We’re pleased to announce the return of Beck to Austin City Limits on Apr. 27.
Beck is back with the release of Morning Phase, already one of the most critically-acclaimed albums of the year, being hailed as a companion piece to his 2002 gem Sea Change. In fact, the trailblazing singer and songwriter last visited the show in 2002, hot on the heels of Sea Change. Beck’s recent live performances have earned raves as some of the very best of his storied career, and we’re thrilled to have him return for our 40th season.
Please join us in welcoming Beck back to the ACL stage.
Information about how to get tickets to this taping will be posted in April.
Austin City Limits is thrilled to announce our final taping of Season 43 with Oklahoma country rockers Turnpike Troubadours. The breakout band will hit the ACL stage on December 5 for a debut taping that will also be streamed live around the world. Speaking of livestreams, we’re also stoked to say that we’ll be doing the same for Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach’s taping on November 27. Auerbach will also be joined during the set by a very special guest, Louisiana soul singer Robert Finley, the first signing to his Easy Eye Sound record label. Both tapings will stream at 8pm CT/9 pm ET, Dan Auerbach here on November 27 and Turnpike Troubadours here on December 5, powered by Dell.
Called “the greatest country music band in the world right now” by Saving Country Music, the Turnpike Troubadours make their ACL debut in support of their fourth album A Long Way From Your Heart. Produced by Grammy winner Ryan Hewitt (The Avett Brothers, Red Hot Chili Peppers), Heart is a rare triumph––an album that hooks immediately but then rewards listeners willing to dig deeper. “I love what we as a band have turned into and how we treat songs,” says lead singer and chief songwriter Evan Felker. “That’s something we’ve grown into––adding some sort of oddly theatrical element to the musicianship to help the story along, to sum up where or who the character is to give him a little bit of landscape. It’s not just an acoustic guitar and a guy telling you what somebody’s doing.”Born in Okemah, Oklahoma, birthplace of Woody Guthrie and Troubadours pal John Fullbright, Felker founded his band of virtuosic country-rock road dogs in 2005. Since then, the Troubadours have delivered punch after punch of smart rock & roll that sells out huge venues throughout the Midwest and South and packs legendary haunts like the Troubadour in Los Angeles. “Felker has evolved into a Red Dirt Springsteen, deftly blending autobiographical elements with complex, hardscrabble characters,” raves Garden & Gun.Narratives put to music are nothing new, but Felker and his bandmates have upped the ante, creating a web of unforgettable characters that show up on album after album in songs that are both catchy and musically complex: men and women with their backs against their wall, represented realistically but also imbued with dignity. “It feels like going home to see that those characters are still alive in a way that movies and literary writers have always done,” Felker says. “It feels good.”
photo by Alyssa Gafkjen
Dan Auerbach has performed on ACL twice before with his band The Black Keys, and this will be his first time performing solo on the program where he will be backed by some of Nashville’s finest musicians—Bobby Wood, Gene “Bubba” Chrisman, Pat McLaughlin, Dave Roe, Russ Pahl, Ray Jacildo, Ashley Wilcoxson, Leisa Hans, Nick Bockrath from Cage the Elephant—as well as featuring legendary bluesman Robert Finley.The eight-time Grammy winning superstar will perform songs from his acclaimed new solo release Waiting On A Song. NPR calls the album “a batch of sparkling pop songs that’s sweet, breezy, and primed for summer.” The album is Auerbach’s follow-up to 2009’s Keep It Hid and is his love letter to Nashville. As such, he recruited some of Nashville’s most respected players to write and record his latest. “Living in Nashville has definitely changed the way I think about music and the way that I record it,” he says about working with his heroes. “I didn’t have all of these resources before. I am working with some of the greatest musicians that ever lived.” The always-understated musician is happy to have his own version of the Wrecking Crew at his Easy Eye Studio in south Nashville. “Sometimes I feel I created my own Field of Dreams. I built the studio to accommodate live musicians playing, and then all of a sudden the best musicians in Nashville show up, and it’s happening. This isthe sound I was looking for, and now there really is an Easy Eye sound. It’s a factory—but in the way that Motown or Stax or American Studios was a factory. Anything can happen, any day.” He pauses a long minute, as if to let it all sink in. “Even with the success I’ve had, it’s only just now that I’m finally finding myself,” Auerbach says. “I called the album Waiting On A Song because I’ve been waiting my whole life to be able to do this. And now I have. And none of us ever want it to stop.”
Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes about a week before each taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings. Or you can join us online for Dan Auerbach here on November 27 and Turnpike Troubadours here on December 5 for these full-set livestreams. The broadcast versions will air on PBS early next year as part of our Season 43.
Austin City Limits welcomes the 2018 Grammy Award-winner for Best New Artist: acclaimed singer/songwriter Alessia Cara, who will hit the stage in her debut taping on August 2, showcasing songs from her highly-anticipated new album alongside chart-topping career highlights.
Following a groundbreaking run of six global platinum hits, the 21-year old Canadian recently released “Growing Pains,” the debut single from her forthcoming sophomore album, out later this year. The entire LP was written solely by Cara and features two songs self-produced by the Grammy Award winning artist. “I really thought it’d be cool to have a nice challenge to see if I can write something, like a whole project, on my own,” she tells Rolling Stone. “It’s something that I wanted to see if I could do.”
Cara catapulted onto the charts in late 2015 with her spellbinding, multi-platinum smash “Here,” from her breakout platinum debut album KNOW-IT-ALL, which also spawned the chart-topping global hit “Scars To Your Beautiful.” For Alessia’s legions of die-hard fans, “Growing Pains” is the long-awaited follow-up to the 4x-platinum “1-800-273-8255,” her hit collaboration with fellow Def Jam artist Logic, one of 2017’s landmark singles with over 1.5 billion streams worldwide. Along with “Stay”—her Grammy-nominated double-platinum #1 pop collaboration with Zedd—and a parade of hits, Alessia has generated over 7 billionglobal streams to date, becoming the most-streamed new female artist of 2017.
Known for stripped down, powerful live shows, Cara closed out this year’s Grammy broadcast joined by collaborators Logic and Khalid, in a show-stopping, emotional performance of the Grammy-nominated anti suicide song “1-800-273-8255”. Still at the beginning of what promises to be a remarkable career, we’re thrilled to showcase this stunning new artist on the ACL stage.
Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes about a week before each taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings. The broadcast version will air on PBS later this year as part of our upcoming Season 44.
Austin City Limits is pleased to announce a new taping with Alabama Shakes on Oct. 2.
We are thrilled to welcome back Alabama Shakes for their third appearance on the ACL stage. The Athens, AL quartet has been tearing up festival stages this year including Coachella, Bonnaroo, Glastonbury and Lollapalooza in support of Sound & Color, the chart-topping follow-up to their Grammy-nominated debut Boys & Girls. The album’s twelve songs reveal a band honed by years on the road, and drawing from a wide range of influences, from the bluesy groove of “Shoegaze” and the garage-rock freak-out on “The Greatest” to the psychedelic space jam “Gemini” and the urgent, tightly-coiled funk of “Don’t Wanna Fight.” Long instrumental intros and passages create hazy atmosphere, while the intensity of Howard’s vocals snaps everything back into riveting focus. Expanding on the soulful blues-rock base that made their name, the Shakes defy predictable expectations and map an exciting, surprising, and innovative new direction. We’ll join them on this new journey on Oct. 2.
Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes about a week before the taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings.
Austin City Limits is thrilled to announce a trio of new tapings for our milestone Season 50: 2X Grammy-nominated Nashville sensation Jelly Roll makes his highly-anticipated ACL debut on April 9, showcasing his breakthrough album Whitsitt Chapel; formative bluegrass act Nickel Creek returns for the first time in a decade on May 5 for their fourth taping, showcasing their latest album Celebrants; and UK phenom, eclectic singer and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier, makes his ACL debut on May 14 on the heels of his sixth Grammy win and the release of his new LP Djesse Vol. 4.
Jelly Roll. Photo by Robby Klein.
