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Featured News Taping Announcement

New tapings: Jon Batiste and Charley Crockett

Courtesy UMG

Austin City Limits is proud to welcome a pair of highly-anticipated acts to our stage, making their ACL debuts as part of our Season 47: celebrated musician Jon Batiste on July 18, and acclaimed Texas singer-songwriter Charley Crockett on July 28.

Musician and composer Jon Batiste recently topped a banner awards season with an Academy Award for the soundtrack Soul, winning Best Score for Disney and Pixar’s hit animated film. His jazz-infused score, created alongside the work of fellow musicians Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, picked up over 35 international awards including a BAFTA, Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice award. Collecting his trophy at the Los Angeles ceremony, Batiste said: “What’s deep is that God gave us 12 notes. It’s the same twelve 12 notes that Duke Ellington had, Bach had, Nina Simone (had)…This moment is a culmination of a series of miracles. It’s so incredibly powerful to stand here and the lineage that we come from, the lineage in this film…I’m just thankful to God for those 12 notes.”

In between sessions for Soul, Jon Batiste also recorded a brand-new studio album, WE ARE, recently released on Verve Records to critical acclaim. The album debuted in the Top 10 R&B Charts, Top Album Charts, and the single “I NEED YOU” recently reached #1 on the AAA Radio Charts. Vanity Fair described the album as “a vivid turn from straight jazz to joyful, danceable pop and neo-soul”, while Billboard called it “a delightful marriage of contemporary jazz melodies and slick pop.” WE ARE represents a completely new sonic chapter for Jon Batiste. He wrote and planned much of the project in about a week from his dressing room at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he’s the musical director and bandleader. The album was recorded in New York, Los Angeles and in his native New Orleans, melding inspiration from his new home and new collaborators with that of the Batiste musical dynasty. On WE ARE, Batiste presents a captivating musical experience to the world rooted in catharsis, joy, freedom, contemplation and sensuality. It’s a love letter to his southern roots and the heritage of Black Music with guest appearances by Mavis Staples, Quincy Jones, Zadie Smith, PJ Morton, Trombone Shorty, St Augustine Marching 100, his father Michael Batiste, grandfather David Gauthier and many more. It is a meditation steeped in the sounds of the times with collaborators including POMO (Anderson.Paak), Ricky Reed (Lizzo), Jahaan Sweet (Drake, Eminem) as well as songwriter Autumn Rowe and producer Kizzo.

Batiste says, “WE ARE is a message of love for humanity, of humble reverence for our past, and of a hopeful future, in which we are the ones who can save us. The art reveals its motive to you. You just have to wait for the Spirit to tell you what it wants.” We are thrilled to welcome him for his first-ever appearance on the ACL stage.

photo by Bobby Cochran

Newly nominated for Emerging Act of the Year at the 2021 Americana Music Awards, Charley Crockett has become one of the leading lights in independent country music following a decade of busking on the streets of New York City and New Orleans, and only two years removed from life-saving open-heart surgery. The South Texas native crafts his self-proclaimed “Gulf & Western” sound by synthesizing country, blues, soul, cajun, Western Swing, R&B and other pieces of American roots music into an unmatched, truly singular sound. When Crockett’s voice comes out of your speakers, there is no confusing him for any other artist. Rolling Stone raves Crockett is “Gearing up for a breakout year” and NPR Music calls him “such a fascinating mix, very 21st century and very vintage.” The Wall Street Journal agrees, “Mr. Crockett’s unique vocal style is one third Ernest Tubb honky tonk with clipped-word diction, one third Bill Withers low-key, soulful crooning, and one third jazzy French Quarter second-line swagger.” 

Hailing from the Texas bordertown of San Benito, Crockett was raised in an isolated, rural part of the Rio Grande Valley by a single mother in a trailer surrounded by sugar cane and grapefruit fields. As a teenager he was into free-styling and rapping. He spent formative years living with his uncle in New Orleans where he first became a street performer who discovered a love for folk music. In New York City he played hip hop and blues on street corners and in subway cars. What’s important to his identity as an artist, says Crockett, is that he has lived the songs he writes and sings. The prolific artist surprise released 10 For Slim: Charley Crockett Sings James Hand, a tribute to his friend and Texas honky tonk hero James Hand in February, and will release another full-length album of new songs later this year. We’re excited to welcome Charley Crockett and his band the Blue Drifters to the ACL stage.

