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News Ticket Giveaway

Giveaway: Cam

Austin City Limits will tape a performance from Cam on Monday, June 2nd at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). Austin City Limits Taping Giveaways are presented by AXS Events.

Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pick up tickets. Winners will be notified via email. Duplicate entries for a single taping will be automatically voided. Tickets are not transferable and will be voided if sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras, computers or recording devices allowed in the venue. While we do our best to accommodate all winners, we cannot guarantee admissionThese passes are based on space available therefore you will be filling in spots available on the floor or balcony depending on the tickets that are available when you arrive.


In 2025, multi-platinum, GRAMMY-nominated artist and songwriter Cam’s voice resonates louder than ever, contributing songwriting, production, and backing vocals to Beyoncé’s genre-shattering album COWBOY CARTER. Her significant involvement on COWBOY CARTER secured Cam her first GRAMMY win as a songwriter for Album of The Year,

In addition to her big year with Beyonce, she was also a featured artist and songwriter on 070 Shake’s new album PETRICHOR (released late 2024) and is now preparing for the release of her new body of work with RCA Records in 2025.

Prolific and adored, Cam stepped into the spotlight in a big way with her critically acclaimed full-length debut, Untamed. The record not only bowed in the Top 15 of the Billboard Top 200 and registered at #2 on the Top Country Albums Chart, but it also yielded her the breakthrough smash “Burning House.” It went triple-platinum, notched GRAMMY®, ACM, and CMA award nominations, and remains one of the best-selling country songs by a female solo artist since its release.      

For her critically acclaimed sophomore release, The Otherside, she once again enlisted producers Tyler Johnson (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, SZA) and Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, Alicia Keys). The record featured the international Jolene-in-reverse hit “Diane,” the undeniable jam “Till There’s Nothing Left,” plus songwriting from Avicii, Harry Styles, Jack Antonoff, and Sam Smith. In addition to penning five songs for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album (“American Requiem,” “Protector,” “Daughter,” “Tyrant,” “Amen”), Cam has also lent her songwriting to superstars like Miley Cyrus, Diplo, and Sam Smith. 

She has consistently sold out shows across the globe, cementing her status as an international powerhouse on stage. From the coveted sunset slot at Stagecoach to top venues across five continents, in recent years, she has been one of the few country acts to play Lollapalooza, ACL Fest, and Outside Lands while also supporting acts like Harry Styles, George Strait, Sam Smith, Loretta Lynn, the Indigo Girls, Eric Church, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill. 

A vivid storyteller, clever wordsmith, and committed visionary, fans have only just begun to scratch the surface of Cam’s many facets. As she bravely steps into her next era, she’s welcoming everyone into a space that’s inclusive, invigorating, and inspiring.


For entry to Austin City Limits tapings, you agree to abide by the Taping Health & Safety Protocols based on the current COVID-19 Community Risk Stage in effect at the time of the event. By attending the ACL tapings, you agree to the Terms & Conditions.

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News Ticket Giveaway Tickets Distributed

Giveaway: Thee Sacred Souls

UPDATE: The giveaway is now closed. Austin City Limits will tape a performance from Thee Sacred Souls on Wednesday, May 28th at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). Austin City Limits Taping Giveaways are presented by AXS Events.

Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pick up tickets. Winners will be notified via email. Duplicate entries for a single taping will be automatically voided. Tickets are not transferable and will be voided if sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras, computers or recording devices allowed in the venue. While we do our best to accommodate all winners, we cannot guarantee admissionThese passes are based on space available therefore you will be filling in spots available on the floor or balcony depending on the tickets that are available when you arrive.


The highly anticipated follow-up to their breakout 2022 self-titled debut, Thee Sacred Soul’s Got A Story To Tell (Daptone Records) features 12 all original new songs, a soaring statement of exquisite craftsmanship from this young band from San Diego whose own story grows bigger by the day. Millions of monthly listeners on Spotify. Celebrity fans like SZA, Alicia Keys, and Kylie Jenner. An NPR Tiny Desk performance that burned the house down. And all in the first two years of the band’s existence. Then came life on the road.

