Kacey Musgraves returned to the Austin City Limits stage for her third appearance in ten years Monday, June 3, 2024 in support of her latest release, Deeper Well. We at Austin City Limits were thrilled to have her back to the show.
“It’s good to be back here in Texas,” said Musgraves, after taking the stage with her talented band, all sporting Canadian tuxedos. She continued, “It is such an honor to be kicking off the 50th season of ACL.”
Kacey Musgraves’ performance will air as the season premiere of the 50th anniversary of Austin City Limits, the longest running music series in television history. Season 50 is slated to premiere on PBS in September 2024.
Kacey Musgraves performs on Austin City Limits, June 3, 2024. Photos by Scott Newton.
Listen to the full set list from the Austin City Limits taping below:
Nickel Creek returned to the Austin City Limits stage Sunday, May 5 for their fourth performance over a 25-year period, in continued support for their 2023 release of fifth album, Celebrants, coming off a nine-year hiatus in releasing new material. With their debut in 1999, Terry Lickona mentioned in introducing them that “they were teenagers when they came on the show the first time,” sharing an episode from their second performance on ACL with none other than Dolly Parton. Siblings Sara Watkins (fiddle, guitar, vocals) and Sean Watkins (guitar, vocals), with Chris Thile (mandolin, mandola, bouzouki, vocals) and Jeff Picker (bass, vocals) came onstage jumping for joy and hyping up the crowd. They began the dazzling hour with “Where the Long Line Leads,” “The Lighthouse’s Tale,” and the instrumental “Going Out…,” with Chris Thile pausing in between to reflect on their fourth visit to ACL, “We’re not teenagers anymore…”
In title track, “Celebrants,” the band clapped rhythmically in unison, pairing that enthusiasm with whimsical licks from the mandolin, with Thile switching between the mandolin, mandola and bouzouki throughout the set. Sara Watkins wielded her fiddle with expert showmanship, with band member introductions before and after “Strangers.” Jeff Picker and Sean Watkins grounded the set with consistency and self-assurance only earned from years of growth and experience. In fact the underlying tone of the set seemed to be an introspective look at growth with a fond acceptance of where they’re currently at musically and in life, and embracing those in between moments.
The trio shared one microphone for “Water under the bridge Part 1,” with their flawless harmonies dipping and diving into low and high registers, showcasing their skillful range. Their infectious energy proved they were truly having fun onstage, which the studio audience definitely seemed to pick up on and feed off, clapping along throughout the set.
Sara prefaced “Thinnest Wall,” with a few background notes, “We would like to address the relationship part of relationships where you’re in there dealing with all the stuff,” with the song being a look at the “beautiful monotony of the in between.”
“To the Airport,” featured an impassioned monologue about Amy’s Ice Cream from Chris Thile, followed by a vocals-only section where the trio harmonized perfectly to a quietly intent audience. Followed by fiddle tune, “Cuckoo’s Nest,” the second half of the hour picked up in energy, leading the group to a strong finish with “New Blood,” “Smoothie Song,” and “The Fox,” with Sara chiming in between songs, “It’s so special to us to get to do ACL.” With that the band did a choreographed jump and bow, and walked offstage momentarily before returning to perform an encore of “When in Rome,” and “Holding Pattern.” Catch the taping of Nickel Creek later this year as part of Austin City Limits’ special 50th anniversary season.
Nickel Creek performs on Austin City Limits, May 5, 2024. Photos by Scott Newton.
Listen to the full set list from the Austin City Limits taping below:
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Austin City Limits, Zilker Belts has designed and produced two custom leather belts, the Spotlight and Backstage, featuring signature black Argentine leather expertly hand-stitched in Buenos Aires with tonal grey and gold nylon thread, incorporating the iconic Austin City Limits logo.
Zilker Belts values handmade artistry and are passionate about bringing traditional Argentine fashion to our hometown of Austin and beyond. We’re thrilled to partner with a brand like Zilker Belts, music lovers through and through, whose passion for their city is reinforced by their Zilker Sessions and collaborations with other Austin brands like SXSW, Luck Reunion, and The Daytripper, to name a few.
DON’T KNOW YOUR SIZE? A good rule when choosing a Zilker Belt is to go 2” larger than your pants’ waist size. So if you typically wear size 34 jeans, order a size 36 belt. For odd sizes, we suggest ordering 3” larger to be safe (ex. – choose a size 38 Zilker Belt for size 35 jeans).
Belts will also be sold at the merch table at Austin City Limits tapings and other events, and are available to purchase online HERE.
Austin City Limits is excited to announce that we will be live streaming our upcoming Season 49 taping with Grammy-winning guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela in their first appearance in a decade, with a one-of-a-kind performancefeaturing the Austin Symphony Orchestra on July 7 at 8pm CT. This appearance marks the first time Austin City Limits/Austin PBS has collaborated with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, one of Austin’s oldest and most respected arts institutions. ACL offers fans worldwide the unique opportunity to watch this taping live in its entirety free here on our ACLTV YouTube Channel.
