Category: Taping Announcement

Austin City Limits is beyond excited to announce a stellar slate of tapings featuring artists performing at our namesake Austin City Limits Music Festival this October. Please welcome for the first time: rising star Khalid on Oct. 3, Latin superstar rapper Residente on Oct. 7, boundary-smashing soul auteur Janelle Monáe on Oct. 8 and British modern rock icons Arctic Monkeys on Oct. 13.

Five-time Grammy® nominated artist Khalid has seen great success since he released his first single “Location” right before his high school graduation. The song’s domination led to Khalid’s major label deal with Right Hand Music Group/RCA Records followed by the release of his debut album American Teen. The album received mass critical acclaim with Rolling Stone calling Khalid a “pop prodigy” and TIME Magazine stating, ““His thoughtful, relatable reflections on modern youth culture and the limitations of love are just as pitch-perfect as his soulful, measured delivery.” American Teen shattered expectations, as it stayed in the Top 200 for 51 weeks, peaked at #4, and stayed in the Top 20 for 48 out of the 51 weeks it was in the Top 200. The singer-songwriter has over one billion streams worldwide across all partners, his first single “Location” is certified 4x Platinum by the RIAA, his previous single “Young Dumb & Broke” is certified 3X Platinum, and his album is now certified 2x Platinum. Since the album’s debut, Khalid has garnered five 2018 Grammy® nominations including Best New Artist and landed on the cover of Billboard’s 2018 Grammy® Preview issue. He recently won two 2018 Teen Choice Awards for Choice Breakout Artist and Choice R&B/Hip-Hop Song for “Love Lies” with Normani. He was also nominated for a 2017 BET Award for Best New Artist, a 2017 Teen Choice Award for Choice R&B/Hip-Hop Song for “Location”, and a 2017 American Music Award for Favorite Song-Soul/R&B for “Location.” Khalid also won Top New Artist at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards, Best New Artist at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards and an MTV’s Woodie To Watch Award. In addition to American Teen, Khalid has collaborated with some of music’s biggest stars. He has been featured on a number of songs including mega hits like Calvin Harris’s “Rollin” with Future, “1-800-273-8255” with Logic and Alessia Cara, “Silence” with Marshmello, “Lovely” with Billie Eilish, “Youth” with Shawn Mendes, and many more. Khalid’s current singles “Love Lies”, a duet with Normani, and “OTW” featuring Ty Dolla $ign and 6lack are burning up the airwaves. Khalid recently wrapped up his third sold-out North American headlining tour.

Born René Pérez Joglar, Residente is a Puerto Rican rapper, writer, producer and co-founder of the trailblazing alternative rap group Calle 13. He has won a record-breaking 28 Grammy® Awards (four Grammys® and 24 Latin Grammys®). Residente studied fine art for eight years before launching an independent career as a lyricist, performer and director of many of his own music videos. He was inspired to create his self-titled 2017 debut solo album after a DNA test showed that he had roots all over the world. Thus galvanized, he traveled the globe, visiting the different countries where his roots could be found and recording with local musicians in Siberia, Moscow, China, Ghana, Burkina Faso, France, and many more. The resulting album includes guest performances from Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda (Residente’s distant cousin), Tuareg world music star Bombino, French pop singer SoKo, At the Drive-In/Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-López and members of the Peking Opera. Rolling Stone notes “Each song is its own new genre, sourced from regional sounds and specially tailored to reflect the diversity of his DNA,” while Remezcla remarks that “at the heart is Residente’s belief that knowledge of our fellow global citizens is power.” Billboard simply describes the album as “exciting, thought-provoking, touching and shocking.”  Residente has been recognized for his commitment to social justice, championing educational and native rights across Latin America. The superstar received the prestigious Nobel Peace Summit Award in 2015 for his efforts to promote social awareness and peace. He has also served as the spokesperson for UNICEF and Amnesty International campaigns, and in 2018 was awarded the BMI Champion Award for his musical career and humanitarian work – the first Latin American artist to receive this recognition.  