Since 2022, Thee Sacred Souls have toured North America and Europe, playing their sweet soul music at dozens and dozens of sold-out headlining shows, and in the process they went from young musicians to a tight-knit, stress-tested band who knew each other like family. All the great bands were made better by life on the road, and Thee Sacred Souls is ready to join that pantheon. Got A Story To Tell is in every way a tighter and emotionally richer record because of their journey.  

The challenges of touring resulted in a darker, more mature record, Alejandro Garcia (drums, guitar) says. Salvador Samano (bass, drums) agrees: “As we got busier, we were all dealing with things back home, trying to balance life and music and touring.” Heartbreak, family issues, finding ways to be creative when you’re leaving it all on the stage every night. Every member had their own experience, and no new development went undetected by their bandmates. “You can’t hide how you’re feeling,” Garcia says, of the intimacy of touring. “We know what’s going with each other.”

But it’s not as if the songs on Got A Story To Tell, which they began writing at the end of 2022, are accounts of a band on the run; there’s no “Turn the Page” here. Josh Lane (vocals) says all those emotions and personal stories from the three founders were sprinkled into the songwriting to create a potent blend of truth and imagination. In an age where pop stars have their albums treated like chapters in an ongoing memoir, Thee Sacred Souls hearken back to the more universal, relatable school of songwriting that made Hitsville U.S.A. and the Brill Building so successful and timeless.

Lead single and opening song “Lucid Girl” is Thee Sacred Souls’ entry into the canon of pop and R&B songwriting that champions independent women. (Stevie Wonder’s “Superwoman” is but one example.) It started as an instrumental that Garcia wrote one Christmas morning, during a moment of quiet heartache and solitude. Driving away from the studio to see family in the afternoon after cutting the track, the phrase popped into his head: “lucid girl.” It was perfect fodder for Lane to start his work.

“A good instrumental tells a story on its own,” says Lane, and what Garcia laid down that Christmas hit him instantly. It was heavy, with some of the toughest drums and bass of anything the band had recorded, and Garcia’s title conjured the image of a woman who wouldn’t be held down. Like someone lucid dreaming, this woman did what she wanted, how she wanted. “She chose herself and then she grew,” he sings in his pure tenor before the drums hit a stutter-step and the chorus kicks in. The album is full of characters and stories, and “Lucid Girl” sets the stage for what comes after.

Thee Sacred Souls recorded Got A Story To Tell at Penrose Recorders, in Riverside, CA, the studio built by producer and Daptone Records co-founder Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann). It’s a simple space some 50 miles east of Los Angeles that offers an unadorned analogue experience. They filled it with immortal grooves, classic vocal harmonies, and sincere, heartfelt lyrics about love and loss—the persistent feelings.

A ballad of guilty feelings, “My Heart Is Drowning” draws on two pivotal wells of inspiration for the band: Jamaican rocksteady and ‘60s girl-group pop. The spectral slow tempo of rocksteady, with its thick bass lines and simple guitar riffs, is the instrumental basis upon which Lane sings about making his lover cry, eventually losing her. The chorus is beautifully accented with soft and affecting backing vocals that recall the great Motown siren Mary Wells. In its final moments, it takes an unexpected turn toward the sunny, even though the protagonist is still languishing in regret. The tension between the music and lyrics create one of the most beguiling moments on the record.

Listening to the beloved Brazilian artist Arthur Verocai unlocked melodic ideas for Lane while writing “On My Mind,” a breezy stand-out on Got A Story To Tell. The rhythmic shifts on the song evoke the dynamics described in Lane’s lyrics, as he sings about “the good and the bad together…the good and the bad that make this man.” The acknowledgement of life’s total complexity brings one of the most stirring performances out of Lane.

Any conversation with the band will inevitably turn into a music celebration; the sharing of classic tunes, as they point out specific records that proved important during recording. Mann, their producer, is something of an encyclopedia, and what knowledge he bequeathed to them they’re all too happy to share.  The little-known Philadelphia guy group the Fabulous Performers. The sweeping vocals of the Delfonics. The unreal falsetto of Alton Ellis. The beguiling arrangements from Jesse Boone and the Astros. In part, Thee Sacred Souls are able to make timeless music because they have a deep appreciation for history.