In an unprecedented performance, Rodrigo y Gabriela will be joined by over thirty musicians from the Austin Symphony Orchestra to bring to life their latest release In Between Thoughts…A New World on the ACL stage. For over two decades, the Mexico City-bred duo of Gabriela Quintero and Rodrigo Sanchez have created music that invites lasting transcendence, captivating audiences across the globe with their virtuosic and wildly inventive guitar playing. In Between Thoughts marks a sharp departure from the signature acoustic sound the acclaimed act first showcased on their 2006 self-titled studio debut, and finds the pair expanding their sound with an orchestra. Conceived during the pandemic, the duo worked remotely with Vienna-based composer Adam Ilyas Kuruc and The Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, who ornamented their serpentine arrangements with lush strings and powerful percussion. Sparked from their study of Advaita Vedanta (a Hindu philosophy rooted in the concept of nondualism), In Between Thoughts…A New World arrives as one of Rodrigo y Gabriela’s most revelatory offerings to date: a spontaneously composed body of work primed to bring about the very expansion of consciousness that inspired its creation. As they delved further into the philosophy, the duo began channeling their sense of heightened awareness into song form. “The music just started flowing out, without any real intention,” says Rodrigo. “When we looked back we realized we’d come up with nine songs that told the story of our coming to understand the Advaita path, in the exact perfect order.” The album finds Rodrigo trading his acoustic guitar for electric, adding a mercurial new energy that’s elegantly amplified by the duo’s subtle use of analog synths, Mellotron, and other electronic instruments. Propelled by a fierce vitality hinting at their thrash-metal roots, the result is an album of relentless movement and endless fluidity, each moment charged with the pure thrill of discovery. “When the subject matter is something like spirituality or seeking meaning, that can very easily go along with music that’s calming or serene,” says Gabriela. “But we wanted to do something different — we wanted to bring a cinematic quality and a lot of action to the music, and make it feel as exciting as we find all this to be.”
Join us here on July 7 at 8 p.m. CT for Rodrigo y Gabriela featuring the Austin Symphony Orchestra; the broadcast episode will air on PBS this fall as part of our upcoming Season 49. Tune in to your local PBS station on Saturday nights for fan-favorite encore episodes of Austin City Limits; watch live on PBS, or stream anytime at PBS.org.
Photos by Danny Clinch, Derrek Kupish, and Anton Goiri.
Austin City Limits kicks off an exciting summer with a trio of new tapings for Season 49: the return of celebrated Americana superstars Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit on June 14 in their third headlining appearance; the long-awaited comeback, after nearly four decades, of country icon Tanya Tucker on July 10; and the debut of global music powerhouse Jorge Drexler, who swept the 2022 Latin Grammy Awards with a record seven awards, on July 31.
A Jason Isbell record always lands like a decoder ring in the ears and hearts of his audience, a soundtrack to his world and, magically, to theirs, too. Weathervanes, Isbell and his GRAMMY®-winning band the 400 Unit’s eighth album, out June 9, carries the same revelatory power. This is a storyteller at the peak of his craft, observing his fellow wanderers, looking inside and trying to understand, reducing a universe to four minutes. Isbell shrinks life small enough to name the fear and then strip it away, helping his listeners make sense of how two plus two stops equaling four once you reach a certain age—and carry a certain amount of scars. “There is something about boundaries on this record,” Isbell says. “As you mature, you still attempt to keep the ability to love somebody fully and completely while you’re growing into an adult and learning how to love yourself.” Written and produced by Isbell, Weathervanes is a collection of grown-up songs: Songs about adult love, about change, about the danger of nostalgia and the interrogation of myths, about cruelty and regret and redemption. Some will make you cry alone in your car and others will make you sing along with thousands of strangers in a big summer pavilion, united in the great miracle of being alive. The record features the rolling thunder of Isbell’s fearsome 400 Unit, who’ve earned a place in the rock ‘n’ roll cosmos alongside the greatest backing ensembles, as powerful and essential to the storytelling as The E Street Band or the Wailers. They make a big noise, as Isbell puts it, and he feels so comfortable letting them be a main prism through which much of the world hears his art. He can be private but with his mighty band behind him he transforms, and there is a version of himself that can only exist in their presence. The roots of this record go back into the isolation of the pandemic and to Isbell’s recent time on the set as an actor on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. There were guitars in his trailer and in his rented house and a lot of time to sit and think. The melancholy yet soaring track “King of Oklahoma” was written there. Isbell also watched the great director work, saw the relationship between a clear vision and its execution, and perhaps most important, saw how even someone as decorated as Scorsese sought out and used his co-workers’ opinions. “It definitely helped when I got into the studio,” Isbell says. “I had this reinvigorated sense of collaboration. You can have an idea and you can execute it and not compromise — and still listen to the other people in the room.”
