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ACL to live stream The Weather Station on 6/21

Austin City Limits is thrilled to announce we will live stream the debut taping of acclaimed indie rock band The Weather Station on June 21 at 8 p.m. CT. ACL offers fans worldwide the unique opportunity to watch the taping live in its entirety on our ACLTV YouTube Channel. The broadcast episode will air this fall on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 48.  

Tamara Lindeman is a Toronto-based songwriter and singer who performs under the name The Weather Station.  As The Weather Station, she has released six albums, most recently 2021’s breakthrough Ignorance and its companion album, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars, released this March, which deal with themes of climate grief, disconnection and conflict, love and birds. Ignorance was regarded as one of the most praised albums of 2021, landing in the best albums of the year lists by the New Yorker, New York Times, Pitchfork and way beyond. The Weather Station has been nominated for two Junos, a Socan Award, and has been shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. Recorded live in just three days, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars is achingly intimate; full of breath, silence, and detail. “I had no idea if I wanted anyone to ever hear these songs,” Lindeman says, “but I also felt like they were the best songs I’d ever written, and I wanted to document them in some way.” Not long after completing Ignorance, Lindeman decided to make this album on her own terms, fronting the money herself and not notifying the labels. She assembled a new band, and communicated a new ethos: the music should feel ungrounded, with space, silence, and sensitivity above all else. On this record, there are no drums, no percussion; in the absence of rhythm, time stretches and becomes elastic. Lyrically, many of the songs return to what has often been a hallmark of Lindeman’s writing, a description of a single moment and all the meaning it might encompass. Influenced by records like Chet Baker Sings or Bob Dylan’s Shadows In The Night, the record was recorded live off the floor at Toronto’s Canterbury Music Studios, with Jean Martin co-producing. Lindeman sang and played piano live while the band improvised their accompaniment. Whereas the recordings on Ignorance leaned towards ambition and grandeur, here the band reaches towards a different goal: grace, perhaps. In her telling, Lindeman has always reached towards classic songwriting, and on this record, she overtly pursued this influence, allowing some of the songs to be “naive in the way that American songbook songs often are; naive in the way of reaching towards something with that sort of crushing longing, naive in terms of melody and simplicity.”
Join us here on June 21 at 8 p.m. CT for The Weather Station, and this fall on PBS for the broadcast premiere of Austin City Limits’ upcoming Season 48.

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Featured Live Stream News

Live stream announcement: Allison Russell

Austin City Limits is excited to announce we will live stream the debut taping of acclaimed singer and songwriter Allison Russell on May 25 at 8 p.m. CT. This truly is one for the record books – the 1000th taping of Austin City Limits! We are thrilled to welcome this exceptional artist to the ACL stage for this historic milestone. ACL offers fans worldwide the unique opportunity to watch the taping live in its entirety via our ACLTV YouTube Channel. The broadcast episode will air this fall on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 48.  

After years of collaborations with like-minded artists, Allison Russell’s first-ever solo project Outside Child was released in 2021 to critical acclaim and earned a trio of 2022 Grammy nominations, including Best Americana Album. Russell, a self-taught singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and co-founder of folk collective Our Native Daughters and duo Birds of Chicago, unpacks her youth in searing detail. Rolling Stone raves, “Russell turned her brutally tough childhood into stunning art.” Raised in Montreal, Russell imbues her music with the colors of her city – the light, the landscape, the language – but also the trauma that she suffered there. It is a heartbreaking reflection on a childhood no one should have to endure, and at the same time a powerful reclamation – asserted from a place of healing, of motherhood, of partnership – and from a new home made in Nashville. The record features many of the artistic family members she has found there including Yola, Erin Rae, The McCrary Sisters, Ruth Moody, Jamie Dick, Dan Knobler and her partner JT Nero. Outside Child, says Russell “is about resilience, survival, transcendence, the redemptive power of art, community, connection, and chosen family.” Singing about this on the double Grammy-nominated “Nightflyer,” Russell ponders the healing power of motherhood, using the track’s wide-open expanse to convey the strength she didn’t know she had. Here, the line “I am the mother of the evening star / I am the love that conquers all” is “the most defiantly triumphant, hopeful line I’ve ever written,” says Russell. “That’s about the birth of my daughter and how that transformed me.” Though she endured a fraught relationship with her own mother, Russell remembers how she’d crawl underneath the piano and listen to her mother play. “I would hum along with her,” Russell recalls. “She said I was humming before I could talk. I was able to feel some kind of comfort or love or connection in a way that she couldn’t verbally or physically express – but I could feel in her music that there was love in her.” Ultimately, Outside Child is not only a radical reclamation of a traumatic childhood and lost home, it is a lantern light for survivors of all stripes – a fervent reminder of the eleventh hour, resuscitative power of art. Fellow songwriter and poet Joe Henry raves, “Outside Child draws water from the dark well of a violent past. The songs themselves ––though iron-hard in their concerns–– are exultant: exercising haunted dream-like clean bedsheets snapped and hung out into broad daylight, and with the romantic poet’s lust for living and audacity of endurance.” Russell’s work has also been recognized with three nominations at this year’s 2022 Americana Music Awards: Artist of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year. We’re thrilled to bring Russell to the ACL stage as we celebrate a landmark occasion with our milestone 1K taping moment.