Janelle Monáe is a Grammy® nominated singer-songwriter, performer, producer, activist and actress. She recently released her critically-acclaimed third solo album Dirty Computer and the accompanying film Dirty Computer: An Emotion Picture by Janelle Monáe, earning widespread praise for her cinematic range and vision.  The L.A. Times calls the record “a warm and vibrant tribute to the marginalized people, especially women and those with fluid ideas about gender and sexuality, whom Monáe sees as the true embodiment of America’s promise.” Q describes it as “fierce, honest and a challenge to the forces of obsolescence,” while The A.V. Club simply says “she’s outdone herself in both the execution of this vision and its resonance.” Rolling Stone put it more bluntly: “It’s a sexy MF-ing masterpiece.” The UK’s Guardian hailed her current world tour as “euphoric funk at the edge of megastardom.”  Immersed in the performing arts at a young age, the Kansas City native founded her own record label, Wondaland Arts Society, releasing the 2008 EP Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). Monáe went on to release 2010’s acclaimed The ArchAndroid and 2013’s The Electric Lady. Additionally, she took her talents to the silver screen, starring in the 2017 Academy Awards Best Picture Moonlight and the Oscar-nominated hit Hidden Figures. Monáe is set to star in Robert Zemeckis’ Welcome to Marwen for release in winter 2018.  The visionary artist launched Fem the Future in 2016, an initiative to create more opportunities to advance the awareness, inclusion and opportunities for women and those who identify as women through music, arts, mentorship and education.

One of music’s biggest live acts, Arctic Monkeys make their ACL debut in the midst of a sold-out world tour and a headlining spot on ACL Fest. After springing to international attention in 2006 when their first album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not became the fastest selling debut LP in British chart history, Arctic Monkeys have released a string of critically acclaimed albums. The band’s sixth studio album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, follows the Sheffield, U.K. quartet’s most commercially successful LP to date, 2013’s A.M., which reached #1 on charts in a dozen countries, achieved platinum status in the U.S. and has sold approximately five million copies worldwide. Tranquility Base is a bold and brilliant album reflecting singer/songwriter/bandleader Alex Turner’s ever more comprehensive creative vision. The core ideas for Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino took root in L.A. in the early months of 2017, as Turner began recording demos in his modest home studio. Though he’d rarely written on anything other than guitar, piano-led songs began pouring out of him. After Turner tracked as much as he could at home on his Tascam, Arctic Monkeys reconvened at France’s storied La Frette studio, a converted 19th-century mansion, to spend five weeks recording with their longtime producer James Ford. “There’s a definite vibe about that place,” says guitarist Jamie Cook. “We were really home there…I would probably say it was the best recording session we’ve ever done.” The result is the most unusual record in the band’s six-record repertoire. Q calls it “a strange, wonderful album,” while Spin notes that “the more you give in to these vibes, the more the vibes give back.” “The first listen may be surprising,” says PopMatters, “but repeated listens illuminate that Arctic Monkeys remain progressive and energetic even when style and mood shift dramatically.”

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 broadcast versions will air on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 44.

Austin City Limits welcomes back a pair of singular artists with their own spins on traditional American musical forms: legendary blues guitarist/singer Buddy Guy on September 17, making his fifth appearance on the ACL stage, and soul/funk singer/horn player Trombone Shorty on September 26, making his third.

Buddy Guy’s astounding career spans over fifty years with just as many albums released. Career highlights include the 2015 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, seven Grammy Awards, 37 Blues Music Awards, Kennedy Center Honors, Billboard Music Awards’ Century Award, Presidential National Medal of Arts, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to name a few. The blues titan recently released his eighteenth solo LP, The Blues is Alive and Well, the acclaimed follow-up to his 2015 album Born To Play Guitar, which received “Best Blues Album” honors at the 2016 Grammy Awards, and debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Blues Album charts.  Produced by Guy’s longtime partner Tom Hambridge and featuring special guests Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck and James Bay, the new album is hailed “a heart-warming set from a cultural treasure” by Mojo. Rolling Stone raves, “Buddy Guy proves blues is alive and well,” while Uncut notes, “[Guy] stretches out into these songs, inhabiting them comfortably and casually, almost always finding a way to make the familiar sound fresh.” Guy will be the recipient of this year’s Americana Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Honor, and at 82 years young, proves unstoppable as he continues to record and tour around the world.