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Featured News Taping Recap

Sarah Jarosz comes home to ACL

photo by Scott Newton

Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz was only nineteen the first time she appeared on Austin City Limits in 2010, but we – staff and viewers – knew she was a major talent, and not just because she hailed from our neck of the woods. Time, critical acclaim and a shelf full of Grammys and Americana Music Awards have proven us correct. So we’re always thrilled to host her again, and especially so for a taping that got delayed from last year due to the pandemic. The pent-up energy was on full display in a performance that included every song from 2020’s Grammy Award-winning World on the Ground, and was live streamed around the world. 

“This is incredibly exciting,” noted Jarosz as she took the stage with her four-piece band (which included renowned World producer John Leventhal). The conservatory-trained songwriter started with World opener “Eve,” a song that sounds like it could be a century old, while still sounding like it had to have been written in the now. Jarosz exchanged her guitar for a mandolin and went into “Pay It No Mind,” another memorable, melodic World folker. “It’s a dream to do it once, let alone three times,” she noted about her third Austin City Limits appearance as she donned her signature octave mandolin. “This is a good way to re-emerge after the last year.” She then reached back to her 2016 album Undercurrent for the brooding “House of Mercy,” the Grammy-winning song ornamented by Leventhal’s supremely subtle Telecaster. Jarosz talked about how growing up in Austin and Wimberley inspired the songs on World, which capped a rough year by winning a Grammy. Leventhal then took to the piano as Jarosz sang the beautiful “Orange and Blue,” which the two of them wrote together. 

Jarosz introduced guitarist Mike Robinson, whose ringing guitar introduced “Green Lights,” another luminous folk rock tune from Undercurrent. Clearly by this point it was time for a ballad, and Jarosz obliged with the bittersweet “Hometown” a tune that led her to note how much of an emotional experience it was to sing these Texas-based songs in her home state. The next tune “Johnny” essayed more folk rock, anchored by the memorable line “An open heart looks a lot like the wilderness.” The hopeful “Maggie” was inspired by Jarosz attending her high school reunion – “I had a blast and I got some songs out of it.” No word on whether or not “What Do I Do” was one of those, but it still made an impression with its melancholy melody and steel guitar frosting. The energy kicked up a notch on the mock-apocalyptic “I’ll Be Gone,” a jolt of gallows humor surrounded by three acoustic guitars. The band then quit the stage, as Jarosz reached into her deep well of cover songs recorded and streamed over the course of the pandemic, and a special one it was: a gentle, soulful take on U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” that turned the rock anthem into the folk song it always threatened to become. 

“The only way to follow U2 is with the banjo,” chuckled Jarosz as she strapped on said instrument for “Little Satchel,” a traditional folk tune that was one of the first songs she ever learned, back when she was participating in the Wimberly bluegrass jams at the age of nine. “This song was written about Kendall,” Jarosze said about “Empty Square,” in a nod to Succession fans – perhaps a bit cryptic for anyone who hasn’t seen that HBO show, but the song was strong regardless. She closed the main set with “one of my greatest Texas songwriting influences,” ACL two-timer James McMurtry and his stirring tune “Childish Things.” That earned the exiting Jarosz and the band wild applause, but it wasn’t over yet. She and the band encored with another key influence on the star’s writing: frequent ACL visitor Nanci Griffith and 

her lovely tune “You Can’t Go Home Again,” which fit in perfectly with the evening’s themes of coming home and was a perfect way to send the crowd gently out into the night. It was a truly special performance, and we can’t wait for you to see it when it airs this fall as part of our Season 47 on your local PBS station. 

photos by Scott Newton

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Featured News

Garth Brooks to perform benefit concerts in Austin City Limits original Studio 6A

Copyright Blue Rose, Inc.