Join us here on May 25 at 8 p.m. CT for Allison Russell. Join us this fall on PBS for the broadcast premiere of Austin City Limits’ upcoming Season 48.  

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Featured Live Stream News

Live stream announcement: Sylvan Esso

Austin City Limits is thrilled to announce we will live stream the debut taping with acclaimed indie pop duo Sylvan Esso on May 9 at 8 p.m. CT. ACL offers fans worldwide the unique opportunity to watch the taping live in its entirety on our ACLTV YouTube Channel. The broadcast episode will air this fall on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 48.  

Sitting in a Wisconsin deli in 2012, Amelia Meath told her new friend Nick Sanborn she wanted to start a pop band. She proposed a simple division of labor: She’d write and sing their emotionally multivalent songs, wrapped around seemingly effortless hooks. And he’d make the beats that drove them, slightly slippery instrumentals that winked at his abstract electronic inclinations. For a time, that was the premise of Sylvan Esso. But during the last decade, those responsibilities have morphed. Meath and Sanborn’s roles have become so intertwined that every moment of any new Sylvan Esso song feels rigorously conceptual but completely rapturous, their compelling central paradox. “Making music now looks like both of us sitting in a room together and having small arguments,” Meath quips. That dynamic thumps at the heart of Free Love, Sylvan Esso’s instantly endearing third album and a charming but provocative testament to the duo’s long-term tension. “We’re trying to make pop songs that aren’t on the radio, because they’re too weird,” says Meath. You could frame Free Love in a dozen different ways. You could, for instance, declare it their undeniable pop triumph, thanks to the summertime incandescence of “Ferris Wheel” or the handclap kinetics of “Train.” You might, on the other hand, call it their most delicate work yet, owing to Meath’s triptych of gently subversive anthems—“What If,” “Free,” and “Make It Easy”—that begin, end, and split the record into sides. You could label Free Love their modular synthesis album, since Sanborn’s explorations of those infinite systems shape so many of these daring songs. You might even call it their marriage record, as it’s the first LP Meath and Sanborn have made since trading vows. Instead, the thread that binds together every scintillating moment of Free Love may seem surprising for a duo that has already netted a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album for the record , made some of their generation’s sharpest pop daggers, and generally approached their work with an anything-goes esprit: Finding confidence. An album that implores us to consider that our assumptions about our world might be wrong, Free Love asks major questions about self-image, self-righteousness, friendship, romance, and environmental calamity with enough warmth, playfulness, and magnetism to make you consider an alternate reality. These are Sylvan Esso’s most nuanced and undeniable songs—bold enough to say how they feel, big enough to make you join in that feeling. The Durham, NC-based duo is currently on a U.S. headline tour with high-profile upcoming summer dates at Wilco’s Solid Sound and Rothbury’s Electric Forest Festival.

Join us here on May 9 at 8 p.m. CT for this exciting performance by Sylvan Esso. Join us this fall on PBS for the broadcast premiere of Austin City Limits’ upcoming Season 48. 

