Japanese Breakfast records Austin City Limits, April 20, 2022. Photo by Scott Newton.
Listening to the music of Japanese Breakfast is like a masterclass in how to take the personal and make it universal. Bandleader Michelle Zauner is an expert at drawing inspiration from her life without creating insular art – see her bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart, which resonated with millions of readers worldwide. Her music does the same, as she proved while bringing her full band to the ACL stage, following her solo guest appearance at last year’s ACL Hall of Fame ceremony.
The eight-piece band took the stage to enthusiastic applause, opening with fan-favorite “Paprika,” one of the catchiest of the catchy tunes that adorn the 2022 Grammy-nominated act’s breakthrough third LP Jubilee. A gong decorated with lights became the centerpiece as Zauner thrilled the crowd punctuating the chorus of the banger with each hit. That was followed by the album’s synth-driven, perfectly crafted pop confection “Be Sweet,” which Zauner sang with a big smile. She donned her guitar for “In Heaven,” a melodic rocker from her first album Psychopomp, supported by Adam Schatz’ sensual saxophone and seguing smoothly into “Woman That Loves You,” from the same LP. Zauner admitted that when she appeared at the ACL Hall of Fame last fall to perform in tribute to Wilco, she never imagined she’d be back with her own band so soon. The group then dialed back its normally sunshine-bright sound for Jubilee’s moody midtempo charmer “Kokomo, IN,” driven by Peter Bradley’s slide guitar. Zauner visited JB’s second album Soft Sounds From Another Planet for the nostalgic “Boyish,” which earned cheers the moment it began. The band stuck with that album for the pretty indie rocker “The Body is a Blade,” ending the trip (for now) with the ambiguous, unsettling “Road Head,” which also garnered cheers as soon as the opening chords rang.
Things took a turn back to the upbeat with Jubilee’s “Savage Good Boy,” which ended on harmony guitar riffs from Zauner and Bradley. Drummer Craig Hendrix’s counterpoint vocals and Zauner’s playfully naughty lyrics highlighted Psychopomp’s “Everybody Wants to Love You,” after which Zauner introduced the musicians. The airy, horns-spiked pop of “Slide Tackle” came next, its chorus of “Be good to me/We’ve always had a good time” sung directly to Bradley, who’s also Zauner’s husband. Ironically, that was followed by the romantic yearning of “Posing in Bondage,” which turned from melancholy to joyful by tune’s end. Bradley’s keyboard and Christabel Lin’s violin dominated the dreamy “Glider,” composed for the video game Sable.
Seated at the keyboard, Zauner noted the day was a special one, as it also marked the first anniversary of the 2021 release of Crying in H Mart, her powerful memoir about growing up Korean American and dealing with the grief of losing her mother. She explained the book paved the way for Jubilee, an album about giving yourself permission to welcome joy back into your life after experiencing tragedy. That led to “Tactics,” a song about moving forward from sadness, as difficult as it might be. The band quit the stage, leaving Zauner solo with her guitar for “Posing For Cars,” a song that builds in intensity, a tactic emphasized by the musicians returning one by one, until the whole thing culminated, appropriately, in her epic guitar solo. Japanese Breakfast wasted no time in going into the final song, the widescreen Soft Sounds rocker “Diving Woman,” on which everyone cut loose before Bradley and Zauner brought the song to a ringing, jangling close. It was a great show and a great debut performance, and we can’t wait for you to see it when it airs this fall as part of our upcoming 48th season on your local PBS station.
Japanese Breakfast on Austin City Limits, April 2022. Photos by Scott Newton.
Austin City Limits will be taping a performance by Japanese Breakfast on Wednesday, April 20th at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). We will be giving away a limited number of space available passes to this taping. Enter your name and email address on the below form by Noon on Monday, April 18th.
Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pick up tickets. Winners will be notified by email. Passes are not transferable and cannot be sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras computers or recording devices allowed in venue.
Austin City Limits is excited to announce we will live stream the highly-anticipated debut taping of Grammy-nominated indie-pop rock band Japanese Breakfast on April 20 at 8 p.m. CT. ACL offers fans worldwide a unique opportunity to watch the ACL taping live in its entirety on our ACLTV YouTube Channel. The broadcast episode will air this fall on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 48.
