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News Taping Recap

Taping recap: The Revivalists

New Orleans rock band The Revivalists earned their success the old-fashioned way: writing good songs and playing ‘em for people as often as they could. After 10 years of grinding, the veteran road dogs scored a platinum single with 2015’s breakout “Wish I Knew You,” setting the stage for their next wave of success with 2018’s Take Good Care and its hit “All My Friends.” We were happy to catch that wave as it crested, hosting the octet for its Austin City Limits debut, which we live streamed around the world.

“What a true honor it is to be here on this stage,” remarked singer David Shaw as the band took the stage. Then the band kicked off with “When I’m With You,” a slow build that turned into a mini-anthem. The group then launched a heavy groove that powered “Oh No,” a bluesy rocker that had the front row singing along. The radio hit “All My Friends” came next, filling the room with its catchy chorus. Shaw put down his guitar for “Change,” a song for the crowd to clap along with and sing the “Ooooohs.” The Revivalists kept the energy level up with “You and I,” Shaw advising the crowd to “give us the good stuff.” A certain psychedelic element crept into “Criminal,” courtesy pedal steel guitarist Ed Williams’ spacy tones, but the electricity never flagged, and the audience responded with its biggest cheers yet.

The band slowed the pace down slightly with “It Was a Sin,” which had a more measured tempo – at least until the bridge, when it all ramped up again. “Fade Away” dived deeper into the pool of soul balladry, a move the eager crowd adored. “Otherside of Paradise” explored more atmospheric pop, before “You Said It All” re-asserted groove without breaking the spell. That presaged “Got Love,” a gospel-inflected tune that carried the group’s love for old-school soul into the audience for some old-fashioned call-and-response. That vibe kept burning bright with “Celebration,” its unabashed “na-na” chorus evoking the titular feeling.

“We’re in the home stretch now!” declared Shaw, which meant that it was time for the Big Hit. Sure enough, the band went straight into “Wish I Knew You,” the lyrics’ yearning tone riding the song’s irresistibly smooth pop groove into a massive crowd singalong. The Revivalists quit the stage to massive applause. But of course the show wasn’t over; a meditative piano line and Shaw strumming an acoustic guitar signaled the start of “Soulfight,” a lighter-waver of the first order that had the crowd going wild. That was the real end, with band and audience happy beyond words. It was a great show, and we can’t wait for you to see it when it airs this fall on your local PBS station.

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News Taping Recap

Taping recap: The Raconteurs

Headed up by the double-headed beast made up of singer/guitarist Jack White and singer/guitarist Brendan Benson, The Raconteurs are hard-wired to play exciting, tuneful rock & roll. Joined by fellow Detroit homeboys Jack Lawrence on bass and Patrick Keeler on drums (plus utility man Dean Fertita, last seen on our stage with Queens of the Stone Age and Iggy Pop), the band is positively deadly. As we found out when the group came back to the ACL stage in support of their long-awaited third album Help Us Stranger, delivering a loud, riff-filled show for the ages, which we streamed live around the world. 

With screaming guitars and thrashing drums, the fivesome hit the stage and into the blasting Stranger opener “Bored & Razed,” with White on the verses and Benson on the choruses. That wasn’t raucous enough, so the band hit the bluesy, crunchy “Don’t Bother Me” even harder. One squall of feedback later, Benson donned an acoustic guitar for “Only Child,” a folk rocker of sorts that featured Benson and White harmonizing on the same mic, bluegrass-style. The ex-White Stripes singer moved to the keyboard for the semi-ballad “You Don’t Understand,” a pop song overtaken by White’s passionate delivery and pounding piano. He stayed on his stool for “Shine the Light On Me,” a classic rock anthem for a new generation, but returned to the guitar to lay fuzzed-out guitar licks on Benson’s conflicted kiss-off “Now That You’re Gone.” 

That song led straight into the rifftastic “Sunday Driver,” one of the new record’s catchiest and fiercest rockers. So an acoustic guitar had to come back out, with Benson driving “Help Me Stranger” through its mutated power popping country rock. “Thoughts and Prayers” moved back to anthemic folk rock territory, though with rumbling synth embellishment. Benson went back to acoustic for the Southern rock-inflected ballad “Somedays (I Don’t Feel Like Trying),” which keyed on ragged three part harmonies as much as loud guitars, and denied its depressive sentiment with the coda “Here right now – not dead yet.” The band double dipped back into 2008’s Grammy-winning Consolers of the Lonely for the countryish “Old Enough” and the snarling “Top Yourself,” before slamming directly into Stranger’s boogieing Donovan cover “Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness).” Then a familiar beat underpinned guitars riffing in harmony, leading to an extended take on “Steady As She Goes,” the powerhouse rocker from their 2006 debut Broken Boy Soldiers that introduced The Raconteurs to the world. The crowd broke into call-and-response with “Are you steady now?” before the song crashed back into its blazing wall of guitars. 