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Live stream announcement: Cimafunk

Photo by Michael Alford.

Austin City Limits is excited to announce we will live stream our upcoming taping with Cuban sensation Cimafunk on May 3 at 8 p.m. CT. Watch one of music’s most talked about live performers, Cimafunk, and his nine-piece band from Havana, take the stage for an electric ACL debut. ACL offers fans worldwide the unique opportunity to watch the taping live in its entirety on our ACLTV YouTube Channel. The broadcast episode will air this fall on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 48.  

Cimafunk is an Afro-Cuban rock star whose name refers to his heritage as a “cimarrón,” Cubans of African descent who resisted and escaped slavery, as well as to the essence of his music that aims to subvert conventional sounds with rhythmic innovation. As innovative funk forefather George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic fame says, “he is the one, the next one.” By bringing out the best in Cuban rhythms and traditions and infusing sounds and styles from Africa and the U.S., Cimafunk has created something unique and special, both in terms of music and the values he stands for. His monumental second album El Alimento, released in October 2021, received overwhelming praise: Rolling Stone ranked it #3 of the Best Spanish-Language and Bilingual Albums of 2021 and #23 of the 50 Best Albums of 2021. El Alimento was also among NPR’s Best Latin Music of 2021 and #1 of Le Monde’s Latin Music favorites. Singles also made their way through 2021 lists: “Rómpelo” ft. Lupe Fiasco was among NPR Alt.Latino’s best singles of 2021, and “Funk Aspirin” ft. George Clinton in Remezcla’s 10 Best Indie Pop, Rock, & Chill Songs of 2021. Co-produced by Cimafunk and Grammy-award winning producer Jack Splash (CeeLo Green, Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Keys), the sonically dynamic collection masterfully blends Afro-Cuban sounds and rhythms with global funk, hip hop and soul, resulting in a progressive, head-bopping celebration of black music’s power to eclipse borders and cross-pollinate across cultures. Written and recorded over 2020, the album served as an alimento for the soul, a motivation to persevere through the pandemic, as Cimafunk spent countless hours studying decades of musical influences to help understand who he is musically and culturally, and thus, where he wanted this album to take him. According to The New York Times, Cimafunk is on “Quest to Create One Nation Under a Groove.” Cimafunk became a household name in Cuba with his 2018 hit “Me Voy,” which generated a frenzy, creating a movement in Havana and throughout the island, selling out venues with thousands of fans excited to dance to the groove of Afro-Cuban Funk and millennials replicating his style and appearance, one that draws heavily on his African roots and the black showmen of the 20th century. Named by Billboard as a “Top 10 Latin Artist to watch,” Cimafunk stole the show at the 2019 South by Southwest Music Festival and has toured aggressively in the U.S. and Europe, making a name for himself as one of today’s great showmen, performing an electric live show with his nine-piece band from Havana.

Join us here on May 3 at 8 p.m. CT for this much-anticipated performance by Cimafunk. Join us this fall on PBS for the broadcast premiere of Austin City Limits’ upcoming Season 48.

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Live Stream News

Live Stream Announcement: Robert Earl Keen 4/27

Photo by Melanie Maganias Nashan

Austin City Limits is delighted to announce we will live stream our upcoming taping with renowned singer/songwriter and Texas icon Robert Earl Keen on April 27 at 8 p.m. CT. The legend caps his remarkable musical journey with one last taping on our stage before his planned retirement from live performance later this year. ACL offers fans worldwide the unique opportunity to watch the taping live in its entirety on our ACLTV YouTube Channel. Join us for this very special occasion as we tip our hat to an American original. The broadcast episode will air this fall on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 48.  