2021 was a big year for Michelle Zauner. She released Jubilee, her third album with her band Japanese Breakfast, which quickly became one of the most praised releases of 2021, landing her two 2022 GRAMMY nominations for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album, as well as placement on Best Of 2021 lists from Rolling Stone, People, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly, Billboard, NPR,Spin, Wall Street Journal and more. The album was also voted the #1 album of the year on NPR’s Listeners’ Poll, and its hit single “Be Sweet” was voted the #1 song of the year on Pitchfork’s Readers’ Poll. From the moment she began writing her new album, she knew that she wanted to call it Jubilee. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish; Psychopomp was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while Soft Sounds From Another Planet took the grief she held from her mother‘s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos. Jubilee is an album about processing life and love in the quest for happiness, and how that process sometimes requires us to step outside of ourselves. In addition to Jubilee, 2021 saw Zauner release her New York Times best-selling memoir Crying in H Mart, which she’s currently adapting for the screen for MGM’s Orion Pictures. Crying in H Mart is an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. The book has been on the New York Times Best Sellers’ list for 30 weeks. She also released the original soundtrack to the anticipated video game Sable, which Entertainment Weekly compared to David Bowie’s 1977 masterwork Low and Pitchfork said is “a streamlined glimpse into her versatility as a narrative artist.” Michelle Zauner first appeared on our stage at the 2021 ACL Hall of Fame celebration to salute honorees Wilco and we’re thrilled to have her return with Japanese Breakfast.
Join us here on April 20 at 8 p.m. CT for this performance by Japanese Breakfast. Join us this fall on PBS for the broadcast premiere of Austin City Limits’ upcoming Season 48.
Arlo Parks tapes Austin City Limits, Season 48. Photo by Scott Newton.
One of the coolest experiences we can have at Austin City Limits is to open a brand new season with new talent. The 21-year-old from West London, singer/songwriter Arlo Parks, took her own country by storm with her album Collapsed in Sunbeams, which earned her two 2022 Grammy nominations in the States and won the Mercury Prize at home for Best British Album of 2021. With major dates opening for Harry Styles and Billie Eilish, and a stateside tour with Clairo under her belt, the singer of radio hits “Hurt” and “Softly” capped the first half of 2022 off with her debut taping for Austin City Limits.
Parks’ eight-piece band came out first, singers and horn players on either side of the usual guitar/bass/drums/keys lineup, and started a warmly funky groove. Arriving in shorts, lime-green sneakers and a Dizzy Gillespie T-shirt, Park went immediately into the smooth R&B of “Green Eyes” to great applause. After introducing herself to the audience, Parks and the band kept the soulful vibe going with “Portra 400,” a gem from Collapsed in Sunbeams that began in her bedroom home studio. She followed with the moodier, more atmospheric “Caroline,” encouraging the crowd to sing along to the chorus, before going into “Cola,” her very first single from her attention-getting EP Super Sad Generation, made while she was in high school. She then announced “Eugene,” which she called “my favorite” – a sentiment to which her fans apparently agreed, as they cheered the soul-pop take on unrequited love before it even began.
Parks then did something that’s never happened on the ACL stage before: she read an original poem. Besides giving her a chance to catch her breath, it also took the audience back to her beginnings, when she wrote poetry and fiction before incorporating music. She followed that ACL milestone with the lovely ballad “Angel’s Song,” which truly sounded like an extension of her roots in written verse. The song has barely finished before a cymbal wash and electric piano chords heralded “Romantic Garbage,” an emotional but witty ballad from Super Sad Generation that was the song which led her manager to her and started her career. “I love playing that song,” she noted. Parks shifted the mood for the next song, the darker “Black Dog,” though it was less dwelling on depression than insisting it can be overcome. Then the groove pumped back up, the horns started to soar, and Parks led the band in “Hurt,” another song determined to pull its main character from the brink.
Parks took a break to introduce the band, before launching into the soul tune “Too Good,” dismissing an emotionally detached ex with hooks and a groove and proving to be an immediate crowd favorite. She followed with “Softy,” a catchy electropop tune released as a single only a couple of months ago and destined for greatness, if the audience hand-waving is any indication. “It’s been very magical,” proclaimed Parks as the last song of the set loomed. “Sophie” ended the main set on a slinky, luscious soul groove and an epic guitar solo. Of course, Parks and her band returned for one more song, accepting flowers from an audience member before sending the crowd home with the affirmational, gospel-tinged “Hope.” “You’re not alone!” Parks declared, and everyone was with her as she left the stage. It was a strong showing by a relative newcomer, and we can’t wait for you to see Parks and her band when her episode airs this fall on your local PBS station as part of our Season 48.
Arlo Parks on Austin City Limits, 2022. Photos by Scott Newton.
Austin City Limits is proud to announce new tapings for Season 48, showcasing a trio of originals. Renowned singer/songwriter and Texas icon Robert Earl Keen caps his remarkable musical journey with one last taping on April 27 before his planned retirement from live performance later this year. We’re also thrilled to showcase debut tapings by a pair of 2022 Grammy-nominated acts whose individuality and artistic reach create songs thrilling in their distinctive flavors. On May 9, we welcome North Carolina-bred electronic duo Sylvan Esso. On May 25, Nashville-based singer and songwriter Allison Russell takes the ACL stage as we reach a major milestone: our 1000th taping.