Austin PBS, KLRU-TV is thrilled to announce that Garth Brooks will bid farewell to legendary Studio 6A, longtime home to iconic music series Austin City Limits, with a pair of intimate performances on July 20 & July 21, 2021. This event, originally scheduled for May 24, 2020 and delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will now feature two nights with the country superstar. Garth Brooks returns to the original Austin City Limits stage where it all began for a memorable send-off to the historic Studio 6A on the University of Texas campus. Austin PBS’s Farewell to Studio 6A: An Evening with Garth Brooks will be a once-in-a-lifetime event celebrating the iconic institution and also a fundraiser for the public television station, Austin PBS, that produces the series.

“Thirty years ago, Garth made history when he stepped onto the Austin City Limits stage for the first time, and now he’s one of the biggest stars in music history,” said ACL executive producer Terry Lickona. “We are honored to have him return and make history once again, with the final performances on a stage that was the original home for the longest-running music series on television.”

After more than 50 years on the University of Texas Austin campus, Austin PBS is moving to a brand new home on the Austin Community College Highland Campus in 2022. The larger facility will be a modern, state-of-the-art broadcast studio as well as a community space that will allow Austin PBS to create new initiatives. The public television station will celebrate the move with this final musical salute in the historic Studio 6A. The intimate soundstage was the birthplace of the Peabody Award-winning series Austin City Limits, hosting the now-infamous 1974 debut taping with Willie Nelson, as well as the setting for history-making performances for its first 36 seasons, spotlighting hundreds of legendary artists and music innovators, including Ray Charles, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Leonard Cohen, Pearl Jam, B.B. King, Foo Fighters and more. Studio 6A was officially designated a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Landmark in 2009 and was the featured location for the Austin installment of the Foo Fighters’ 2014 documentary series Sonic Highways. The final Austin City Limits episode in Studio 6A was taped in 2010, when the program moved to its current studio home for the last decade, ACL Live at The Moody Theater, in downtown Austin, where it will continue to be taped and is now in its 47th Season. Studio 6A has been used consistently throughout the years for community events, town hall discussions and many other Austin PBS programs including ATX Together, Central Texas Gardener and Overheard with Evan Smith. The studio also hosted tapings for the TNN/CMT programs Legends of Country Music and The Texas Connection, as well as CBS’s Willie Nelson: The Big Six-0 60th birthday special. 

A limited number of event packages are available to attend this historic event. All proceeds from the event will benefit Austin PBS’s Moving Forward Campaign to support funding for the new facilities. To find out more go to austinpbs.org/farewell. Individual seat packages start at $2,500 on either night – July 20th or 21st – with the same performance each night. The concerts are a fundraising event and will not be filmed for Austin City Limits broadcast. 

Garth Brooks has made two legendary Austin City Limits appearances in Studio 6A. He first appeared on the program in 1990, during Season 15. Just beginning his ascent to superstardom, Brooks performed his early hits “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)” and “The Dance.”  The hitmaker returned a decade later to both open and close ACL’s milestone 25th anniversary season with two hourlong episodes, performing career highlights and fan favorites, including “The Thunder Rolls,” “Two of a Kind (Workin’ On a Full House),” and leading a massive crowd singalong to “Friends in Low Places.” Brooks’ relationship with Austin City Limits  goes beyond that of a performer. He is also a longtime fan. “If we’re baseball players, this is the World Series,” he said during a post-show interview after his 2000 return appearance. “The thing I like about Austin City Limits is that it hasn’t changed, it’s still like getting around your family in your living room and playing music. I think that’s what I love most about it.”

Austin PBS

Austin PBS, KLRU-TV is dedicated to telling stories that entertain, inspire and change lives. This community-supported public television station highlights what makes Austin unique — whether music, arts or public issues — by creating and distributing award-winning original content. Austin PBS produces Austin City Limits, Arts In Context, Central Texas Gardener, Overheard with Evan Smith and more for PBS stations across the nation. We also create online-first projects like Decibel, a community journalism initiative that seeks to amplify diverse voices in Central Texas. As a nonprofit educational organization, Austin PBS also prepares children to succeed in school and creates lifelong learning opportunities for all. Find out more at austinpbs.org. 

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 47th 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, KLRU-TV 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.