Got A Story To Tell proves that Thee Sacred Souls are here to stay; a vital force in contemporary music. Though it’s not a concept album, it creates a satisfying emotional arc for the listener, taking them through life’s ups and downs—but finding a happy ending when it counts. The final track “I’m So Glad I Found You, Baby” is the feeling of coming home from a long journey to find your love waiting for you. 

If the last two years tested the mettle of Thee Sacred Souls, Got A Story To Tell is all that hard work paying off.


For entry to Austin City Limits tapings, you agree to abide by the Taping Health & Safety Protocols based on the current COVID-19 Community Risk Stage in effect at the time of the event. By attending the ACL tapings, you agree to the Terms & Conditions.

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News Ticket Giveaway Tickets Distributed

Giveaway: Samara Joy

UPDATE: The giveaway is now closed. Austin City Limits will tape a performance from Samara Joy on Sunday, May 25th at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). Austin City Limits Taping Giveaways are presented by AXS Events.

Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pick up tickets. Winners will be notified via email. Duplicate entries for a single taping will be automatically voided. Tickets are not transferable and will be voided if sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras, computers or recording devices allowed in the venue. While we do our best to accommodate all winners, we cannot guarantee admissionThese passes are based on space available therefore you will be filling in spots available on the floor or balcony depending on the tickets that are available when you arrive.


Grammy-Winning Jazz Vocalist Samara Joy to Release New Verve Album Portrait on October 11, 2024

Recording presents inspired arrangements and performances by Joy’s impressive live ensemble

“I’m still speechless,” says Samara Joy, reflecting on her 2023 Grammy win for Best New Artist. When the Bronx-raised jazz vocalist, 24, tries to place herself back in that historic moment today, she feels nothing but gratitude.

At the same time, Joy understood then that she couldn’t let the award define her. She still had a lifetime of music to explore, a tight-knit crew of extraordinary collaborators to guide, and a passion for songwriting to nurture. So Joy did what any committed, eternally curious jazz musician would do: She hit the road. For her and her band, a seemingly endless run of sold-out tour dates became a nightly opportunity to reach new creative heights. “I just got back to work, doing what, in essence, got me the Grammy in the first place,” she says. 

Joy’s new Verve Records release, Portrait, is the proper follow-up to Linger Awhile, her 2022 breakthrough LP, and it represents the next phase in her continuing artistic evolution — unbound by expectations. 

Portrait documents the immersive, seemingly telepathic rapport she’s developed with her touring band, which includes musicians she learned the jazz craft alongside while earning her undergraduate degree; in fact, it wasn’t until college that Joy began to pursue jazz singing. On the strength of that cozy dynamic — on the road, “I’m among friends, which explains personal chemistry that translates to our live performances,” Joy says. The vocalist offers an album that both honors jazz heritage while staking out bold, singular territory. Whatever a rote, singer-with-sidemen record is, Portrait is not.  

Joy co-produced Portrait with fellow multiple Grammy winner Brian Lynch, a trumpeter and musical director who has been Eddie Palmieri’s most vital late-career collaborator and was a member of the final lineup of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. The album was tracked in streamlined sessions — just two or three takes of each tune — at one of jazz’s most hallowed sites, Van Gelder Studio. “With this kind of band,” Joy says, “we play very close together on stage,” so the singer and Lynch recreated that vibe in the studio. The band recorded all together in that same fantastic room, feeding off each other’s energy as they would at a fiery live show. “It was the perfect place to capture this sound in its entirety,” Joy says.

Lynch, Joy raves, allowed her and the band to remain “in the driver’s seat, acting as our very supportive co-pilot.” The singer and her co-producer bonded over Abbey Lincoln’s 1961 LP Straight Ahead, on which the daring singer becomes brilliantly enmeshed in a band comprising Max Roach, Booker Little, Eric Dolphy, Coleman Hawkins, Julian Priester and other greats. That recording, Joy says, “showed me what my role could be, and opened my ears to what was possible.”