Robert Earl Keen debuted on Austin City Limits in 1989 as part of a Texas Showcase and has made four headlining appearances in addition to appearing as a guest of Lyle Lovett in 2000, returning for ACL’s milestone 40th Anniversary special in 2014 and hosting the ACL Hall of Fame in 2019. One of the most beloved songwriters and performers in Texas, the Houston native has lived his signature anthem “The Road Goes On Forever” as a road warrior performing over 180 dates in any given year, playing to his legions of fans at roadhouses, dance halls, theaters, and festival grounds. The legendary entertainer made the surprise announcement in March that he’ll wrap up a remarkable four decades of touring with one last tour in 2022 as his swan song: I’m Comin’ Home:41 Years On The Road. “I’ve been blessed with a lifetime of brilliant, talented, colorful, electrical, magical folks throughout my life,” says Keen. “This chorus of joy, this parade of passion, this bull rush of creativity, this colony of kindness and generosity are foremost in my thoughts…It’s with a mysterious concoction of joy and sadness that I want to tell you that as of September 4, 2022, I will no longer tour or perform publicly.” With a catalog of 21 albums, a band of stellar musicians, and many thousands of live shows under his belt, POLLSTAR ranked Keen in its Top 20 Global Concert Tours in 2021. Since releasing his debut album, No Kinda Dancer, in 1984, Keen has blazed a peer, critic, and fan-lauded trail that’s earned him living-legend status in the Americana music world. He’s received many accolades along the way, including 2015’s inaugural BMI Troubadour Award, celebrating songwriters who have made a lasting impact. His songs have been recorded by George Strait, Joe Ely, Nancy Griffith, Gillian Welch, The Highwaymen and more. Keen has been inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame (alongside his longtime friend and Texas A&M classmate Lyle Lovett), the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Texas A&M University. Keen was weaned on classic rock and Willie records and steered clear of the country mainstream, always taking the road less traveled throughout his storied career. His literate songcraft, razor wit and killer band stirred up a grassroots sensation not seen since the ’70s heyday of outlaw country. While Keen will be hanging up his hat on live shows, he’ll continue to write music and create, host his popular Americana Podcast, support young artists, and follow his artistic muse wherever it takes him. We’re thrilled to welcome Robert Earl Keen back to our stage for this very special performance.
Created with RNI Films app by Shervin Lainez.
Sitting in a Wisconsin deli in 2012, Amelia Meath told her new friend Nick Sanborn she wanted to start a pop band. She proposed a simple division of labor: She’d write and sing their emotionally multivalent songs, wrapped around seemingly effortless hooks. And he’d make the beats that drove them, slightly slippery instrumentals that winked at his abstract electronic inclinations. For a time, that was the premise of Sylvan Esso. But during the last decade, those responsibilities have morphed. Meath and Sanborn’s roles have become so intertwined that every moment of any new Sylvan Esso song feels rigorously conceptual but completely rapturous, their compelling central paradox. “Making music now looks like both of us sitting in a room together and having small arguments,” Meath quips. That dynamic thumps at the heart of Free Love, Sylvan Esso’s instantly endearing third album and a charming but provocative testament to the duo’s long-term tension. “We’re trying to make pop songs that aren’t on the radio, because they’re too weird,” says Meath. You could frame Free Love in a dozen different ways. You could, for instance, declare it their undeniable pop triumph, thanks to the summertime incandescence of “Ferris Wheel” or the handclap kinetics of “Train.” You might, on the other hand, call it their most delicate work yet, owing to Meath’s triptych of gently subversive anthems—“What If,” “Free,” and “Make It Easy”—that begin, end, and split the record into sides. You could label Free Love their modular synthesis album, since Sanborn’s explorations of those infinite systems shape so many of these daring songs. You might even call it their marriage record, as it’s the first LP Meath and Sanborn have made since trading vows. Instead, the thread that binds together every scintillating moment of Free Love may seem surprising for a duo that has already netted a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album for the record , made some of their generation’s sharpest pop daggers, and generally approached their work with an anything-goes esprit: Finding confidence. An album that implores us to consider that our assumptions about our world might be wrong, Free Love asks major questions about self-image, self-righteousness, friendship, romance, and environmental calamity with enough warmth, playfulness, and magnetism to make you consider an alternate reality. These are Sylvan Esso’s most nuanced and undeniable songs—bold enough to say how they feel, big enough to make you join in that feeling. The Durham, NC-based duo is currently on a U.S. headline tour with high-profile upcoming summer dates at Wilco’s Solid Sound and Rothbury’s Electric Forest Festival.
