Category: Featured

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Featured News

ACL announces Hall of Fame 2016 talent and ticket on-sale date

Austin City Limits announces an all-star line-up of performers for the 2016 ACL Hall of Fame Inductions and Celebration on October 12, 2016: Willie Nelson, Mavis Staples, Rodney Crowell, Gary Clark Jr. and Taj Mahal are slated to perform in tribute to the newest class of inductees. The celebration will feature one-of-a-kind music performances and tributes, as three giants of American music are inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame: B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt and Kris Kristofferson. Comedy super couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally will emcee the celebratory evening. Joining the superstar line-up will be honorees Kris Kristofferson and Bonnie Raitt, who will also perform at the ceremony. More information about performences, presenters and additional guest stars will be announced prior to the event.

The event is open to the public and will take place at ACL’s studio home, Austin’s ACL Live at The Moody Theater. Tickets are on-sale May 20th at 10am at acltv.com/hall-of-fame. Musical highlights and inductions from the ceremony will be broadcast in a special episode as part of ACL’s Season 42 which premieres in the fall on PBS.

The Austin City Limits Hall of Fame was established in 2014 to celebrate the legacy of legendary artists and key individuals who have played a vital part in the pioneering music series remarkable 40+ years as a music institution. The inaugural induction ceremony in 2014 honored Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, Lloyd Maines, program creator Bill Arhos and Darrell Royal. 2015’s second annual ACL Hall of Fame ceremony honored Asleep at the Wheel, Loretta Lynn, Guy Clark, Flaco Jiménez and Townes Van Zandt, along with the original crew of the show’s first season in 1974-75.

The 2016 Austin City Limits Hall of Fame is sponsored in part by SanDisk, Stratus Properties, Heritage Title Company of Austin, Dell and Cousins Properties. For sponsorship opportunities contact Laura Villagran at lvillagran@klru.org.

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Featured Live Stream News

ACL to livestream My Morning Jacket taping on 5/2

Austin City Limits is pleased to announce that we will be streaming our third taping with My Morning Jacket live, powered by Dell, on May 2 at 8pm CT/9 pm ET. Fans around the world can watch the concert on  ACLTV’s  YouTube channel as it happens.

My Morning Jacket are old friends of Austin City Limits. Not only has the band been featured twice, in 2006 and 2008, but dynamic leader Jim James has appeared four additional times, as a solo headliner, with Monsters of Folk and as a special guest of Bright Eyes and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. For their first collective appearance in eight years, the eclectic Kentucky group focus both on material recorded for their most recent album The Waterfall, which the New York Times called “a consolidation of the band’s strengths” and Salon hailed as “the Louisville band’s best, most ambitious and most nuanced effort in more than a decade,” and previews of its upcoming 2016 LP.  

Please join us on May 2 on our ACLTV YouTube channel as we welcome back My Morning Jacket.

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Featured News Taping Announcement

New taping: Paul Simon

Austin City Limits is proud to announce the first-ever appearance by music legend Paul Simon, who is set to tape his ACL debut on Thursday, May 12th, 2016.

An artist whose work has had a profound effect on music and culture, Simon is one of the most successful and respected songwriters in popular music history.  Almost thirty years since the release of his landmark album Graceland, Simon continues his musical and sonic exploration on his highly anticipated 13th solo album, Stranger to Stranger, which is set for release via Concord Records on June 3rd, 2016. Produced by Simon and longtime musical partner Roy Halee, Stranger to Stranger is full of thrilling textures that feel fresh and modern, while still offering subtle and artful allusions to our shared musical past. “Its about making music that sounds old and new at the same time – music with a sense of mystery,” Simon explains of the new album, his first new studio recording since 2011’s widely acclaimed So Beautiful or So What.  “Sound is the theme of this album as much as it’s about the subjects of the individual songs. If people get that, I’ll be pleased.  The right song at the right time can live for generations. A beautiful sound – well, that’s forever.”

We can’t wait for this historic appearance, as we welcome Paul Simon to the ACL stage for the very first time.

Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes about a week before the taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings.