As on that vocal-jazz touchstone, Joy is best heard here as an integral part of an egalitarian octet featuring trumpeter Jason Charos, saxophonists David Mason and Kendric McCallister, trombonist Donavan Austin, pianist Connor Rohrer, bassist Felix Moseholm and drummer Evan Sherman. She soars above and out front, of course, but also functions as a pure instrument and a source of support and interplay. “I’m often the fifth voice,” she says, “the fifth horn. I just love the sound of this band. Hopefully, when people hear it they’ll realize that I’m a musician too.” 

Highlighting Joy’s generous, all-for-one strategy as a leader — an influence she gleaned from Art Blakey and Max Roach — Portrait boasts a uniquely synergistic approach to arranging. “I enjoy collaborating with fresh musical voices,” Joy says of her band, “because it not only helps all involved grow but helps to expand how musicians and audiences alike hear this music and what’s to come. So I wanted to put these creative minds in one place to expand the music and, as a result, each other.” Joy took the ever-evolving highlights from her concert songbook and gave them to individual band members to arrange, based on each player’s gifts and personality. 

Portrait is also Joy’s most profound expression yet of her prowess as a songwriter — particularly as a lyricist of absolute poetic precision. It’s an inspired, surprising program that serves as a reminder of how the vocal-jazz repertoire can still break new ground while nodding to jazz history. On “Reincarnation of a Lovebird (Pursuit of a Dream),” Joy weds Charles Mingus’ tender tribute to Charlie Parker to her own mediation on, as she describes it, “love so strong that it’s surreal.” “Peace of Mind/Dreams Come True” matches Joy’s first original song and saxophonist Kendric McCallister, which unpacks the anxieties Joy felt in her post-Grammy moment, with the gratitude and cosmic optimism of Sun Ra. “Now and Then (In Remembrance Of…)” features Joy’s affecting words atop music by the late, great bebop sage Barry Harris, with whom Joy and McCallister studied. “It’s for Barry,” Joy says, “but it’s also for everybody in my life who is no longer here and yet I want to keep thinking of them, keep them present.”

Still, as might be expected given Joy’s track record with classic tunes, some of Portrait’s most impressive moments are the standards: Jason Charos’ arrangements of “You Stepped Out of a Dream” and “No More Blues” (an exuberant palate cleanser on which Joy sings Jon Hendricks’ lyrics); McCallister’s take on “Autumn Nocturne”; David Mason’s “Day by Day.” Donavan Austin’s original “A Fool in Love (Is Called a Clown)” is so delightfully sentimental it might as well be a standard.   

Throughout, Joy sounds divine, evoking her jazz idols while tapping into her rich background in a family of gospel and R&B renown. Or as Joy puts it simply, “I’m grateful to have so many tools at my disposal.”

Ultimately, though, Portrait is a masterwork that unspools the story of an ensemble — a band that coalesced as friends and student musicians and has continued developing through jazz stardom. “It’s just everything that I could have ever dreamed of in a band,” Joy says. “I hope we stay together for years to come. I really do.” 


For entry to Austin City Limits tapings, you agree to abide by the Taping Health & Safety Protocols based on the current COVID-19 Community Risk Stage in effect at the time of the event. By attending the ACL tapings, you agree to the Terms & Conditions.

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Live Stream News

Live Stream Waxahatchee’s ACL Taping on 5/19 @ 8pm CT

Austin City Limits to Live Stream Waxahatchee’s ACL Debut

Breakout artist Waxahatchee makes her Austin City Limits debut on Monday, May 19 and the legendary music series is thrilled to announce this highly-anticipated performance will be livestreamed on the ACLTV YouTube Channel. ACL offers fans worldwide the unique opportunity to watch Waxahatchee’s taping live from the famed ACL stage in its entirety on May 19 at 8pm CT/9pm ET free via the ACLTV YouTube Channel.  The livestream will begin promptly at 8pm CT and will only be available live. The broadcast episode will air this fall on PBS and stream on pbs.org/austincitylimits as part of the television series’s upcoming Season 51.