Breakout singer-songwriter Jelly Roll (born Jason DeFord) makes his Austin City Limits debut riding country’s hottest hand: he scored a Best New Artist nomination at this year’s Grammy Awards, his 2023 debut country album Whitsitt Chapel debuted at No. 3 on Billboard’s All-Genre chart and No. 2 on the Country Album chart, earning him the biggest country debut album in chart history, and he just announced a 37-date “Beautifully Broken” headlining U.S. arena tour. A native of working-class Nashville borough Antioch, Jelly is racking up a string of record-breaking hits and countless accolades, with four 2024 People’s Choice Awards, including Male Country Artist of the Year; was the most nominated male at the 2023 CMA Awards, with five nominations, winning CMA Best New Artist, and swept the 2023 CMT Awards, taking home a trio of awards to become the most awarded artist of the night. He also landed a Billboard magazine “Country Power List” cover, and the chart-topper recently received Billboard’s 2023 Breakthrough Award. His 2023 smash #1 single “Save Me”—a confessional, vulnerable expression of self-doubt—broke radio airplay records and set the stage for a new chapter in his life. Jelly Roll held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Emerging Artist chart for 25 straight weeks, the longest run in that ranking’s history. Whitsitt Chapel— named for the small Tennessee church he grew up going to—takes listeners on a “Backroad Baptism” through songs of faith, addiction, love and life in-between with powerful highlights including “Need A Favor” and “Hungover In a Church Pew.” “A collection of songs about Saturday night sins and Sunday morning sanctity,” raves The Tennessean. “I’ve always felt like my music lived somewhere between Willie Nelson and 3-6 Mafia,” Jelly tells American Songwriter, as he straddles country, rock and rap to create songs that resonate with his legions of fans across the globe. In addition to his radio and streaming success, he has also become a pop culture phenomenon and is the subject of an acclaimed Hulu documentary charting his remarkable ascent from former inmate to music-making stardom. His self-built, unconventional industry rise and unique fan connection have garnered praise from numerous outlets, with Variety noting, “For everyone who’s facing the same struggles, Jelly Roll is their Springsteen,” and American Songwriter echoing, “with a string of accolades and an extremely dedicated following, Jelly Roll has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the music industry.” His current single, “Halfway To Hell” currently dominates Country and Rock radio.
Nickel Creek. Photo by Josh Goleman.
GRAMMY Award-winning trio Nickel Creek—Sara Watkins (fiddle), Sean Watkins (guitar), and Chris Thile (mandolin)—is in the midst of a triumphant year following the release of their acclaimed album, Celebrants—their first new project in nine years. Recorded at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, Celebrants was released to critical praise and earned a 2024 Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. Of the record, NPR Music raves, “the trio sounds and plays better than ever…these songs are nuanced and honest, not fantasy but one suited for introspection,” while Paste praises, “their instruments and voices alternately blend and shine…it’s a joy to have the gang back together,” and Spin proclaims, “giddily ambitious…breathtaking instrumental interplay between mandolin, guitar, and fiddle.” Together a sum of more than their staggering parts, Nickel Creek revolutionized bluegrass and folk in the early 2000s and ushered in a new era of what we now recognize as Americana music. After meeting as young children and steadily earning the respect of the bluegrass circuit over the course of a decade, the trio signed with venerable label Sugar Hill Records in 2000 and quickly broke through with their Grammy-nominated, Alison Krauss-produced self-titled LP. Since that effort, the group has released a trio of acclaimed studio albums: 2002’s This Side, which won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, 2005’s Why Should the Fire Die? and 2014’s A Dotted Line. Known for their high energy live shows, Nickel Creek will continue to perform through 2024 including an extensive headline tour this spring, a special co-bill with Andrew Bird for several weeks in July, and will join Kacey Musgraves throughout her North American arena tour this fall. Nickel Creek made their ACL debut in Season 26 in 2001, returned in Season 28 and in 2014 for Season 40, and we’re thrilled to welcome them back for our golden anniversary.
Jacob Collier. Photo by Tom Bender.
Recognized by audiences, critics, and fellow musicians alike as one of the most gifted young artists of modern times, 29-year-old music prodigy and North London native Jacob Collier has already notched a seemingly endless list of achievements, including becoming the first British act in history to win a Grammy Award for each of his first four albums, along with 12 Grammy nominations, including the top honor of Album of the Year in 2021. He continues the creative streak in 2024, scoring his sixth career Grammy win at this year’s awards, marking an astonishing fifth consecutive year of nominations. Djesse Vol. 4 marks the epic climax to the four-part journey that Collier first began in 2018 with the release of Djesse Vol. 1; this final album completes the quartet with 16 sweeping tracks and an epic list of special guests and collaborators including Brandi Carlile, Stormzy, Michael McDonald, Kirk Franklin, Chris Martin, Chris Thile, Anoushka Shankar, John Legend and John Mayer; as well as the “Audience Choir,” the collective recorded voices of more than 150,000 audience members from every corner of the world across Collier’s last two years of global touring. The Guardian raves, “A thesis would be required to do Djesse Vol. 4 justice, but it is ultimately an invigorating and irrepressible record, unlike anything else you are likely to hear.” His 2016 debut LP In My Room, recorded, produced and played entirely by Collier, heralded the arrival of a staggering musical mind, traversing everything from microtonal of the Flintstones theme to folk-influenced ballads. An ensuing one-man-band international tour saw him developing an innovative live show where he played and layered twelve instruments to recreate the world of In My Room onstage. “My audiences are so musical and they participate so readily in the music,” says Collier. “When I play live, I’m not just showing up to entertain, it feels like we’re all coming together to make music in unison.” That natural pull towards musical collaboration went on to inform Collier’s plans for his ensuing Djesse series of releases. “After being on my own,I realised I wanted to work with other people and learn from them,” he explains. “I decided to make a quadruple album including every genre under the sun, where each collaborator made music that was special to me. I wanted to plunge myself into the deepest possible waters of creativity.” The resulting volumes of Djesse have delivered on Collier’s ambitious promise, featuring musical themes that encompass everything from orchestral composition to folk songwriting, R&B, rap and pop. “The key skill to collaboration is drawing things out of people that they didn’t know they had in them,” he says. “It’s all about being taken by surprise and holding the potential for things changing. “I’m just following my voice to see where it takes me next,” says Collier. “I’m keeping my mind and ears open, as there is still so much more to discover and create.”