Tanya Tucker, 2023. Photo by Derrek Kupish.
Edgy. Classic. Country. A defining voice of music and a modern-day legend, 2023 Country Music Hall of Fame Inductee and two-time GRAMMY® winner Tanya Tucker continues to inspire artists today. Born in Seminole, Texas, Tanya – who first appeared on ACL in 1986, during Season 11 – had her first country hit, the classic “Delta Dawn,” at the age of 13 in 1972. Since that auspicious beginning, she has become one of the most admired and influential artists in country music history, amassing 23 Top 40 albums and a stellar string of 56 Top 40 singles, ten of which reached the No. 1 spot on the Billboard country charts. Tanya’s indelible songs include some of country music’s biggest hits such as the aforementioned “Delta Dawn,” “Soon,” “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane,” “It’s a Little Too Late,” “Trouble,” “Texas (When I Die),” “If It Don’t Come Easy,” “Strong Enough To Bend” and many more. Tanya is also the recipient of numerous awards, including two CMAs, two ACMs and three CMT awards. In 2020, Tanya received two GRAMMY® Awards for Best Country Album: While I’m Livin’ and Best Country Song: “Bring My Flowers Now.” In the fall of 2020, Fantasy Records released Tanya Tucker – Live From The Troubadour on the one-year anniversary of Tanya’s historic, standing-room only set from which it originates. In October 2022, The Return of Tanya Tucker, Featuring Brandi Carlile, a documentary that chronicles the resurgence in Tucker’s career following the success of While I’m Livin’, hit theaters globally via Sony Pictures Classics. Lauded by The New York Times, the documentary raves that Tanya “hasn’t lost a step in terms of phrasing. The teardrop in her voice, strategically used in heartache songs, remains credible. [The doc] interweaves the contemporary sessions…better-than-competent piece of fan service.” In December 2022, Tanya made her acting debut in a lead role in Paramount’s A Nashville Country Christmas, starring alongside Academy Award® winner Keith Carradine. This June, Fantasy Records will release Tanya’s new album, Sweet Western Sound, which stands on her exquisitely warm and wizened vocals and a spectacular collection of cut-deep songs—an assertive and confident declaration of vitality and purpose from an irrepressible and irreplaceable country music icon. Produced once again by Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings, Sweet Western Sound reunites the award-winning trio. In October of 2023, Tanya will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame – marking more than 50 years in the entertainment business.
Jorge Drexler, 2023. Photo by Anton Goiri.
Jorge Drexler is an Uruguayan musician and singer-songwriter with a storied professional career—over the course of three decades, he has recorded fourteen studio albums and has toured all over the world. The widely-acclaimed and decorated artist is the recipient of an Academy Award (2004) and thirteen Latin Grammys (2014, 2018, 2021, 2022). In 2022 Drexler released the acclaimed Tinta y Tiempo (Ink and Time), his fourteenth studio album, which earned an astonishing seven awards at 2022’s Latin Grammy Awards, including top honors of Song of the Year and Record of the Year for the album’s breakout single “Tocarte” (To Touch You). The sweeping and cinematic Tinta y Tiempo focuses on nature’s invention of love as a survival mechanism. “It was the thematic vector that informs the entire record, the kind of discourse that comes up when you emerge from a pandemic,” says Drexler. “Dealing with fear and the possibility of death makes you ponder the importance of life. Love as driving energy, life’s dynamo. This is why I believe the album is filled with color.” Anchored on his trademark poetic cosmovision and quirky wordplay, the collection is boosted by exquisite orchestral arrangements. Guest artists including Panamanian songwriter Rubén Blades, Spanish rapper C. Tangana, Israeli rapper/singer Noga Erez and Uruguayan singer Martín Buscaglia add color to a sophisticated songbook that finds Drexler’s voice—a wondrous instrument, capable of evoking vulnerability, hope and wistfulness within a single verse—in a state of grace. Rolling Stone calls the album “One of the most whimsical and free-spirited albums of his 30-year career.” The New York Times remarks that “Tinta y Tiempo is Drexler’s 14th studio album in a recording career filled with richly poetic, ingeniously constructed songs, delivered with amiable understatement.” This is an album of classic elegance and, at the same time, the overall sound vibrates in a very contemporary frequency, combining elements of candombe, pop, bossa nova, flamenco, bolero, Carioca funk, hip hop, trap, zamba, soul, Panamanian mejorana, or baguala, filtered through the sound of the orchestra, samples, percussive textures, female vocals, bass, drums, electric guitar and keyboards. The conceptual song cycle of Tinta y Tiempo sums up Drexler’s lush take on popular song, its ability to uplift and enlighten. “We have just emerged from a very difficult experience,” he adds. “Our capacity to love and our zest for life have been tested. The act of loving involves a certain sense of confusion, of losing control, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We should not lock ourselves in a world fueled by fear and self-oppression. We must keep our hearts thirsty for more, much more – against all odds.”
Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes a week in advance of the taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings. The broadcast episodes will air on PBS this fall as part of our upcoming Season 49.
Austin City Limits announces an all-star slate of guest performers for the 2022 ACL Hall of Fame Inductions & Celebration on October 27, 2022 celebrating a pair of American originals: superstar singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow and legendary Texas music pioneer Joe Ely. Music greats Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, Mavis Staples, Brittney Spencer, Marcia Ball, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock will take part in saluting the newest class of inductees with one-of-a-kind music performances and tributes. The inductees will be honored at the star-studded ceremony on October 27th, 2022 at ACL’s studio home, ACL Live at The Moody Theater in downtown Austin. More information about presenters and additional guest stars will be announced prior to the event. Musical highlights and inductions from the celebration will air as a special Austin City Limits on January 7, 2023 on PBS.
The event is open to the public and a limited number of tickets are on sale at acltv.com/hall-of-fame. Sponsor packages are available now at acltv.com/hall-of-fame. All proceeds benefit Austin PBS.
An all-star line-up of special guests will salute the honorees on this epic night: Americana great and six-time Grammy Award recipient Brandi Carlile, celebrated songwriter Jason Isbell, living legend Mavis Staples and country breakout Brittney Spencer will perform in tribute to nine-time Grammy Award winner Sheryl Crow. Texas music legend Joe Ely will be honored by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright along with a musical salute from revered Lone Star musicians and Ely’s longtime collaborators in Texas supergroup The Flatlanders, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, along with blues legend and ACL Hall of Famer Marcia Ball. Inductees Sheryl Crow and Joe Ely will perform at the celebration. ACL Hall of Famer, renowned steel guitarist and producer Lloyd Maines, returns as Music Director, leading the ACL All-Stars house band featuring guitarist David Grissom, keyboardist Chris Gage, bassist Bill Whitbeck and drummer Tom Van Schaik.
The eighth class of inductees features two iconic acts: Celebrated singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow has made two classic hourlong appearances on ACL in her remarkable three-decade career, starting with her debut on Season 22 in 1997 and returning in 2004. She also co-hosted ACL’s 40th anniversary special in 2014, the same year the Hall of Fame was established. An icon of Texas music, Joe Ely has made 11 appearances on ACL: including as a headliner five times beginning with his 1980 ACL debut in Seasaon 5; also joining Los Super 7 in 1999, Texas supergroup The Flatlanders in 2002, and a Songwriters Special with Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt and Guy Clark in 2008. The influential artist has made guest appearances with multiple acts, including Kevin Welch in 1992, Ryan Bingham in 2009 and joined Steve Earle and the Dukes in 2019 for a tribute to Guy Clark.
Established in 2014, the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame celebrates the legacy of legendary artists and key individuals who have played a vital part in the pioneering music series remarkable nearly half-century as a music institution. The Hall of Fame has inducted over twenty artists at seven previous ceremonies including Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, Lloyd Maines, Asleep at the Wheel, Loretta Lynn, Guy Clark, Flaco Jiménez, Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Roy Orbison, Rosanne Cash, The Neville Brothers, Ray Charles, Marcia Ball, Los Lobos, Lyle Lovett, Buddy Guy, Shawn Colvin. The seventh annual Hall of Fame in 2021 welcomed Lucinda Williams, Wilco and Alejandro Escovedo to its ranks.
Austin City Limits and the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame are produced by Austin PBS. Austin PBS is a non-profit organization providing public television and educational resources to Central Texas as well as producing quality national programming.
Austin City Limits
Austin City Limits (ACL) offers viewers unparalleled access to featured acts in an intimate setting that provides a platform for artists to deliver inspired, memorable, full-length performances. Now in its 48th Season, the program is taped live before a concert audience from The Moody Theater in downtown Austin. Austin City Limits is the longest-running music series in television history and remains the only TV series to ever be awarded the National Medal of Arts. Since its inception, the groundbreaking music series has become an institution that’s helped secure Austin’s reputation as the Live Music Capital of the World. The historic Austin PBS Studio 6A, home to 36 years of ACL concerts, has been designated an official Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Landmark. In 2011, ACL moved to the new venue ACL Live at The Moody Theater in downtown Austin. ACL received a rare institutional Peabody Award for excellence and outstanding achievement in 2012.
Austin City Limits is produced by Austin PBS and funding is provided in part by Dell Technologies, Workrise, the Austin Convention Center Department and Cirrus Logic. Additional funding is provided by the Friends of Austin City Limits. Learn more about Austin City Limits, programming and history at acltv.com.
