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ACL to livestream debut taping of Austin’s Shinyribs

Austin City Limits is excited to announce that we will be streaming the debut taping of Austin favorite Shinyribs on Sunday, October 29 directly from the ACL stage at 8pm CT/9 pm ET on ACLTV’s YouTube channel.  

Led by Beaumont, Texas native Kevin Russell, who last appeared on ACL in 2007 with the Gourds, Austin’s Shinyribs began as a side project before becoming Russell’s full-time concern following the Gourds’ dissolution in 2013. This year, the now eight-person Shinyribs dosed fans with the exuberant swamp-pop soul-funk of their fourth release, I Got Your Medicine. Tracked at Houston’s legendary Sugar Hill Recording Studios, it carries a New Orleans R&B vibe — with extra gris-gris added by Russell’s co-producer, Jimbo Mathus, late of the Squirrel Nut Zippers. AllMusic calls the album “funny, heartfelt, and dirty, a retro-soul album that never feels stuck in the past,” while the Austin American Statesman names it as one of 2017’s best albums so far. The band puts a gospel groove on “Don’t Leave It a Lie,” and throw several retro influences into Ted Hawkins’ “I Gave Up All I Had.” The syncopated sexiness of “A Certain Girl,” an Allen Toussaint cover, a gorgeous rendering of the Toussaint McCall/Patrick Robinson ballad “Nothing Takes the Place of You” and the bluesy “I Knew It All Along,” Russell’s very-successful attempt to write “just a real good done-me-wrong soul song,” are equally captivating. “Tub Gut Stomp and Red-eyed Soul” gets its title from Russell’s definition of his musical style; an energetic N’awlins romper, it’s filled with “freak-out juice.” Gospel rave-up “The Cross Is Boss” puts a clever, slightly satirical finish on the affair; Russell says the song — like the album — is meant as a reminder that not every issue has to be taken so seriously. “A lot of people are so tightly wound, they can’t let themselves go,” he says. “I can demonstrate to them that you can shake your hips, roll around on the floor, scream and shout, and it’s OK: people will still accept you. It’s just music; relax and have some fun.”

Join the party October 29 for this full-set livestream on our ACLTV YouTube channel. The broadcast version will air on PBS early next year as part of our Season 43.

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Featured Live Stream News

Austin City Limits to livestream debut taping from country star Chris Stapleton

Austin City Limits is excited to announce that we will be streaming the debut taping of acclaimed, bestselling country artist Chris Stapleton on Monday, October 23 directly from the ACL stage at 8pm CT/9 pm ET on ACLTV’s YouTube channel.  

Kentucky-born Chris Stapleton is one of Nashville’s most respected and beloved musicians. Since releasing his now double Platinum debut solo album Traveller in 2015, Stapleton has received multiple Grammy, CMA and ACM Awards and remains one of the most critically praised musicians of his time. His sophomore follow up, From A Room: Volume 1, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Albums chart upon its release and, with it’s Gold certification, remains the strongest-selling country album of 2017. Rolling Stone calls the album “strikingly focused, sonically and thematically” while The New York Times praises, “Like Traveller, From A Room is earthen, rich with tradition, has a tactile intensity and is carefully measured.” A second album, From A Room: Volume 2, will be released December 1 and is now available for pre-order. In celebration of the music, “Chris Stapleton’s All-American Road Show,” which Rolling Stone calls, “one of the most ambitious country tours ever,” is currently underway and will span throughout 2017. Of a recent performance, the Seattle Times declared, “Stapleton dazzled the sold-out crowd with a barrage of songs that defy easy categorization while receiving the kind of deafening cheers reserved for superstars.”

Please join us October 23 for this full-set livestream on our ACLTV YouTube channel. The broadcast version will air on PBS early next year as part of our Season 43.

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Featured Live Stream News

ACL livestreams Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires on 8/21, Father John Misty on 8/22

Austin City Limits is happy to announce a trio of upcoming livestreams featuring some of this season’s most highly-anticipated performers: Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Amanda Shires and Father John Misty. ACL will host back-to-back live streams from a rare double shoot with acclaimed singer-songwriters Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and Amanda Shires. The creative collaborators (and husband and wife team) will each perform separate sets, with Shires up first in her solo ACL debut streaming live starting at 8pm CT/9pm ET on ACLTV’s YouTube Channel; Isbell takes the stage after a 20-minute intermission and his return ACL appearance will stream live at approximately 9:20pm CT/10:20pm ET.  The next day on August 22 join us to witness the captivating Father John Misty in his solo ACL debut, which will stream in its entirety live from the Austin City Limits stage at 8pm CT/9 pm ET on ACLTV’s YouTube Channel.