After that facemelter, the band ended the set with the crime story “Carolina Drama,” which might have been a Marty Robbins-style folk ballad were it not for the rock volume and White’s distinctive wail. “If you want to know the truth of the tale,” White sang, “Go and ask the milkman” the audience answered. The set ended, a guitar fed back, White hugged a member of the audience, and the crowd went wild. “That’s it!” said White, and it was over. It was a hell of a show, and we can’t wait for you to see it when it airs early next year on your local PBS station as part of our Season 45.

  • photo by Scott Newton
  • photo by Scott Newton
  • photo by Scott Newton
  • photo by Scott Newton
  • photo by Scott Newton
  • photo by Scott Newton
  • photo by Scott Newton
  • photo by Scott Newton
  • photo by Scott Newton
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Taping Recap

Taping recap: The Head and the Heart

The Head and the Heart returned to the Austin City Limits stage for its second appearance on the show, on the heels of its acclaimed third LP Signs of Light. The livestreamed performance left no fan disappointed, as the Seattle band hit the stage with its effervescent melodies and poignant harmonies intact.

The band took the stage, tuned up and went into the hyper-melodic “All We Ever Knew,” from Signs of Light. The sextet stuck to the new record for “City of Angels,” a rocking paean to Los Angeles. Kenny Hensely’s piano pounding then signaled a look back to the band’s beloved first album in the form of the rollicking tune “Ghosts.” “Rhythm and Blues” followed, its title genre subtly woven into the rhythm, before the pace slowed a bit with the shimmering “Another Story.” The Head and the Heart then essayed the lovely “Let’s Be Still,” the lush duet between leader Jonathan Russell and violinist Charity Rose Thielen that became a stirring anthem and serves as title track to the combo’s second record.

The cut-time strumming of Russell’s acoustic guitar brought the folk-popping “Lost in My Mind,” one of the band’s hits and, from the sound of the cheers, a clear crowd favorite. The group showcased its trademark harmonies on “Winter Song,” a fingerpicked folk tune of surpassing beauty. Then came a surprise – the Seattleites paid tribute to late Soundgarden leader Chris Cornell with a gently faithful take on Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Strike,” sung by new guitarist Matthew Gervais and Russell, that found great favor with the audience. Following that triumph, Russell commanded the stage solo for “Oh My Dear,” a dramatic ballad that segued into the full band thumper “I Don’t Mind,” both from Signs of Light. The Head and the Heart returned to its debut for the tunefulness overload of “Sounds Like Hallelujah,” before cranking the amps and the rhythm for Let It Be Still’s “Shake.” The main set ended with “Down in the Valley,” the fan favorite folk pop anthem that distills the band’s essence into one memorable number.

One boisterously cheering crowd later, Russell, Thielen and Gervais returned to the stage for “Library Magic,” putting their own stamp on the guitar ‘n’ three part harmony sound of Crosby, Stills & Nash. The rest of the band came back onstage to close with the crowd-pleaser “Rivers and Roads,” one of the group’s most potent folk rock anthems. The crowd went appropriately wild, and the band quit the stage to rapturous applause. It was a great show, and we’re happy for you to see it this fall when it airs on your local PBS station.

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Taping Recap

Taping recap: The Black Angels

It’s no surprise that we at ACL love to showcase Austin’s finest acts when we have the opportunity. So we were thrilled to welcome back Central Texas’ modern psychedelic sons The Black Angels for their livestreamed second appearance. Performing the entirety of their latest album, the critically-acclaimed Death Song, alongside crowd favorites, the Angels delivered a scorching set of darkly droning, acid-kissed rock & roll.

Surrounded by screens projecting trippy kaleidoscopic images, the band kicked things off with new album opener “Currency” a politcally charged tirade that rolled off the stage on a wave of reverb anchored by frontman Alex Maas’ keening vocals. A twanging guitar line signaled the start of “The Prodigal Sun,” from the band’s striking debut Passover, much to the approval of the crowd. Backed by the otherworldly display of abstract lighting, the Angels launched into the droning but rocking “Entrance Song,” before upping the energy level for “Better Off Alone.” The quintet returned to the new record for the menacing “I Dreamt,” aptly displaying the darker side of the hippie dream as implied by their name. The rhythm-driven “Medicine” added a side of funk to the group’s smoky acid rock, while “Hunt Me Down” glowered its way through the grungy riffs of guitarists Christian Bland and Jake Garcia.