Garth Brooks

In May, Garth Brooks was one of five artists to receive one of the most prestigious honors an artist can receive, The Kennedy Center Honor. Garth is the first-ever seven-time recipient of the CMA Entertainer of the Year honor. Brooks is the first and only artist in history to receive nine Diamond Awards for the now nine diamond-certified albums at over 10 million album sales each. He remains the #1-selling solo artist in U.S. history, certified by the RIAA with 157 million album sales. He has received every accolade the recording industry can bestow on an artist. In 2020, Garth was awarded the esteemed Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, becoming the youngest-ever recipient of the honor. The same year Brooks received Billboard’s Icon Award, joining only eight other artists to ever receive the honor. Brooks’ 2017 tour with Tricia Yearwood sold over 6.3 million tickets, making it the biggest North American tour in history and the biggest American tour in the world. In 2019, Brooks launched the Garth Brooks Stadium Tour, which has broken stadium attendance records and which Pollstar named the bestselling country music tour of the year.

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Featured Live Stream News

ACL to live stream Sarah Jarosz on 6/2

Austin City Limits is thrilled to announce we will live stream our third taping with multiple Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Sarah Jarosz on June 2 at 8 p.m. CT. ACL offers fans worldwide a unique opportunity to watch the ACL taping live in its entirety at this location. 

With World On the Ground, the 2021 Grammy Award-winner for Best Americana Album, and her first solo album in four years, Sarah Jarosz shares a collection of stories of her Central Texas hometown of Wimberley, each song lit up in her captivating voice and richly detailed songwriting. Produced by renowned producer/songwriter John Leventhal (who will be joining Jarosz for her taping), World on the Ground finds wisdom being passed down through song by a bird observing the world below: “When the world on the ground is gonna swallow you down, sometimes you’ve got to pay it no mind.” 

As the now four-time Grammy Award-winner inhabits characters both real and imagined, Jarosz reveals her remarkable gift for slipping into the interior lives of others and patiently uncovering so much indelible insight. In the making of World On the Ground, Jarosz – who already has two ACL appearances under her belt (in 2010 and 2014) – ultimately moved undeniably closer to one of her greatest ambitions as an artist: to create an emotionally honest body of work that continually reveals new meaning for the listener. “My favorite records are the ones I just want to play over and over again because of all the details that are there to discover,” she says. “As I was writing this record, it was the deepest I’d ever gone in terms of getting down to the very specific details in the way I told each story. The details are what make people feel something and connect the story to their own lives, and that’s really all I want for my music.” 

A prolific artist, this spring she released Blue Heron Suite, a song cycle inspired by the frequent trips Jarosz and her parents made to Port Aransas, a small town on the Gulf Coast of Texas that had been devastated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. “I like to think of the song cycle as a quiet acknowledgment of life’s many uncertainties,” she says. “You never know what will be thrown your way, but you can always work to try to face the highs and the lows with grace and strength.” 

Join us here on June 2 at 8 p.m. CT for this performance by Sarah Jarosz. The broadcast episode will air early next year on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 47.

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Featured News Taping Recap

Dayglow tapes an effervescent ACL

photo by Scott Newton

Sloan Struble, AKA Dayglow, may only be twenty-one, but as his brand new album Harmony House proves, he writes expert pop tunes like a pro. He’s also moved easily from solo auteur to confident bandleader, as his debut ACL taping (live streamed around the world) can attest. 

After a typically rousing Terry Lickona introduction, the stage remained empty, as an electronic pulse teased the imminent arrival of the musicians. The band came on one by one, with Struble himself taking the stage last and bouncing around to the happy energy of album opener “Something.” Struble took a moment to introduce the band, before displaying the modern/nostalgic dichotomy that makes his music sound so fresh: “Medicine” opens with a noisy burst of electronica before settling into a warmly organic 70s pop groove. “This is actually our biggest show ever,” noted Struble. “I know it’s limited capacity, but this is the biggest crowd we’ve ever played for.” The band then revisited the first Dayglow album Fuzzybrain for the Latin-feeling “Nicknames,” complete with ending cowbell solo. Struble noted how cool it was that he first visited the original ACL studio as a University of Texas freshman, and now he found himself onstage at ACL Live recording his own episode. Powered by that giddy joy, there was no choice but to go into the bubbly, danceable “Hot Rod,” frosted with harmony leads from Struble and guitarist Colin Crawford. Saxophonist Marshall Lowry then joined the quintet onstage, adding some deliciously 80s pop saxophone to the melancholy “December.” Struble took to his even more-80s styled keyboard for the song’s coda, segueing directly into the upbeat “Moving Out.” 