We’re thrilled to welcome these incredible artists to the ACL stage for our milestone season. Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes a week in advance of each taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings. The broadcast episodes will air on PBS this fall as part of our anniversary Season 50.
2024 marks the 50th Anniversary of Austin City Limits, kicking off a yearlong celebration saluting five decades of iconic performances. The trailblazing series is thrilled to announce the initial tapings of milestone Season 50, featuring an all-star slate of returning favorites: Eight-time Grammy nominees, Austin’s own Black Pumas make their long-awaited return on February 20 supporting their acclaimed sophomore release Chronicles of a Diamond; Colombian superstar Juanes returns to the ACL stage for the first time in over a decade on March 4, making his third appearance with songs from his smash Vida Cotidiana; Austin native/hometown hero Gary Clark Jr. returns March 26 for his fourth appearance to preview his powerful new offering JPEG RAW; and celebrated singer-songwriter Brittany Howard takes the ACL stage for her second solo headlining performance on April 29 to showcase her upcoming album What Now.
Photo by Jody Domingue.
When Black Pumas released their star-making self-titled debut in 2019, the Austin-bred soul duo set off a reaction almost as combustible and rapturous as their unbridled breed of psychedelic soul. Along with earning an astounding seven Grammy Award nominations (including Album Of The Year) and critical acclaim, singer/songwriter Eric Burton and guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada achieved massive success as a sensational live act, delivering a transcendent show Burton aptly refers to as “electric church.” The band’s meteoric rise saw them playing thrilling sold-out shows across North and South America and Europe and selling more than one million albums worldwide. Their breakout single “Colors,” a gold-certified anthem that resonated with audiences across the globe, received over 450 million streams. In creating the follow-up to one of the most celebrated debuts in recent years, the band broadened their sonic palette to include a dazzling expanse of musical forms: heavenly hybrids of soul and symphonic pop, mind-bending excursions into jazz-funk and psychedelia, and starry-eyed love songs that feel dropped down from the cosmos. Chronicles of a Diamond harnesses the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry between Burton (a self-taught musician who got his start busking on beaches and subway platforms in his native Los Angeles) and Grammy Award-winning Quesada. Wilder and weirder and more extravagantly composed than its predecessor, Chronicles of a Diamond arrives as the fullest expression yet of Black Pumas’ frenetic creativity and limitless vision, bringing their singular vision to life with more power, passion, and daring originality than ever before. Pumas have already earned a 2024 Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance for the record’s irresistible opening track “More Than a Love Song,” along with widespread praise: “One of the most moving things about this record is his (Burton’s) voice…” says NPR Music, adding it’s, “a little trippy, [and] a little gritty.” and the Austin American-Statesman declares “it will go down in history as one of the defining soul albums of our generation.”
Photo by Mario Alzate.