Robert Earl Keen debuted on Austin City Limits in 1989 as part of a Texas Showcase and has made four headlining appearances in addition to appearing as a guest of Lyle Lovett in 2000, returning for ACL’s milestone 40th Anniversary special in 2014 and hosting the ACL Hall of Fame in 2019. One of the most beloved songwriters and performers in Texas, the Houston native has lived his signature anthem “The Road Goes On Forever” as a road warrior performing over 180 dates in any given year, playing to his legions of fans at roadhouses, dance halls, theaters, and festival grounds. The legendary entertainer made the surprise announcement in March that he’ll wrap up a remarkable four decades of touring with one last tour in 2022 as his swan song: I’m Comin’ Home: 41 Years On The Road. “I’ve been blessed with a lifetime of brilliant, talented, colorful, electrical, magical folks throughout my life,” says Keen. “This chorus of joy, this parade of passion, this bull rush of creativity, this colony of kindness and generosity are foremost in my thoughts…It’s with a mysterious concoction of joy and sadness that I want to tell you that as of September 4, 2022, I will no longer tour or perform publicly.” With a catalog of 21 albums, a band of stellar musicians, and many thousands of live shows under his belt, POLLSTAR ranked Keen in its Top 20 Global Concert Tours in 2021. Since releasing his debut album, No Kinda Dancer, in 1984, Keen has blazed a peer, critic, and fan-lauded trail that’s earned him living-legend status in the Americana music world. He’s received many accolades along the way, including 2015’s inaugural BMI Troubadour Award, celebrating songwriters who have made a lasting impact.  His songs have been recorded by George Strait, Joe Ely, Nancy Griffith, Gillian Welch, The Highwaymen and more. Keen has been inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame (alongside his longtime friend and Texas A&M classmate Lyle Lovett), the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Texas A&M University. Keen was weaned on classic rock and Willie records and steered clear of the country mainstream, always taking the road less traveled throughout his storied career. His literate songcraft, razor wit and killer band stirred up a grassroots sensation not seen since the ’70s heyday of outlaw country. While Keen will be hanging up his hat on live shows, he’ll continue to write music and create, host his popular Americana Podcast, support young artists, and follow his artistic muse wherever it takes him. We’re thrilled to welcome Robert Earl Keen back to our stage for this very special performance.Join us here on April 27 at 8 p.m. CT for this special performance by Robert Earl Keen. Join us this fall on PBS for the broadcast premiere of Austin City Limits’ upcoming Season 48. 

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Live stream announcement: Japanese Breakfast 4/20

photo by Tonje Thilesen

Austin City Limits is excited to announce we will live stream the highly-anticipated debut taping of Grammy-nominated indie-pop rock band Japanese Breakfast on April 20 at 8 p.m. CT. ACL offers fans worldwide a unique opportunity to watch the ACL taping live in its entirety on our ACLTV YouTube Channel. The broadcast episode will air this fall on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 48. 

2021 was a big year for Michelle Zauner. She released Jubilee, her third album with her band Japanese Breakfast, which quickly became one of the most praised releases of 2021, landing her two 2022 GRAMMY nominations for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album, as well as placement on Best Of 2021 lists from Rolling Stone, People, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly, Billboard, NPR, Spin, Wall Street Journal and more. The album was also voted the #1 album of the year on NPR’s Listeners’ Poll, and its hit single “Be Sweet” was voted the #1 song of the year on Pitchfork’s Readers’ Poll. From the moment she began writing her new album, she knew that she wanted to call it Jubilee. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish; Psychopomp was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while Soft Sounds From Another Planet took the grief she held from her mother‘s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos.  Jubilee is an album about processing life and love in the quest for happiness, and how that process sometimes requires us to step outside of ourselves. In addition to Jubilee, 2021 saw Zauner release her New York Times best-selling memoir Crying in H Mart, which she’s currently adapting for the screen for MGM’s Orion Pictures. Crying in H Mart is an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. The book has been on the New York Times Best Sellers’ list for 30 weeks. She also released the original soundtrack to the anticipated video game Sable, which Entertainment Weekly compared to David Bowie’s 1977 masterwork Low and Pitchfork said is “a streamlined glimpse into her versatility as a narrative artist.” Michelle Zauner first appeared on our stage at the 2021 ACL Hall of Fame celebration to salute honorees Wilco and we’re thrilled to have her return with Japanese Breakfast.

Join us here on April 20 at 8 p.m. CT for this performance by Japanese Breakfast. Join us this fall on PBS for the broadcast premiere of Austin City Limits’ upcoming Season 48.