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 andTwitter for notice of postings.
Austin City Limits is pleased to announce a pair of new tapings: British folk-rock sensation James Bay on April 12 and soul singer Andra Day on June 12.
Coming off three 2016 Grammy nominations and a recent BRIT Award win for Best Male Solo Artist, singer-songwriter-guitarist James Bay is busily conquering the States with his debut LP Chaos and the Calm. Recorded in Nashville with producer Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, R.E.M.), the album went to #1 in the U.K and top 15 in the U.S. and produced the breakout hits “Let It Go” and “Hold Back the River.” The 25-year-old began playing music at age 11, growing up in the London suburb of Hitchin, strumming along to his parents’ Van Morrison and Derek & the Dominos records. At 18, Bay moved to the seaside city of Brighton to study music and hit every open mic night he could. When a fan recorded one of his performances it caught the attention of Republic Records, who signed him in 2013. Since then Bay has gone on to perform at iconic festivals including Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Sasquatch, Outside Lands, Austin City Limits Festival and more. Internationally, Chaos And The Calm has gone on to become one of the “Biggest New Artist Album Releases of 2015” and has been certified Gold in Australia & Switzerland, double platinum in the UK and has sold one over million albums worldwide. Currently in the midst of a sold-out Stateside headlining tour, Bay makes his Austin City Limits debut on April 12. You can enter our drawing for passes to this taping here.
photo by Myriam Santos
Singer and songwriter Andra Day also turned heads at this year’s Grammys, performing her uplifting song “Rise Up” from her Grammy-nominated debut album Cheers to the Fall. With a vintage flair and a voice for the ages, Day proved she’s ready to take her place in the pantheon of soulful vocalists and deliver her truth to the world. Her acclaimed debut, Cheers to the Fall, produced by heavyweight soul man Raphael Saadiq, is self-described as “a biography told in the form of music,” with themes centered on truth, fearlessness, vulnerability, forgiveness and love. The Boston Globe says, “This confident, stylish pop R&B record ushers in a sophisticated vocalist who faithfully reflects past influences while remaining contemporary and relevant,” and Vibe raves, “The beauty in Andra’s art is that the message applies to all. All we need to do is listen.” Singing in the church choir and studying, dance, theater and music at San Diego’s School of Creative and Performing Arts, Day always knew she wanted to sing professionally. She was performing in local nightclubs when none other than Stevie Wonder discovered her.
Day then filmed a series of popular YouTube clips, including a mashup of Lauryn Hill and Amy Winehouse, which caught the attention of Warner Bros. Records and led to a record deal. Known for her standout live performances, Day is currently on a U.S. tour, including upcoming dates with ACL alum Leon Bridges and a performance at this year’s Bonnaroo on deck. Join us in welcoming Andra Day in her ACL debut on June 12.
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 andTwitter for notice of postings.
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.”
photo by Dan Winters
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.
photo by Tom Beard
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 andTwitter 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.
photo by Danny Clinch
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 andTwitter 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
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.