Juanes’ critically-acclaimed 10th studio album Vida Cotidiana (Everyday Life), his first album of original material in four years, is also his most personal, with the global icon reflecting on topics ranging from love, marriage, family, social concerns and more. The career highlight has earned press raves including NPR, Billboard, Rolling Stone and Variety declaring Vida Cotidiana among ‘The Best Latin Music of 2023’ and Juanes achieves a new creative pinnacle in his distinguished two-decade career. Juanes recently received his 25th career LATIN GRAMMY award (extending the Colombian music icon’s status as The Latin Recording Academy’s most honored solo artist of all time). He also received a 2024 GRAMMY nomination for “Best Latin Rock Or Alternative Album,” his ninth career nomination. An electrifying guitarist and gifted songwriter, with a staggering 30 million albums sold worldwide, Juanes admits, “I think this is my best album as a musician, composer and performer. All my previous experiments were certainly valid—getting out of your safe zone and feeling uncomfortable can provide a transformative experience. But this new session returns to the places that are closely connected with my essence.” From the somber power-rock chords of “Gris” and the funky accents of the politically charged “Canción Desaparecida,” to the stately orchestral touches of “Mayo” and the infectious vibes of “Cecilia”—the Latin chart-topping duet with Dominican master Juan Luis Guerra informed by the spiraling grooves of Cuban son and Afrobeats—Vida Cotidiana confirms Juanes as one of the most soulful practitioners of sterling Latin pop-rock in the game. The superstar brings his widely praised Vida Cotidiana World Tour to the U.S. in early 2024, as The LA Times declares, “‘Juanes’ live show is… a daring rock production… and a ‘don’t miss’ event. His concerts confirm Juanes as the rare artist — in company with the likes of U2, and Bruce Springsteen — with the power to inspire beyond the [venue] walls.”
Photo by Mike Miller.
Anyone who has listened to a Gary Clark Jr. album or watched the four-time Grammy Award winner perform live knows that he’s a gifted multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and performer. And never more so than on his last album, 2019’s illuminating This Land. But while This Land signaled a breakthrough in displaying his musical versatility beyond the blues, his fourth studio album,JPEG RAW, represents a quantum leap. “Blues will always be my foundation,” says Clark. “But that’s just scratching the surface. I’m also a beat maker and an impressionist who likes to do different voices. I’ve always loved theater and being able to tell a story. At home when I play the trumpet, I think Lee Morgan, or John Coltrane when I play the sax. I’ve even got bagpipes just in case I need them. So while this is my most honest and vulnerable album about relating to the human condition, it’s also the most freeing.” The album’s title track—an acronym for Jealousy, Pride, Envy, Greed … Rules, Alter Ego, Worlds—examines the role cell-phone society plays in this chaos at the expense of real-life, one-on-one interaction. “I don’t love having a mobile device,” explains Clark of the song’s origin and the album’s overarching theme. “I miss being able to have more genuine interaction, looking someone in the eyes and learning something, getting a perspective. JPEG RAW is about showing the real and not the edit. We live in a world of edits, filters and redos. We only get one shot.” “When the album sequencing was finished, the band and I realized that we’d made an album into a movie,” he recalls. “That’s what I was going for sonically because that’s how the whole writing process played out. First, it’s about angst and confusion, the unknown. Next, it’s about looking at ourselves internally. And then it’s about what comes after: the hope and triumph.”
Photo by Bobbi Rich.
There’s a double meaning to the title of What Now, the revelatory new album from singer/songwriter Brittany Howard. “With the world we’re living in now, it feels like we’re all just trying to hang onto our souls,” says the Nashville-based musician and frontwoman for four-time Grammy Award-winning Alabama Shakes. “Everything seems to be getting more extreme and everyone keeps wondering, ‘What now? What’s next?’ By the same coin, the only constant on this record is you never know what’s going to happen next: every song is its own aquarium, its own little miniature world built around whatever I was feeling and thinking at the time.” With five Grammy wins and sixteen nominations, Howard follows up her massively acclaimed solo debut Jaime—a 2019 LP that landed on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of Pitchfork, The New York Times and Rolling Stone – with What Now, drawing an immense and indelible power from endless unpredictability. Over the course of its 12 tracks, Howard brings her singular musicality to a shapeshifting sound encompassing everything from psychedelia and dance music to dream-pop and avant-jazz—a fitting backdrop for an album whose lyrics shift from unbridled outpouring to incisive yet radically idealistic commentary on the state of the human condition. Anchored in Howard’s inimitable and infinitely commanding voice—a supreme vessel for channeling raw emotional truth—the record is at turns galvanizing, cathartic, and wildly soul-expanding, and the result is a monumental step forward for one of the most essential artists of our time. “I think the gift I bring is to help people to be more introspective and ask themselves questions,” says Howard. “With a little self-examination, we can learn to be kinder, more compassionate, more understanding of each other. We can see that a lot of us are going through the same shit, and we all just want to be seen for who we really are.”
We’re thrilled to welcome these incredible artists to the ACL stage to launch our milestone season. Want to be part of our audience? We will post information on how to get free passes a week in advance of each taping. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for notice of postings. The broadcast episodes will air on PBS this fall as part of our upcoming Season 50.