Part Jimi Hendrix, part James Brown and all New Orleans, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews is the bandleader and frontman of Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, a hard-edged funk band that employs brass-band beats, rock dynamics and improvisation in a jazz tradition. NPR hailed him as “New Orleans’ brightest new star in a generation,” and New York Magazine wrote that “Trombone Shorty takes in a century-plus worth of sounds—ragtime and jazz and gospel and soul and R&B and hip-hop—and attacks everything he plays with festive fervor.” His 2017 Blue Note Records debut Parking Lot Symphony contains multitudes of sound—from brass band blare and deep-groove funk to bluesy beauty and hip-hop/pop swagger—and plenty of emotion all anchored by stellar playing and the idea that, even in the toughest of times, as Shorty says, “Music brings unity.” OffBeat wrote that “Parking Lot Symphony continues Trombone Shorty’s personal tradition of stunningly good musicianship, crowd-pleasing good material and just plain good fun,” adding that “Andrews keeps the music close to his heart and his hometown.” To celebrate that hometown’s 300th birthday, its rich cultural heritage, and the bright future of its music, Trombone Shorty, Orleans Avenue and handpicked special guests are touring the nation as Trombone Shorty’s Voodoo Threauxdown. “New Orleans is the best place in the world,” says Shorty. “With this show, my friends and I want to spotlight New Orleans, bring joy and fun and partying to the nation, because that’s what New Orleans creates. That’s what our music is about.”

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 broadcast version will air on PBS later this year as part of our upcoming Season 44.

Austin City Limits welcomes the 2018 Grammy Award-winner for Best New Artist: acclaimed singer/songwriter Alessia Cara, who will hit the stage in her debut taping on August 2, showcasing songs from her highly-anticipated new album alongside chart-topping career highlights.

Following a groundbreaking run of six global platinum hits, the 21-year old Canadian recently released “Growing Pains,” the debut single from her forthcoming sophomore album, out later this year.  The entire LP was written solely by Cara and features two songs self-produced by the Grammy Award winning artist. “I really thought it’d be cool to have a nice challenge to see if I can write something, like a whole project, on my own,” she tells Rolling Stone.  “It’s something that I wanted to see if I could do.”  

Cara catapulted onto the charts in late 2015 with her spellbinding, multi-platinum smash “Here,” from her breakout platinum debut album KNOW-IT-ALL, which also spawned the chart-topping global hit “Scars To Your Beautiful.” For Alessia’s legions of die-hard fans, “Growing Pains” is the long-awaited follow-up to the 4x-platinum “1-800-273-8255,” her hit collab­o­­­ration with fellow Def Jam artist Logic, one of 2017’s landmark singles with over 1.5 billion streams worldwide. Along with “Stay”—her Grammy-nominated double-platinum #1 pop collaboration with Zedd—and a parade of hits, Alessia has generated over 7 billion global streams to date, becoming the most-streamed new female artist of 2017.

Known for stripped down, powerful live shows, Cara closed out this year’s Grammy broadcast joined by collaborators Logic and Khalid, in a show-stopping, emotional performance of  the Grammy-nominated anti suicide song “1-800-273-8255”. Still at the beginning of what promises to be a remarkable career, we’re thrilled to showcase this stunning new artist on the ACL stage.

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 broadcast version will air on PBS later this year as part of our upcoming Season 44.

We here at Austin City Limits are excited to welcome one of the fastest-rising and most adventurous voices in R&B to our stage: Miguel. The singer, songwriter and creator of the acclaimed LP War & Leisure tapes his ACL debut on July 8.

