked towards John Prine it was as if I was facing an exodus of people, young and old, lit joints in hand, on their way to see the Allman Brothers Band. I was like a fish swimming up stream. There were some young people at Prine, but not as many as the Allmans.

I already said I’m not a jam-fan and that I was there to cover folk music. John Prine IS folk music. He wrote “Angel from Montgomery,” made famous by Bonnie Raitt and others. All I can really say about this elder-statesmen of songwriting is that he was incredible. If there was a school for songwriters, the introductory course should be on John Prine and it would be called “Three Chords & the Truth.” His gravelly voice is sounding more like Dylan, but there’s no question his lyrics are profound and come across clean and clear. One of his best lines was about being “as Welcome as a Wal-Mart store” and not just anyone can sing about “cherry wine” and a place called “bear creek” without sounding cheesy. Prine did. Go find a copy of his song “Sam Stone”- THIS is songwriting.

The sun began setting behind John Prine and Keane, who played at 7:30, got an eerie glaze that could only come from natural lighting effects. They’re a space-pop trio that I don’t mind calling Coldplay-lite. It’s arena ready stuff, contemplative and catchy with less falsetto and more belting. Their keyboard player at least made it look hard. It’s saying something if you can out-dramatize your keyboard playing more than Chris Martin (coldplay).

Again I had to ignore the folk of Lyle Lovett because I could never live with myself if I had missed The Black Crowes. Its rumored that they’re going to do a new album, and I’m pretty sure they opened up with some new tracks (but I only own “Shake Your Money Maker” and couldn’t tell you another one of their albums).
I was invigorated for the first 30 minutes of their set. In my head I was already writing a “return of pure rock & roll” manifesto in my head. Music, as we know it, had been saved. Chris Robinson gives all skinny white kids hope; If this guy can come out in leather pants, a white laced-up shirt lookin’ like Jesus and sing like Robert Plant (ooooooooh-YEAH) than anyone of us can!
The first hit they pulled out was “She Talks To Angels,” and the crowd sang along. Sadly, the elation didn’t last long. After the bombardment of ass-kicking rock, and I’m talking clinched devil-horns ass-kicking here, they ventured off into jam land. In other words, they’re out of songs and Chris can only sing for so long before his voice is gone. So they padded the set with gruelingly long guitar solos, some harmonica, rock-organ, and even a drum solo before they finally made it into “Jealous Again” and “Hard to Handle.” Like I said earlier, Warren Haynes is one of the only guitar players that I want to hear wank off for a half hour, NOT Rich Robison and his cronies.

Incredibly disappointed that the return of “rock” is unfortunately still relegated to the Killers and the Bravery, I hung my head and walked my aching knees towards the gate, Sunburned, dehydrated, and moping, not because I was tired and exhausted, but because, for a moment, I thought I was witnessing the return of REAL rock & roll, the best thing since Zeppelin, roll over Stones, and make way for the Black Crowes. Sigh. . . . it was not to be.

Day two is coming sooon. . . .

Current Listening: Betty LaVette-"I've Got My Own Hell To Raise" *Obscure Fiona Apple cover Alert!!!