Category: Featured

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ACL Backstage Featured News

Spoon featured in ACL: Backstage

The final installment of Season 1 of our new virtual reality series ACL: Backstage, starring Austin superstars Spoon, is out now.  The ACL four-timers (that’s Seasons 28, 31, 36 and 40 for you trainspotters) and ACL Festival favorites have been a mainstay of our fair city’s music scene for a quarter of a century, and this episode illustrates why they’re one of today’s biggest live acts.  ACL: Backstage offers viewers amazing, only-in-VR moments, taking fans behind the scenes for a conversation with Britt Daniel & co. and closer than front row seats to Spoon’s sold-out show at Austin’s legendary Stubb’s venue.  Check it, and the entire 10-episode series, out here.  Season 1 features a stellar slate of superstars straight from Austin City Limits’ Season 43, including Run the Jewels, Ed Sheeran, Father John Misty, Dan Auerbach, Zac Brown Band and more.  Watch ACL: Backstage on YouTube, and the content is even more immersive when viewed in Daydream or Cardboard.

ACL: Backstage is presented by ACL and SubVRsive, an Emmy-nominated XR company based in Austin, TX that focuses on creating impactful 360 Video, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality experiences.

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Encore Broadcast Featured News

Encore: Iggy Pop

Austin City Limits presents a Season 42 highlight: an hour with the one and only Iggy Pop. The larger than life icon gives a king-sized performance in his first-ever ACL appearance, with a mix of classics and songs from his acclaimed 2016 release Post Pop Depression, his first career solo #1 album.  

Bringing new songs to life alongside classics that bookend his storied career, Iggy is joined by the all-star team behind Post Pop Depression: Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Dean Fertita and the Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders, augmented for the stage with Queens’ Troy Van Leeuwen and indie-rock mainstay Matt Sweeney. Hurtling onstage to open the eleven-song set with “Lust For Life,” the godfather of punk bares his soul and torso in this memorable hour. Shirtless by the second song, the Detroit native performs selections from his first two solo albums, the late 1970s pair of collaborations with David Bowie, The Idiot and Lust for Life, including rarely performed gems “Some Weird Sin” and “China Girl.” A raucous “Funtime” features Josh Homme taking the vocal sung by co-writer Bowie on the original version. Iggy launches into new classics fitting perfectly into his solo catalog, featuring tight, punchy marvels that embellish his earlier work. Displaying his uniquely animated stage presence, the veteran rock ‘n’ roll warrior thrills with several forays deep into the crowd, saying “This is a pretty good job.”

“There’s never been another show quite like this one, and that’s saying a lot!” says ACL executive producer Terry Lickona. “Iggy is an ageless, timeless, human dynamo, and he took command of the stage, the cameras, the whole building. This show captures the essence of what makes Iggy Pop the godfather of punk rockers.”

photo by Scott Newton

Tune in this weekend for this episode, and, as always, check your local PBS listings for the broadcast time in your area. Go to the episode page for more info, and don’t forget to click over to our Facebook, Twitter and newsletter pages for more ACL info. Join us next week for another encore episode, starring Band of Horses and Parker Millsap.

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Featured News

A Song For You: The Austin City Limits Story now available via VOD

The acclaimed documentary A Song For You: The Austin City Limits Story is now available to buy or rent online and across the country on Cable Video On-Demand!

Produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Keith Maitland (Tower), A Song For You is a must-see for music fans everywhere. Featuring pivotal performances by everyone from Willie Nelson and Beck to Ray Charles and Radiohead, this is the ultimate backstage pass to the longest-running music show in television history, recounting Austin City Limits’  40-year evolution from local outlaw-country showcase to a required stopping point for superstars, cult bands, and up-and-comers from just about every corner of popular music. The film gives an inside look at the people who built the series into the institution it is today and features interviews with many of the music innovators and legends who have made history on the storied stage. Set against the colorful backdrop of Austin, Texas, A Song for You provides a candid look at central moments in the program’s four decades, including the challenges and highlights in the evolution of the Peabody Award-winning series.

After a world premiere at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival, A Song for You has been a favorite on the festival circuit, earning widespread critical acclaim, with Variety hailing, “There is, quite simply, nothing else like Austin City Limits on American broadcast television right now.”  Paste magazine raves, “There’s no question the show has a place in history,” with Rolling Stone citing the film’s “…concert footage guaranteed to make you salivate.”  

Watch it now via the following services:

Online:

iTunes

Amazon Prime Video

Vimeo

YouTube

Google Play

PlayStation

VuDu

Microsoft

Fandango Now

Cable VOD:

Time/Warner/Spectrum

Cox

Direct TV

DISH

Comcast

Charter

Verizon FIOS

WOW

Insight

MediaCom

SuddenLink

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Bloody Mary Morning Featured News

Austin City Limits invites you to Bloody Mary Morning 2018

Join Austin City Limits and KLRU-TV, Austin PBS at the 7th Annual Bloody Mary Morning during SXSW on Thursday, March 15 from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m in the  GSDM courtyard.