Over the last decade, Miguel has established himself as one of R&B’s most sonic fabulists, a consummate artist unafraid to follow his impulses wherever they lead him. The Los Angeles native’s mix of funk, rock, hip-hop and electronica has garnered him frequent comparisons to Prince and Babyface. Miguel’s fourth studio full-length, War & Leisure, is his most ambitious and stunning project yet, a perfect blend of forward-thinking production and melodic delights that more than embody the duality hinted at in the album’s title. Miguel conceived these twelve pop gems as perfectly blending the skyward pop of 2012’s Kaleidoscope Dream (which netted him a Best R&B Song Grammy win in 2013 for its astounding single “Adorn”) and the restless, moody vibes of 2015’s Wildheart—reflecting the true Miguel experience for both listeners and the album’s creator. “On every project, I’m trying to paint a picture for my future self to go back, listen, and remember my experiences and how I was perceiving the world through music,” he states on the mercurial meeting point that War & Leisure reaches. “Kaleidoscope Dream and Wildheart are two sides of the same coin, and this is me taking those sounds and applying all the energy I’m feeling most from those two contrasts.” This is Miguel fusing the two halves of his creative id—the restless experimentalist and the crowd-pleasing hitmaker that millions of fans adore—to reach a new peak in artistic achievement.

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 broadcast versions will air on PBS later this year as part of our Season 44.

Austin City Limits has a pair of highlights coming up this summer: new tapings featuring roots rocker Lukas Nelson in his ACL debut on July 2 and the second appearance of international pop superstar Sam Smith on July 23.

After more than a decade on the road barnstorming across the U.S and around the world, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real have developed into one of America’s most dazzling live acts, attracting a dedicated, ever expanding following.  Still, with a bounty of invaluable experience under their belts, nothing foretold the artistic leap of their latest album, the self-titled Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, a mesmerizing, emotionally genuine, endlessly rewarding slice of cosmic country soul.  Released via Fantasy Records last summer, the widely acclaimed album draws on many of Lukas’ country and rock influences including literate Texas songsmiths like his dad, Willie Nelson, ‘uncles’ Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings, and iconoclasts such as J.J. Cale, The Band, Clapton-era Delaney & Bonnie and of course, the band’s mentor Neil Young, for whom the young devotees have toured and recorded with the past few years. 

Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real features Lukas Nelson (guitar, vocals), Tato Melgar (percussion), Anthony LoGerfo (drums), Corey McCormick (bass, vocals) and Jesse Siebenberg (steel guitars, Farfisa organ, vocals) along with back-up vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Lessig of the indie-pop group Lucius, and Lady Gaga who added stirring vocals to two of the album’s 12 tracks.  The album’s lilting, Glen Campbell inspired gem, “Just Outside of Austin” also features a classic Willie Nelson guitar solo, and piano from Lukas’ 86-year-old Aunt Bobbi. “Their latest displays a newfound confidence, brokering country-soul, Southern rock and R&B with some panache,” proclaimed Uncut.  “The band’s best work, the record is a huge leap forward for Nelson,” raved Entertainment Weekly, and American Songwriter declared, “Ultimately, Lukas is carrying on Willie’s tradition, pushing the outlaw boundaries his famous father established in the ’70s and proving that the musical apple truly does not fall far from the tree.”  Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real were recently honored with a 2018 Americana Music Awards nomination for Group of the Year.

Multi-platinum GRAMMY ® award winning artist Sam Smith wowed ACL audiences with his 2014 debut during our milestone Season 40 and now, he returns with his chart topping, acclaimed sophomore album The Thrill Of It All.  Rolling Stone awarded it four stars and hailed Smith as “one of the mightiest, most expressive singers of his generation.”  The album includes the hits “Pray” and “Too Good At Goodbyes,” which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart and is certified Platinum by the RIAA.  The British native’s breakout 2014 album, In The Lonely Hour was the biggest selling U.K. male debut in the SoundScan era and went on to sell 13 million albums worldwide. In 2015, Smith set a GRAMMY® record, winning a total of four awards – the most ever received by a U.K. artist following the release of a debut album. He was named Best New Artist, In The Lonely Hour took Best Pop Vocal Album honors and his single “Stay With Me” won awards for both Record and Song of the Year. Smith has also earned an Oscar, a Golden Globe, three Billboard Music Awards and three BRIT Awards.  He’s currently on his global headline The Thrill Of It All world tour.

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 broadcast episodes will air on PBS this fall as part of our Season 44.