Photo by Marc Baptiste.
After years of collaborations with like-minded artists, Allison Russell’s first-ever solo project, Outside Child was released in 2021 to critical acclaim and earned a trio of 2022 Grammy nominations, including Best Americana Album. Russell, a self-taught singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and co-founder of folk collective Our Native Daughters and duo Birds of Chicago, unpacks her youth in searing detail. Rolling Stone raves, “Russell turned her brutally tough childhood into stunning art.” Raised in Montreal, Russell imbues her music with the colors of her city – the light, the landscape, the language – but also the trauma that she suffered there. It is a heartbreaking reflection on a childhood no one should have to endure, and at the same time a powerful reclamation – asserted from a place of healing, of motherhood, of partnership – and from a new home made in Nashville. The record features many of the artistic family members she has found there including Yola, Erin Rae, The McCrary Sisters, Ruth Moody, Jamie Dick, Dan Knobler and her partner JT Nero. Outside Child, says Russell “is about resilience, survival, transcendence, the redemptive power of art, community, connection, and chosen family.” Singing about this on the double Grammy-nominated “Nightflyer,” Russell ponders the healing power of motherhood, using the track’s wide-open expanse to convey the strength she didn’t know she had. Here, the line “I am the mother of the evening star / I am the love that conquers all” is “the most defiantly triumphant, hopeful line I’ve ever written,” says Russell. “That’s about the birth of my daughter and how that transformed me.” Though she endured a fraught relationship with her own mother, Russell remembers how she’d crawl underneath the piano and listen to her mother play. “I would hum along with her,” Russell recalls. “She said I was humming before I could talk. I was able to feel some kind of comfort or love or connection in a way that she couldn’t verbally or physically express – but I could feel in her music that there was love in her.” Ultimately, Outside Child is not only a radical reclamation of a traumatic childhood and lost home, it is a lantern light for survivors of all stripes – a fervent reminder of the eleventh hour, resuscitative power of art. Fellow songwriter and poet Joe Henry raves, “Outside Child draws water from the dark well of a violent past. The songs themselves ––though iron-hard in their concerns–– are exultant: exercising haunted dream-like clean bedsheets snapped and hung out into broad daylight, and with the romantic poet’s lust for living and audacity of endurance.” We’re thrilled to bring Russell to the ACL stage as we celebrate a landmark occasion with our milestone 1K taping moment.
Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes as we get a week out from each date. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings. The broadcast episodes will air in late 2022 on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 48.
Please look for safety updates regarding entry to Austin City Limits tapings. Austin PBS will continue to monitor local COVID-19 trends and will meet or exceed protocols mandated by local governments.
Austin City Limits sends our congratulations to the winners of last night’s 64th annual GRAMMY Awards, co-produced by ACL executive producer Terry Lickona. Season 47 standouts Jon Batiste and Olivia Rodrigo both won big. New Orleans native and Stephen Colbert bandleader Batiste won Album of the Year for his 2021 LP We Are, as well as Best American Roots Song, Best American Roots Performance, Best Music Video and Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media (for his contributions to the Pixar film Soul). We’ll be encoring his extraordinary Season 47 hour this coming weekend, to remind everyone what a special artist he is. Chart-topping singer-songwriter Rodrigo, who, like Batiste, made her ACL debut last season, scored a trio of honors, including the coveted Best New Artist award, as well as Best Pop Solo Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album. ACL three-timer St. Vincent, who showcased her latest Daddy’s Home in our Season 47, took home Best Alternative Album for the record.
Though still reeling, as are we all, from the heartbreaking passing of beloved drummer Taylor Hawkins, our friends Foo Fighters swept the categories in which they were nominated for their recent Medicine At Midnight: Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance. Other threepeater ACL performers included country superstar Chris Stapleton (Best Country Album, Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance) and gospel great CeCe Winans (Best Gospel Album, Best Gospel Performance/Song, Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song). Other alumni who took home statuettes include H.E.R., Los Lobos, Juanes, Esperanza Spalding, Rhiannon Giddens, Andra Day, Angelique Kidjo, Bela Fleck, Kendrick Lamar (as guest of Best Rap Performance winner Baby Keem) and late Pat Metheny Group keyboardist Lyle Mays. Special shout out to fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff, who’s gone from his Season 39 performance to win Producer of the Year for his work on several acclaimed and bestselling albums, including St. Vincent’s Grammy-winning Daddy’s Home.
A complete list of winners and nominees can be found here. ACL congratulates everyone for their hard work.