In keeping with the Austin City Limits tradition of bringing audiences “Great Music. No Limits,” this year’s party includes some of music’s most exciting up-and-coming artists: Austin roots rocker Shakey Graves, Nashville honky-tonker Joshua Hedley, Michigan folk rockers the Accidentals, Austin soul powerhouse Tameca Jones, Waco’s Red Dirt country rocker Wade Bowen, Canadian soul troubadour AHI and Nashville country artist Rayland Baxter.  

Even better, you can listen to music while enjoying free (while supplies last!) bloody marys from Tito’s Vodka, craft beverages from Celis Brewery and Austin Eastciders courtesy of Brown Distributing, and breakfast tacos from Tacodeli. Bloody Mary Morning is brought to you by our friends AXS, NetApp and YETI. So make it a Bloody Mary Morning like Willie would want you to!

You don’t need to be a SXSW badgeholder to attend – Bloody Mary Morning is free and open to the public. Wear your ACL swag for a chance to win a YETI Rambler. You can RSVP here. Please join us!

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Featured News Taping Announcement

New taping: St. Vincent

Austin City Limits is pleased to announce an exciting new taping for Season 44, featuring the groundbreaking St. Vincent on May 14, 2018.  First appearing on ACL in 2009, the singer, songwriter and guitarist–born Annie Clark–returns to our stage in support of her highly acclaimed fifth album MASSEDUCTION.  The release has earned some of the biggest raves of her career, with Jon Pareles of The New York Times naming it his #1 album of 2017, and Billboard hailing the record as “At once epic and intimate, fusing the myth of the legend-like St. Vincent with what it means to be simply Annie Clark.”

Following 2014’s Grammy-winning Alternative album of the year, MASSEDUCTION reaffirms St. Vincent’s standing as one of the most innovative presences in modern music. The mass seduction of the album’s title is a bold, emotional reckoning, largely themed around power—or as Clark specifies, “All the forces that can swallow you whole.” These include notoriety and beauty, as well as intoxicating distractions such as pills, sex, and sorrow. Richly melodic and vividly produced, MASSEDUCTION scales up from its predecessor, and marks her first collaboration with co-producer Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde, Sia, ACL alumni Fun). Their work occupies a fertile space between pop and art rock, with narratives that pivot from sentimental to savage. MASSEDUCTION is, most accurately, a mosaic of St. Vincent’s own experiences: “You can’t fact-check it, it’s not a diary entry, but if you want to know about my life, listen to this record.”

One of music’s most thrilling live acts, St. Vincent’s recent shows have wowed fans and critics alike, with Variety citing, “Annie Clark’s ownership of the stage felt like fearless evidence that rock’s future might actually be female… she’s got enough style, ambition, chops, and complications for a half-dozen rock auteurs.”

Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes about a week before each taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings. The taping will also be livestreamed on the Austin City Limits YouTube channel. The broadcast version will air on PBS later this year as part of our Season 44.

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Featured Live Stream News

ACL to livestream Mac DeMarco taping on Feb. 27

Austin City Limits is excited to announce that we will be livestreaming our first taping of Season 44: the debut of singer/songwriter Mac DeMarco on Monday, February 27. We’ll be beaming live directly from the ACL stage at 8pm CT/9 pm ET on ACLTV’s YouTube channel.  

Called the “lovable laid-back prince of indie rock” by the New York Times, Mac DeMarco (aka 27-year old MacBriare Samuel Lanyon DeMarco) released This Old Dog, his third album and first full-length since 2014’s Salad Days, last year via indie label Captured Tracks. It was a little space—in time, location (he moved from Queens to Los Angeles), and method—that inspired the Canadian native while making This Old Dog. Arriving in California with a grip of demos he’d written in New York, he realized after a few months of setting up his new shop that the gap was giving him perspective. “I demoed a full album, and as I was moving to the West Coast I thought I’d get to finishing it quickly,” DeMarco says. “But then I realized that moving to a new city, and starting a new life takes time. Usually I just write, record, and put it out; no problem. But this time, I wrote them and they sat. When that happens, you really get to know the songs. It was a different vibe.” DeMarco wrote demos for This Old Dog on an acoustic guitar, an eye-opening method for him. “The majority of this album is acoustic guitar, synthesizer, some drum machine, and one song is electric guitar. So this is a new thing for me.”  This Old Dog is rooted more in a synth-base than any of his previous releases, but he is careful not to let that tactic overshadow the other instruments and overall “unplugged” mood of the work. “This is my acoustic album, but it’s not really an acoustic album at all. That’s just what it feels like, mostly. I’m Italian, so I guess this is an Italian rock record.”

Join us on February 27 for this full-set livestream on our ACLTV YouTube channel. The broadcast version will air on PBS later this as part of our Season 44.