Category: Taping Announcement

Austin City Limits is proud to announce three new tapings. Singer and songwriter Robert Plant, returns to our stage for the first time in more than a decade on March 21, singer/multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens makes her ACL debut on April 25 and rock stars Florence + the Machine come back for their second visit on May 20 .

Plant travels to ACL with his band The Sensational Space Shifters as part of his “Southern Journey,” visiting the “places that gave birth to so much of the music I love,” with a select run of live dates dubbed the “Blues…Roots and Hollers” tour. The music icon celebrates the American South as a continuation of the eclectic soulful journey he began since leaving Led Zeppelin decades ago. He has spent many years exploring Americana music and America itself, traveling though the U.S. and collaborating with roots musicians, including Alison Krauss for 2009’s six-time Grammy-winning album Raising Sand.  Plant’s acclaimed 10th solo album, 2014’s lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar, combines his love of everything from American country blues and rockabilly to British folk, Moroccan trance music and West African griot into a vision all his own.  Joined by the diverse, versatile six-piece band The Sensational Space Shifters, Plant adds, “Having just begun work on our new album, we thought we’d take time out to raise a little sand and welcome springtime with one more adventure, another celebration of life and song.”  

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 in the 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 and Elizabeth Cotten.”  Reviving, interpreting, and recasting traditional material from a variety of sources has been central to Giddens’ career.  The Piedmont, NC native’s work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops has investigated and promoted the foundational role African-American artists have played in folk-music history, while making recordings that are vital, contemporary, and exuberant. With her solo album Tomorrow Is My Turn, the classically trained singer has embarked on a more personal sort of journey, but with a nod towards history as well. She’s 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. Through the process of creating this album with a disparate set of musicians and practically a century’s worth of songs, she also illustrates the democratic way American music has taken shape and evolved: “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.” We’re thrilled to follow her journey for her ACL debut on Apr. 25.

Florence + the Machine had a gigantic 2015, seeing the release of her first U.S. #1 album How Big How Blue How Beautiful and nominations for five Grammy Awards. Released to extensive critical acclaim and named to year-end best lists from Rolling Stone, NPR Music, SPIN, American Songwriter, Consequence of Sound and more, the album landed Welch on Coachella’s main stage in a standout performance, bookings all over TV and in front of her biggest audiences thus far. Written and recorded over the course of 2014 and produced by Markus Dravs (Björk, Arcade Fire, Coldplay), the album follows Florence’s globally acclaimed Lungs (2009) and Ceremonials (2011). Called “Florence Welch’s most personal, vulnerable and moving album to date” by Rolling Stone, How Big How Blue How Beautiful reached #1 in the U.K. (her third #1 album in the country), Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland and Canada after reaching the top spot on iTunes charts in 24 countries worldwide. The album features the massive hit “Ship to Wreck,” which Fader calls “the best song of her career” and The Daily Beast calls “a testament to her ability to straddle pop and rock, convention and alternative.” As anyone who saw Florence’s previous appearance on ACL knows, her taping will present, as Entertainment Weekly puts it, “an outsize physical presence who doesn’t so much sing as emit deeply emoted sounds out of some wellspring of the collective unconscious who commanded her space and demanded undivided attention.” We’re happy to welcome back Florence + the Machine on May 20.

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.

Austin City Limits is proud to announce the first tapings of our upcoming Season 42 with three incredible artists taking the stage: rock & roll legend Iggy Pop in his long-awaited ACL debut, the debut of international sensation Natalia Lafourcade and the return of one of rock’s finest bands, My Morning Jacket.

The godfather of punk makes his inaugural appearance on the ACL stage March 15th on the eve of his surprise new release Post Pop Depression, out March 18th. Conceived in partnership with Queens of the Stone Age leader Josh Homme, a two-time ACL veteran who also produced the album, Post Pop Depression was recorded in secret in Palm Desert, CA with a vibe described as “Detroit meets Palm Desert by way of old Berlin.” The result is the successor to the legacy of Iggy’s immortal 1977 double-shot of The Idiot and Lust For Life. In their first-ever full-set live performance, Iggy and Homme take the ACL stage ahead of a SXSW appearance and a select run of one-time-only live shows. Bringing the new songs to life alongside classics spanning Iggy’s storied career, the pair will be joined by the Homme-assembled powerhouse band that recorded Post Pop Depression – including Homme’s QOTSA bandmate and Dead Weather-man Dean Fertita and Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders – fleshed out with touring members QOTSA’s Troy Van Leeuwen and Chavez’ Matt Sweeney. We’re thrilled to welcome the one and only Iggy Pop on March 15, just three days before the release of Post Pop Depression.

Singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade is one of Mexico’s biggest music stars. Her infectious mix of pop, rock, folk and bossa nova has earned her multiple chart-topping albums and Grammy award nominations.  The daughter of French-Chilean musician Gastón Lafourcade, the Coatepec native began making music as a child. At the age of nineteen, she released her acclaimed self-titled debut which went to #1 on the Mexican charts and earned her first Latin Grammy nomination.  Her latest LP Hasta La Raíz, hailed “her most profound and enduring statement” by the Village Voice, also reached #1, thanks to what AllMusic calls “extremely well-written songs in the grand romantic Latin American tradition…but with a contemporary perspective.” The title track won three Latin Grammys for Record, Song and Alternative Song of the Year, and the album is currently nominated for a 2016 Grammy for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album.  Please welcome Natalia Lafourcade to her debut ACL performance on March 23.  

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 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.” Expect plenty of wide-ranging alternative rock from veterans My Morning Jacket on May 2.

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.

We’re proud to announce the final taping of Season 41, the Austin City Limits debut of the Tedeschi Trucks Band on December 14th.

Formed in 2010 by guitarist Derek Trucks and singer/guitarist Susan Tedeschi, who appeared twice on ACL under her own name, the 12-piece Tedeschi Trucks Band has quickly become the vanguard of modern roots music. Hailed as “a deeply skilled groove machine (Los Angeles Times) that “booms like a soul thunderclap” (Boston Herald), the band has cemented their reputation for thrilling audiences worldwide with its legendary live performances and award-winning albums. In just five years, Tedeschi Trucks Band has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, and Japan, with headline performances at both The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the venerable Newport Jazz Festival, co-headlining tours with B.B. King and The Black Crowes, and packed houses from Red Rocks Amphitheatre and NYC’s Beacon Theatre to the Hollywood Bowl and London’s Royal Albert Hall.

TTB’s debut release Revelator earned both a Grammy Award and multiple Blues Music Awards. 2011’s dynamic live follow-up, Everybody’s Talkin’, delivered a double-disc classic reminiscent of legendary concert recordings like The Allman Brothers Band’s At Fillmore East. Its sophomore studio effort, 2013’s Made Up Mind, bolstered the Jacksonville, Florida-based group’s growing reputation as the preeminent soul, rock and blues leader. The band’s highly anticipated third studio album Let Me Get By will be released in early 2016.

Sharing a level of respect and camaraderie rarely found in rock and roll, TTB has found a magical combination that delivers nightly an unforgettable, can’t-miss concert experience.

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.

Austin City Limits is proud to welcome hip-hop/R&B icon Ms. Lauryn Hill to the stage Nov. 7 for her debut taping, in a rare television appearance.

Acclaimed artist Ms. Lauryn Hill achieved astounding success as a member of hip-hop trio The Fugees, whose 1996 breakthrough The Score featured the multi-platinum hits “Ready or Not” and “Killing Me Softly,” won a pair of Grammys and remains one of the best-selling hip-hop records of all time.  She launched her solo career in 1998 with the release of the landmark album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and became the first woman or hip-hop artist to earn a record-breaking five Grammy Awards.  The album has sold nearly 20 million records, is regarded as one of the most important releases of the last 25 years, and was entered into the Library of Congress this year as a timeless and classic recording that is the embodiment of who we are as a people and a nation.

Most recently, Ms. Hill executive produced and recorded six songs for the 2015 release Nina Revisited: A Tribute to Nina Simone, including a stunning take on Simone’s signature track “Feeling Good.”  We’re thrilled to welcome Ms. Hill to the Austin City Limits stage.

In  addition to performing at ACLTV Ms. Lauryn Hill will also headline the Fun Fun Fun Fest Orange Stage on Sunday, November 8th. Passes for the festival are available for purchase at funfunfunfest.com.

Want to be part of our audience? The ticket giveaway information is up now – please go to our website to enter.

Austin City Limits is thrilled to announce the final tapings of our 41st season, including the debut of Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats on November 22 and the return of Heartless Bastards to our stage on November 23.

Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, the self-titled LP by the Denver, CO based band, practically explodes with deep, ecstatic soulfulness. “The born-again spirit of vintage soul music poured out of the man, measurable mostly in gallons,” raves NPR of the group’s powerful front man. So it’s entirely fitting that the release arrived on Stax Records, because at certain moments Rateliff seems to be channeling soul greats like Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. Delve beneath the rawboned surface of the new album’s deep-gut grooves, snaky guitars, churning Hammond and irresistible horns, and you’ll find a sensitive, introspective artist who tells it like it is. Yet even as Rateliff honors the gritty, rapturous sound of the legendary Memphis label, he’s also setting out into audacious new territory. “Nathaniel Rateliff is a passionate performer with a gift for singing and winning over an audience,” noted Consequence of Sound, “and that comes through on this record.” “I’m trying to do something that’s emotionally charged and heartfelt,” Rateliff says, “and I want the experience to be joyous. I can remember dancing around to some song that was breakin’ my heart, dancin’ with tears in my eyes. I love that feeling, and I wanna share it with people, and hopefully they’ll feel it too.” Join us on Nov. 22 and experience one of 2015’s finest new arrivals.