ACL is proud to welcome Katie Crutchfield, the indie musician who performs as Waxahatchee (the name of a creek she grew up near in Alabama). She’s been releasing albums as Waxahatchee since 2012 and recently scored a career high with Tigers Blood, which earned a 2025 Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album. Recorded at Sonic Ranch in the Texas bordertown of Tornillo with producer Brad Cook, the Kansas City-based Crutchfield wrote most of the songs on the album during a self-described “hot hand spell” while on tour in 2022. Tigers Blood features her most potent songwriting to date and includes the breakout single “Right Back To It,” a lo-fi gem that features southern indie-rock ace MJ Lenderman on harmony vocals and guitar, nominated for Song of the Year at the 2024 Americana Music Awards. Album highlights include the spellbinding opener “3 Sisters”; “365,” a powerful meditation on co-dependency and addiction; and “Bored,” a blazing number on diverging friendships in your 30s. Tigers Blood is Waxahatchee’s first release in four years since 2020’s acclaimed Saint Cloud, a pandemic era standout and turning point that found Crutchfield steering away from indie rock and leaning into Americana and roots music, a sound with deep ties to her southern upbringing. The road-tested artist is touring throughout 2025, including a recent Luck Ranch show with one of her primary influences, Lucinda Williams. Waxahatchee will join Willie Nelson this fall on his Outlaw Music Festival.

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News Ticket Giveaway Tickets Distributed

Giveaway: Waxahatchee

UPDATE: The giveaway is now closed. Austin City Limits will tape performances celebrating The 50th Anniversary of Antone’s on Monday, May 19th at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). Austin City Limits Taping Giveaways are presented by AXS Events.

Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pick up tickets. Winners will be notified via email. Duplicate entries for a single taping will be automatically voided. Tickets are not transferable and will be voided if sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras, computers or recording devices allowed in the venue. While we do our best to accommodate all winners, we cannot guarantee admissionThese passes are based on space available therefore you will be filling in spots available on the floor or balcony depending on the tickets that are available when you arrive.


One of the hardest working singer-songwriters in the game is named Katie Crutchfield. She was born in Alabama, grew up near Waxahatchee Creek. Skipped town and struck out on her own as Waxahatchee. That was over a decade ago. Crutchfield says she never knew the road would lead her here, but after six critically acclaimed albums, she’s never felt more confident in herself as an artist. While her sound has evolved from lo-fi folk to lush alt-tinged country, her voice has always remained the same. Honest and close, poetic with Southern lilting. Much like Carson McCullers’s Mick Kelly, determined in her desires and convictions, ready to tell whoever will listen. 

And after years of being sober and stable in Kansas City–after years of sacrificing herself to her work and the road–Crutchfield has arrived at her most potent songwriting yet. On her new album, Tigers Blood, Crutchfield emerges as a powerhouse–an ethnologist of the self–forever dedicated to revisiting her wins and losses. But now she’s arriving at revelations and she ain’t holding them back. 

Crutchfield says that she wrote most of the songs on ‘Tigers Blood’ during a “hot hand spell,” while on tour in 2022. And when it came time to record, Crutchfield returned to her trusted producer Brad Cook, who brought her sound to a groundbreaking turning point on 2020’s Saint Cloud

They hunkered down at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas–a border town known for cotton and pecans–and searched for another turn, waited for a sign. Initially, MJ Lenderman, Southern indie-rock wunderkind (much like Crutchfield when she started out) came to play electric guitar and sing on “Right Back To It.” But as soon as they tracked it, Cook told Lenderman he had to stay for the rest of the album. And he did. 

“Right Back To It” is ‘Tigers Blood’’s lead single. A nod to country duets like Gram and Emmylou, winding over a steadfast banjo from Phil Cook. Together, Crutchfield and Lenderman harmonize on the chorus:I’ve been yours for so long/We come right back to it/I let my mind run wild/Don’t know why I do it/But you just settle in/Like a song with no end.” Crutchfield says it’s the first real love song she’s ever written.

The song “Bored” opens with blase drum beats from Spencer Tweedy that crash under Crutchfield as she throws her voice high: “I can get along/ My spine’s a rotted two by four/Barely hanging on/My benevolence just hits the floor.” Lenderman’s scuzzy riffs and Nick Bockrath’s climbing pedal steel add power to the album’s most ‘Southern Rock’ a la Drive-By Truckers moment. 