The Angels returned to social commentary with “Grab As Much (as you can),” another spear in the side of greed. Bland sat down at the keyboard for the dreamy open of “Half Believing,” its idyll altered by drummer Stephanie Bailey’s insistent thump and Garcia’s fuzzed-out Rickenbacker. The energy level blasted off immediately after for the growling “Bloodhounds,” the guitars competing with multi-instrumentalist Kyle Hunt’s cutting Farfisa organ, and stayed high for the cheerfully threatening “I’d Kill For Her.” The dramatic, arresting “Comanche Moon” came next, as Maas imagined vengeance on behalf of First Peoples everywhere. The Angels ended the main set with the melancholy atmospheres of “Life Song,” Maas’ cries of “I’ll see you on the other side” belying the song’s title.   

It wasn’t over, of course; after the appropriate amount of cheering, the band returned for the blurry, meditative “Estimate.” An insistently buzzing guitar snapped the atmosphere into sharper focus for “Death March,” one of Death Song’s standouts. The Angels returned to the beginning for the final number, swirling its fuzzy guitars, pounding rhythms and seething rage for “Young Men Dead,” a warning shot from Passover that got the audience riled up on first lick. It was a perfect closer for this terrific show, and we can’t wait for you to see it when it airs this fall on your local PBS station.    

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Featured News Taping Recap

Taping recap: Terry Allen & the Panhandle Mystery Band

Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band on Austin City Limits, 2021. Photo by Scott Newton.

A charter member of the Lubbock Mafia (Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, etc.), Terry Allen helped give rise to a substantial chunk of Lone Star musical style. Of course, Allen was long gone, off to his still-thriving career as a visual artist, by the time Ely and company made their names. But Texans take Texas with them wherever they go, and Allen’s unique take on the songwriting tradition he co-founded has continued to turn heads and blaze trails, including on his 2020 landmark thirteenth album Just Like Moby Dick, an album the Washington Post raves finds “new ways to marry his personal memories to more universal concerns about looming catastrophe and societal decay.” Returning to headline his own show for the first time since 1998, Allen and his all-star Panhandle Mystery Band showcased the album, and conducted a survey of his career to date, in a magnificent concert that we live streamed around the world. 

Allen and the PMB (guitarists Charlie Sexton and Lloyd Maines, fiddler Richard Bowden, accordionist/keyboardist Bukka Allen, bassist Glen Fukunaga, drummer Davis McLarty, cellist Brian Standerfer, percussionist Bale Allen and singer Shannon McNally) took the stage to wild applause from the crowd. Allen dedicated the show to his longtime friend and supporter Dave Hickey, who passed away three weeks ago, and went into the two-stepping “Amarillo Highway,” his signature tune from his classic 1979 album Lubbock (on everything). The round robin solos from Sexton (on a day off from Bob Dylan’s band), Bukka Allen, Bowden and Maines made clear what an amazing group Allen assembled for the show. He followed with one of his other Lubbock classics – the sardonic seduction waltz “The Beautiful Waitress,” before shifting from tentative love to definite destruction on the rocking “The Lubbock Tornado,” documenting a real-life storm from Allen’s childhood. “Disaster is fun,” he noted wryly. 

Next up were songs from the acclaimed Moby Dick, starting off with “Houdini Didn’t Like the Spiritualists,” a true life narrative documenting exactly that sentiment, as well as featuring a soulful McNally solo vocal. That was followed by “Death of the Last Stripper,” a tune co-penned by Dave Alvin and Allen’s wife Jo Harvey that acknowledged its title with the wistfully sad line “We’re the only ones who even know that she died.” McNally took the lead vocal for the ballad “All These Blues Go Walkin’ By,” which she, Jo Harvey, Sexton and Bukka Allen all had a hand in co-writing with Terry. The family affair continued with “City of the Vampires,” a song co-written by Allen’s nine-year-old grandson Kru that, once again, concerned exactly what the title promised. 

Allen introduced the PMB, before performing a suite of songs going all the way back to his first album, 1975’s Juarez, starting with the folky waltz “The Juarez Device (AKA Texican Badman).” The audience barely had time to clap before the group eased into the moody minor key narrative “What of Alicia,” which itself nearly crashed into the fan favorite rocker “There Oughta Be a Law Against Sunny Southern California.” Allen reached even further back for the next song: “Red Bird,” the first song he ever wrote, first performed on the TV show Shindig! in 1965. Moving forward a few decades, Allen said “This is for Jo Harvey” by way of introduction to the frisky “Flatland Boogie.” 