Heartless Bastards have spent the past decade in motion, boldly pushing their unique brand of rock ‘n’ roll into new shapes over four acclaimed albums and nearly non-stop roadwork. Now, with Restless Ones, the band sets out once again, blazing a path to a place of shifting moods, seasoned songcraft, and unbridled spontaneity. The Austin-based band’s fifth studio recording finds singer/songwriter Erika Wennerstrom exploring as-yet-unvisited avenues of sound and sensation, her bravery and ambition readily apparent in the emotional timbre and the sheer physicality of her songs. “We took a lot of chances,” Wennerstrom says, “taking the sounds in different directions in order to grow. I don’t ever want to make the same album twice.” Tracked in August 2014 during a 10-day session at El Paso’s renowned Sonic Ranch, Restless Ones “is a statement of collective confidence and ambitious vision,” says Magnet. “These songs capture an outstanding band hitting its stride,” says AllMusic, “and growing more comfortable with the craft of record-making along with singing and playing great, passionate music.” Rich with purpose, passion, and commanding musicianship, Restless Ones captures an idiosyncratic band exploring their craft and soul in an effort to reach a place that’s both true and transcendent. Heartless Bastards continue to drive their monumental music ever forward, towards hidden vistas and horizons still unseen. Follow their journey with us on Nov. 23 – and don’t miss their show at the Mohawk in Austin on Nov. 21!

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.

UPDATE: Austin City Limits and KLRU regret to inform you that the ACL taping with D’Angelo and The Vanguard, scheduled for Saturday, November 7th, has been cancelled. Thank you for your understanding.

Austin City Limits is proud to announce two new tapings as part of our upcoming Season 41: the ACL debuts of Kendrick Lamar on Oct. 30 and D’Angelo and The Vanguard on Nov. 7.

Perhaps the most acclaimed rapper on the planet, Kendrick Lamar comes to our stage on Oct. 30. The Compton native – born a year before the genre-defining N.W.A. LP Straight Outta Compton – began writing rhymes when he was 13. The young rapper would become an underground phenomenon, releasing mixtapes and independent albums that made him one of the top-selling digital artists. In 2012 he signed with Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope and released the landmark, platinum-selling good kid, m.A.A.d city. The LP debuted at #2 on the Billboard album chart, garnered seven Grammy nominations and spun off multiple top 40 singles, including “Swimming Pools (Drank”) and “Poetic Justice.” After touring with Kanye West, appearing on Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2 and performing a packed set at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Lamar followed up with the smash single “i,” which won Grammys for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song at the 2015 ceremony. The hit also set the stage for Lamar’s widely acclaimed latest LP To Pimp a Butterfly, which Rolling Stone called “a masterpiece of fiery outrage, deep jazz and ruthless self-critique” and Spin named the “Great American Hip-Hop Album.” The record debuted at #1 on Billboard’s chart, firmly establishing Lamar as one of the biggest hip-hop artists in the world. We’re thrilled to welcome Kendrick Lamar to be part of ACL history.

On Nov. 7 we welcome musical genius D’Angelo and his band The Vanguard. Born in Richmond, Virginia, D’Angelo migrated to New York City at 18 to develop his skills as a singer, songwriter, musician and producer.  After signing a publishing deal in 1991 and a record contract in 1993, his 1995 debut Brown Sugar breathed new life into R&B and yielded gems including the title track, “Lady,” “Cruisin’,” and more. Its 2000 follow-up Voodoo received a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album, while the single “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” earned the Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. After a silence of over a decade, broken only by the release of 2008’s compilation The Best So Far…, D’Angelo and The Vanguard delivered Black Messiah to the unsuspecting, yet receptive, masses on December 15, 2014. Reaffirming the need for raw, righteous, and real soul, its impact could immediately be felt when it landed at #1 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Chart and #5 on the Top 200. The critics spoke as well, with The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, NPR, and countless others extolling the album for both its music and message, thus usurping countless “Best of 2014” music lists. D’Angelo and The Vanguard hit the road, earning rave reviews for live shows Rolling Stone called “ a master class in soul” and Wall Street Journal described as “rendering a strain of soul music reminiscent of Sly Stone in the ‘60s, George Clinton in the ‘70s or 1980s Prince, onstage D’Angelo is a dynamo of the James Brown variety.” We’re excited to experience the same magic as we welcome D’Angelo and The Vanguard to the ACL stage for the first time.

In addition to performing at ACLTV D’Angelo and The Vanguard will also headline the Fun Fun Fun Fest Orange Stage on Sunday, November 8th. USP, 3 Day, and Single Day Passes for the festival are available for purchase at funfunfunfest.com.
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.