 “365” is a story of recognition told from a hard-won place of self-acceptance/forgiveness. Crutchfield initially started writing it for Wynonna Judd, with whom she has written and performed in the past, until the lyrics started hitting closer and closer to home. The writer Annie Ernaux says, “writing is to fight forgetting.” Like Lucinda Williams, Crutchfield’s lyrics are memoir. Throughout ‘Tigers Blood’ Crutchfield is addressing a “you,” but the ‘you’ in “365” evokes raw closeness, vulnerability. “Ya ain’t had much luck but grace is/In the eye of the beholder/And I had my own ideas but/I carried you on my shoulders, anyways.”

“365” is essentially ‘Tigers Blood’’s aria about addiction, with little to no accompaniment to Crutchfield’s voice. Her backing band is hushed, as if the spotlight’s coming down on her, alone on the stage, giving her testimony. Crutchfield slings her voice with arresting precision, reaching its highest harmony on the whole album. “So when you kill, I kill/And when you ache, I ache/And we both haunt this old lifeless town/And when you fail, I fail/ When you fly, I fly/And it’s a long way to come back down.” 
“365” circles back to the beginning of ‘Tigers Blood,’ where Crutchfield’s words ring clear as a bell. Album opener “3 Sisters” starts with Crutchfield singing over hymn-like piano chords:I pick you up inside a hopeless prayer/I see you beholden to nothing/I make a living crying it ain’t fair/And not budging.” ‘Tigers Blood’ is Crutchfield at her most confident and resilient. Staring straight at the truth, forgiving but not forgetting, not batting an eye.


For entry to Austin City Limits tapings, you agree to abide by the Taping Health & Safety Protocols based on the current COVID-19 Community Risk Stage in effect at the time of the event. By attending the ACL tapings, you agree to the Terms & Conditions.

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News Taping Announcement

Samara Joy, Cam and MJ Lenderman announced for Season 51 Tapings

Austin City Limits (ACL) is thrilled to announce summer tapings featuring a trio of American originals in their ACL debuts for our Season 51: on May 25 we welcome five-time Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Samara Joy, making her debut with songs from her celebrated 2025 album Portrait; previously announced modern soul act Thee Sacred Souls comes to our stage on May 28, straight from their buzzed-about Coachella performances; country artist Cam joins us on June 2; riding a high after a 2025 Grammy win for her songwriting on the landmark Cowboy Carter, Cam makes her headlining ACL debut with songs from her upcoming new collection; and ascendant singer-songwriter MJ Lenderman takes the ACL stage on July 1 with highlights from his acclaimed Manning Fireworks.

Photo by Gus Black

Samara Joy is having a banner year, earning a remarkable fourth and fifth Grammy at this year’s Awards, taking home gold for both Best Jazz Performance and Best Jazz Vocal Album. The 25-year-old jazz vocalist’s latest studio album Portrait won the Outstanding Jazz Album Award at the NAACP Image Awards in February. Joy co-produced the acclaimed Verve release with veteran trumpeter/bandleader and multi-Grammy winner Brian Lynch. Portrait showcases the intimate, soulful chemistry she’s developed with her touring band and spotlights her burgeoning gifts as a lyricist in ingenious arrangements that meld her thoughtful words with music by Charles Mingus, Sun Ra and her late mentor Barry Harris. Joy continues to secure her status as perhaps the first Gen Z jazz vocal star: The New York Times praised the “silky-voiced rising star” for “helping jazz take a youthful turn,” while NPR named her a “classic jazz singer from a new generation.” Joy’s meteoric rise launched in 2022 with the release of her breakout Verve debut, Linger Awhile, which garnered critical raves and signaled the arrival of a once-in-a-generation vocalist. The album earned her a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album in addition to a headline-making win for Best New Artist. A native of the Bronx, Joy became entranced by classic R&B as a child and cut her teeth as a singer in her church’s gospel choir. And while her family history is deeply musical, Joy didn’t delve into the jazz tradition until college. During her studies she won the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, which introduced her to the larger jazz scene as a rising star to watch. She was heard, by audiences and critics alike, as a masterful interpreter of jazz standards and a rightful heiress of the sound, technique and charisma that defined her jazz heroines — including Vaughan, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln and Carmen McRae. Joy will tour across the globe throughout 2025, including a career high: her highly-anticipated Carnegie Hall debut this spring.

