The Austin City Limits Music Festival is an annual 3 day music and art festival held at Zilker Park in Austin, Texas. This year marks the 7th annual festival. ACL has grown tremendously since the inaugural festival in 2002. It brought more than 130 bands on eight stages, including rock, country, folk, indie, Americana, hip-hop, reggae, and bluegrass, and attracted a crowd of about 65,000 visitors each day. This year’s lineup included bands like: N.E.R.D, Beck, FooFighters, Gnarls Barkley, The Raconteurs, Erykah Badu, Robert Earl Keen. They keep the Texas favorites and bring in a wide variety of others.
Jason and I were debating on whether or not to buy a 3 day pass or just a 1 or 2 day pass. We went with the Sunday pass because I really wanted to see the Foo Fighters. My brother and Layla went all 3 days. For $160/ticket to see 130 bands is not a bad deal at all! Our 1 day pass was only $80 still but next year we might plan to do the 3 day weekend pass depending on the line up.
Regardless of who plays, you are bound to have a good time. You might discover bands you hadn’t heard of before and could become a big fan.
Jason, my sister and myself drove up to Austin Sunday afternoon and arrived to ACL at around 2pm. We were just in time to see Flyleaf, a band I actually had never really listened to and ended up really liking their music. We went on to see Gnarls Barkley, Blues Traveler and the best closing was the Foo Fighters. The FooFighters we so amazing! This post describes it best: Epic.
A brief overview of what the show was like:
1- Held in city center Zilker Park in a big open grass area surrounded by trees. You can take in your chairs, blankets, umbrellas so you can get comfortable in the sun, drink a beer and chill.
2- September in Texas is still warm so you will find people wearing little to no clothing. Guys without shirts, Girls in bathing suits….and you can imagine what else.
3- Austin is weird so naturally, you will see weird random things. Ladies with armpit hair, groups smoking pipes and joints, piercings in random places.
4- Good food! ACL only allows local restaurants in to sell food. You will not find turkey legs, funnel cakes, concession stand nachos…thank goodness!
5- They care about the environment. There were volunteers walking around everywhere collecting recyclable aluminum and plastic items. There was literally almost no trash on the ground and for 65,000 people, that is an accomplishment!
6- It’s an art show too. Vendors set up to sell hand crafted jewelry, unique apparel, music goodies.
7- Bands! You can get to listen to wide variety of good bands on multiple stages. It’s crazy!
ACL is a blast. I didn’t know this but the producers for ACL (C3 Presents) also co-produce Lollapalooza. I totally recommend this event to anyone who likes live music in general. It’s a good bang for your buck. Plus too, Austin is a fun town to visit. And remember to bring your own unique flag so your group can find you when you get lost! I saw dirty underwear, a dinosaur, UT flags, US flags, Cowboys flags…make it unique!