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Featured News

ACL documentary Kickstarter campaign begins today

The legendary television music series Austin City Limits launches a Kickstarter Campaign on April 26, 2016 in support of the new documentary A Song for You: The Austin City Limits Story. The feature, which made its world premiere at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival, was directed by Keith Maitland, recently named one of Variety’s “10 Documakers to Watch.” The filmmakers have a 30-day Kickstarter goal of raising $125,000 to secure music rights for 70 songs featured in the 91-minute documentary. These funds will be used for finishing the film, which includes paying for music rights, the use of archival footage, and covering the costs of distribution.

For more than four decades Austin City Limits has brought some of the greatest musicians in the world into the homes of millions of people. Now fans can have a piece of ACL history all their own. The Kickstarter drive will offer the opportunity for supporters to choose from a collection of unique, keepsake memorabilia and one-of-a-kind backstage experiences. Special perks include the chance to play the infamous Studio 6A piano immortalized by the likes of Ray Charles, Norah Jones, and Leon Russell, or to sign the exclusive Graffiti Wall, colorfully autographed by many of the music giants who have performed on the show, including Dave Grohl, Kings of Leon and Eddie Vedder. Other “thank you” gifts include pieces of the original wooden stage, graced by legends of music from Willie Nelson to Beck, and Stevie Ray Vaughan to the late Merle Haggard. The Kickstarter campaign launches Tuesday, April 26th at 10am.

Austin-based filmmaker Keith Maitland joined the project after being approached by Austin City Limits’ producing station, KLRU-TV, Austin PBS, to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the music institution. “The most exciting part of making this film has been digging through 40 years of the most incredible live music performances you can imagine,” says Maitland. “And we’re excited to share all this great music with audiences. But we can’t do it if we can’t afford to pay for the licensing – and that’s why this Kickstarter campaign is so important to A Song For You.”

The film has received positive early reviews, 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.”

You can visit the project’s Kickstarter page here for more details.

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Featured Live Stream News

ACL to livestream Rhiannon Giddens’ taping debut

Austin City Limits is pleased to announce that we will be streaming our taping with Americana sensation Rhiannon Giddens live on April 25 at 8pm CT/9 pm ET. Fans around the world can watch the concert on  ACLTV’s  YouTube channel as it happens.

Rhiannon Giddens makes her highly-anticipated ACL debut performing tracks from her release Tomorrow Is My Turn, a 2016 Grammy nominee for Best Folk Album. The widely acclaimed album, produced by T Bone Burnett, marks Giddens’ solo debut after a decade as a founding member and leader of the Grammy-winning string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops.  Rolling Stone calls the debut “a spiritual archaeology of American racial and economic struggle via sublime covers of songs identified with Nina Simone, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton and Elizabeth Cotten.”  The Piedmont, NC native and classically trained singer has chosen from a broad array of songs associated with the female artists who are her musical and spiritual forebears for an album that serves both as patchwork autobiography and as a tribute to these artists and their legacies. “The strength of American music is in bringing all these things together—Celtic, gospel, jazz, folk—all these things that make American music great,” she says. “Putting them side by side and having a production that pulls it all into a cohesive whole shows how related all these things are.”  

Giddens’ showcased her powerful vocals at the White House this past year and gave a show-stopping performance in our own 2015 Americana Music Festival special, and we’re thrilled to follow her journey for her ACL debut.

Please join us on April 25 on our ACLTV YouTube channel as we welcome Rhiannon Giddens.

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Featured News

Merle Haggard 1937-2016

We at Austin City Limits were shocked and saddened to learn of the death of the great Merle Haggard on his 79th birthday, due to complications from pneumonia. An American original often cited as the greatest country singer of all time, Haggard made an incalculable contribution not just to country music, but American music in general. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t know at least a handful of his many classics. “Mama Tried,” “Big City,” “Silver Wings,” “Workin’ Man Blues,” “Okie From Muskogee,” “Daddy Frank,”  “If We Make It Through December,” Mama’s Hungry Eyes,” “Sing Me Back Home” – these songs are essentials threads in the fabric of the American musical tapestry. 

Haggard appeared on our show a total of nine times, in 1978, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1991, 1994 and 1996 (twice). “Other than Willie, Merle Haggard was the first major country artist to appear on Austin City Limits in its early years (season 3), and he appeared many times since,” said ACL executive producer Terry Lickona.” He told me once that he was so proud of his ACL performances that he considered them ‘a scrapbook’ of that time in his career. He was a maverick and a true original.”

Below is Haggard from his first appearance on ACL in Season 3, 1978. May he rest in peace.