Multi-platinum country artist Cam turned heads when she performed on our 50th Anniversary special in 2024; she was featured in the program’s songwriter circle, trading songs and verses with Indigo Girls and Brandy Clark in what became a broadcast highlight.  The singer and songwriter kicked off 2025 with a career highlight: she picked up her first Grammy win as a songwriter on Beyoncé’s genre-shattering Album of the Year Cowboy Carter. A sought-after collaborator, Cam penned five songs for the landmark album (“Ameriican Requiem,” “Protector,” “Daughter,” “Tyrant,” and “Amen”) and contributed production and backing vocals. On the heels of her big year so far with Beyoncé, Cam is now gearing up for the 2025 release of her highly anticipated new album with RCA Records. Prolific and adored, Cam stepped into the spotlight in a big way with her critically acclaimed debut, Untamed. The chart-topping, triple-platinum release featured the breakthrough smash “Burning House,” and notched Grammy, ACM, and CMA award nominations. She followed with her critically acclaimed sophomore release, The Otherside, which featured the international Jolene-in-reverse hit “Diane,” plus songwriting from Avicii, Harry Styles, Jack Antonoff, and Sam Smith. A captivating live performer with a soaring voice, Cam has consistently sold out shows across the globe, cementing her status as an international powerhouse. From the coveted sunset slot at Stagecoach to top venues across five continents, in recent years, she has been one of the few country acts to play Lollapalooza, ACL Fest, and Outside Lands while also supporting acts like Harry Styles, George Strait, Sam Smith, Loretta Lynn, the Indigo Girls, Eric Church, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill. A vivid storyteller, clever wordsmith, and committed visionary, fans have only just begun to scratch the surface of Cam’s many facets. As she bravely steps into her next era, she’s welcoming everyone into a space that’s inclusive, invigorating, and inspiring.

Photo by Shervin Lainez

26-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist MJ Lenderman makes his ACL debut after a busy couple of years. A rock-and-roll and basketball obsessed kid growing up in the mountain town of Asheville, NC, he put out the breakthrough solo set Boat Songs in 2022; the sleeper hit piled offhanded, Southern-inflected rock on wry, laconic bangers like “Hangover Game,” “Six Flags” and “Tastes Just Like It Costs.” With its barbed little jokes, canny sports references, and gloriously ragged guitar solos, the album became one of that year’s standouts, a ramshackle set of charms and chuckles. He followed with a stellar 2024, bookended by a memorable feature on Waxahatchee’s “Right Back To It,” a magnetic duet about romantic doubt that became one of the year’s biggest indie-rock anthems, and the release of his own highly anticipated solo album, Manning Fireworks. A laser-sharp study of misfits and the mistakes they make, where sympathy and sardonicism share the same ragged rock song, the acclaimed release features thumbnail character studies: “She’s Leaving You,” a half-sneering portrait of a dad cheating his way through a midlife crisis, at least until he gets caught and blasts Clapton in a rented Ferrari en route to Vegas; “On My Knees” finds Lenderman wondering what it means to have fun in a world where so many people seem full of shit; and muses on edgelords and alpha males on the standout “Wristwatch.” Manning Fireworks topped many critics’ year-end best lists, with Rolling Stone raving, “MJ Lenderman delivers a sad-guy indie-rock gem” and named him “a budding guitar great and ace storyteller”; The New York Times calls Lenderman “A young artist with an old soul and a keen eye for observational detail that makes his canted portraits of small-town life come alive”; NPR raves, “He’s a homespun magical realist, always throwing in something off-kilter to elevate his tales of lovable losers”; and the Guardian concurs, “Far from being dude-centric, Manning Fireworks’ sad sack anthems tap into something devastatingly, purely human.” 

We’re thrilled to welcome these stellar acts to the ACL stage. The broadcast episodes will air on PBS this fall as part of our upcoming Season 51, stream previous seasons online or on your connected TV with the PBS App. Follow @acltv on socials for a chance to attend these tapings in person. Learn more about how to attend a taping here.