Donning an acoustic 12-string guitar, Struble explained how he makes his records in his bedroom and how he first got his music noticed through the music-sharing platform Tunecore. That music was from Fuzzybrain, the beautifully tuneful title track of which came next. Shouting out longtime ACL makeup artist Glenda Facemire, Struble, acting on a tip from her, good-naturedly patted away the perspiration while introducing the next acoustic guitar-driven song, Harmony House’s “Woah Man.” He went back to his Strat for the peppy, sweetly melodic “Listerine,” before going into the breakout song that launched his career:  “Can I Call You Tonight?,” as perfect a pop song as has hit the airwaves in some time. Unless, of course, you count the next song, the groovy but melody-rich “Crying on the Dancefloor,” also from Fuzzybrain, and featuring Lowry on soprano sax. After two songs in a row from the first album, though, it was time to revisit the new one with the lovely, old-fashioned ballad “Into Blue.” “Thank you for being here – this is awesome!” Struble declared, whose frequent declarations of “Let’s rock” punctuated his enthusiasm. “Definitely a bucket list moment!” The band then closed the main set with the latest Dayglow pop sensation, the effortlessly effervescent “Close to You,” during which the smiling, dancing Struble nearly had more fun than is allowed by law.

Struble bounced happily off the stage, but it wasn’t over yet. The band returned with a delightful surprise: a faithful, heartfelt cover of Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” a song just right for them. Right as it ended, however, Dayglow kicked into an original, the first album-bopper “Run the World!!!!” “I want to run the world!” Struble asserted, and while he may not get his exact wish, as long as he keeps making music this catchy and fun, the music world may well be within his grasp. It was a great show, and we can’t wait for you to see it when it airs this fall as part of our Season 47 on your local PBS station.

photo by Scott Newton

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Featured Live Stream News Taping Announcement

ACL to live stream Dayglow taping on 5/25

Austin City Limits is excited to announce we will live stream the upcoming debut of Austin’s own fast-rising pop phenom Dayglow on May 25 at 8 p.m. CT. ACL offers fans worldwide a unique opportunity to watch the ACL taping live in its entirety at this location. 

21-year-old Sloan Struble, who records music as Dayglow, makes his ACL debut on the heels of the release of his forthcoming sophomore album Harmony House, out this week on May 21. When Dayglow released his runaway debut album Fuzzybrain, featuring its Gold-certified single “Can I Call You Tonight,” from his UT dorm room back in 2018 he had one goal: to make music that made people happy. Now three years later, Dayglow has connected with fans around the world, creating a community that uplifts and makes people feel good. As he did on his debut, he writes, produces, records, and mixes all of his music himself—in his bedroom, no less. 

Dayglow launched 2021 with the breakout single “Close To You,” a song reminiscent of the iconic whimsy of 80’s pop anthems, drawing heavily on some unlikely influences such as Whitney Houston, Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald. The song has already been streamed almost 20 million times, alongside having a viral moment on TikTok and continues to steadily climb the radio charts. 

Struble reveals that Harmony House began life as an imaginary sitcom. He’d begun writing new music and found himself drawn to piano-driven soft rock from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. He was also watching a lot of Cheers, the long-running sitcom that took the viewer to a place where, as the theme song goes, “everybody knows your name.” “At the very beginning, I was writing a soundtrack to a sitcom that doesn’t exist,” he says. “The music would generate a kind of impossible nostalgia for something that had never been real.” “I tried to compose these songs in a way that you could just sit down at a piano and play them. That’s the sign of a good song, when it can live on its own musically.” That sort of sturdiness he strives for in his writing makes for timeless music, and with Harmony House he has created a finely calibrated, carefully fussed-over expression of encouragement for anyone who needs it. 

Join us here on May 25 at 8 p.m. CT for this performance by Dayglow. The broadcast episode will air early next year as part of our upcoming Season 47, on PBS.