Then it was time to rock & roll once again, with the rollicking, Indian-flavored Allen standard “New Delhi Freight Train,” a song covered by Little Feat two years before Allen recorded it himself on Lubbock (on everything). He returned to Moby Dick for “Sailin’ On Through,” a mordant farewell that ruminates on the inevitable passing of, well, everything. But he and the band weren’t quite done. “We’ll end with a religious number,” Allen said, which meant one thing: “Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy,” one of his most popular and hilarious songs, and a perfect way to close out this special show. A grinning Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band took a bow to enthusiastic, well-deserved applause.  It was an excellent show and a great way to wrap our 47th season, and we can’t wait for you all to see it when it broadcasts early next year on your local PBS station. 

Terry Allen & the Panhandle Mystery Band perform on Austin City Limits, Season 47, 2021. Photos by Scott Newton.
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Featured News Taping Recap

Taping recap: Tanya Tucker

Tanya Tucker returns to Austin City Limits on July 11, 2023. Photo by Scott Newton.

Last seen in these parts in Season 11, country icon Tanya Tucker has never slowed down, racking up hits since the seventies. Riding yet another career high thanks to the 2022 documentary The Return of Tanya Tucker and the Grammy-winning Tucker/Brandi Carlile co-write “Bring My Flowers Now,” the Seminole, Texas native – who’s finally getting inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year – returned to the Austin City Limits stage at full power, bringing with her a new acclaimed record, Sweet Western Sound. 

Before we got that LP, however, Tucker – decked out in a green leather fringed jacket and polka-dotted scarf – and her six-piece band dug into that bucket of hits, opening with the frisky top tenner “If Your Heart Ain’t Busy Tonight.” “I just wanna thank y’all for hangin’ in for so many years,” she declared – a broad hint of the next song, the old school honkytonker “Hangin’ In.” Minus drummer Toby Caldwell, the musicians then gathered at the front of the stage for an acoustic pickin’, mandolin and fiddle-powered take on her late eighties #1 hit “Strong Enough to Bend.” The hits kept on coming with 1976’s  “Don’t Believe My Heart Can Stand Another You,” a good choice for the audience’s mid-song clapping. 

The repertoire leapt forward in time to While I’m Livin’, the 2019 Brandi Carlile-produced LP that brought Tucker back to prominence. Driven by her gritty vocals, “Hard Luck” rang out with energy and swagger to big cheers. Then came the Grammy-winning killer: co-write “Bring My Flowers Now.” Backed only by piano and harmonies from singer Presley Tucker and bassist Dino Villanueva, Tucker explained the origins of the song, then delivered it with quiet dignity and expertly controlled passion as only someone feeling the weight of the years could. “If your heart is in them flowers,” she sang, “Bring ‘em on.” From the audience’s standing ovation, their hearts were deep in that garden.

That would be a tough song for anyone to follow up, but Tucker did it by dipping into Sweet Western Sound for “Kindness,” a song that fit the tenor of its predecessor, but with a faster tempo and wry humor. She followed with “When the Rodeo is Over (Where Does the Cowboy Go),” a song Carlile sent to Tucker over the phone, and the kind of classic narrative ballad only a singer of Tucker’s experience (plus co-writer and Tucker paramour Craig Dillingham on harmony) could pull off with the proper gravitas. That went doublefold for “Ready As I’ll Never Be,” a farewell to loved ones performed with solemn soul. “Losin’ your friends is hard enough,” she explained, “but when your friends are your heroes, it’s even harder.” If there was a dry eye in the house, we’d be shocked.  

The mood then changed for the rowdier, as Tucker shared a tequila with an audience member and launched her classic anthem “Texas (When I Die),” as much a showcase for her band as it was an audience party, earning her another standing O. Another tough act to follow, but once again she managed it with her early nineties bluesy strut “It’s a Little Too Late.” “It’s never too late to do the right thing,” she said. “I’m proof of that.” 

Tucker commented on how much she and the band had anticipated this ACL taping, thanked her friends and family for being there, and touched on her illustrious past, including  having met Elvis Presley. Then, of course, she closed the show the only way she could. “I’m sincere when I say I love this song,” she smiled. The familiar piano chords floated in the air, then she sang the words: “Delta Dawn/what’s that flower you have on.” Needless to say, the crowd took a chorus on their own, before Tucker ended the song with a gospel flourish. She left the stage to a final standing ovation, as well she should’ve. There’s nothing like seeing a living legend still in her prime, and Tanya Tucker lived up to the legend. You’ll see for yourself when this episode airs this fall as part of our 49th season on your local PBS station. 

Tanya Tucker on Austin City Limits, 2023. Photos by Scott Newton.