One of the finest songwriters working today, Alabama native Jason Isbell first-appeared on ACL back in Season 39 and returns August 21 with his band the 400 Unit to perform gems from the acclaimed new album, The Nashville Sound, a beautiful piece of American music-making. Isbell has earned numerous accolades since his ACL debut on the heels of 2013’s career breakthrough Southeastern, including a pair of GRAMMY Awards for 2015’s Something More Than Free, and we’re thrilled to have the American original back on our stage.  

A fixture on the Texas circuit since she began her career as a 15-year old fiddle player touring with Western swing institution the Texas Playboys, Amanda Shires has toured and recorded with John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Todd Snider, Justin Townes Earle, Shovels & Rope, and most recently her husband and creative partner Jason Isbell, with whom she first-appeared on ACL in 2013. The Texas native makes her solo debut on the ACL stage with songs from her acclaimed release My Piece Of Land.  Produced by Dave Cobb, the very personal record deals with family, anxiety, and the phases of a young woman’s life, but the primary focus is the concept of home. Shires addresses the similarities and differences between the home she was born into, the two homes she was eventually split between, and the home she has finally made for herself as a wife and new mother.  We’re delighted to have her back home in Texas and on the ACL stage.

Now known as Father John Misty, the erstwhile Josh Tillman (under which name he first appeared on ACL in 2012 as the drummer for Fleet Foxes) makes his long-awaited solo debut on our stage in support of his third solo release, the madly ambitious new album Pure Comedy.  Inspired by the chaos and uncertainty of modern life, the charismatic indie-rock provocateur writes about the dubious privilege of being here, the elusiveness of meaning, true love and its habitual absence, random euphoria and the inexplicable misery of others, truth and its more alluring counterfeits, the sophistication of answers that don’t make any sense, the barbarism of our appetites, lucky breaks and injustice, faith and ignorance, crippling, mind-numbing boredom, and the terror of it all ending too soon.  Variety recently hailed him “the greatest rock star of his generation” and we’re thrilled to bear witness when he takes the ACL stage on August 22, streaming live for fans across the globe.

Please join us both August 21 and 22 for these full-set livestreams on our ACLTV YouTube Channel. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and Amanda Shires will stream here and Father John Misty here. The broadcast versions will air on PBS as part of our upcoming Season 43 which premieres this fall.

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Featured Live Stream News

ACL to livestream Angel Olsen’s July 25th taping

Austin City Limits is proud to announce that we will be streaming the upcoming taping of Angel Olsen on July 25, live and in its entirety, directly from the Austin City Limits stage at 8pm CT/9 pm ET on ACLTV’s YouTube channel.  

An artist who reigns over the land between being an elliptical outsider and a pop personality with a haunting obliqueness and sophisticated grace, Angel Olsen hits our stage in celebration of her third LP My Woman, which Uncut calls “another giant progression in an already distinguished career.” The St. Louis native began her journey in Chicago as a backing vocalist for Bonnie Prince Billy, but her talent soon manifested in her first EP Strange Cacti and album Half Way Home in 2012. Signing to respected indie Jagjaguwar, Olsen released 2014’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness to great fanfare, setting the stage for My Woman. Recorded with producer Justin Raisen (Charlie XCX, Santigold) after her relocation to Asheville, NC, the record expands on the reverb-shrouded poetic swoons, shadowy folk and grunge-pop workouts of her previous work via 70s country rock, vintage electronic pop and languid psychedelic soul. “These are controlled, tempered, well-steered songs, capable of navigating genres,” notes Q. An intuitively smart, warmly communicative and fearlessly generous record, My Woman speaks to everyone. “Contradictory, complex, and worthy of endless re-listens,” says DIY, “Angel Olsen has crafted her most compelling record to date.”

Please join us July 25 for this full-set livestream on our ACLTV YouTube channel. The broadcast version will air on PBS later this year as part of Season 43.

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Featured Live Stream

ACL to livestream tapings from The Head and the Heart and The Black Angels

Austin City Limits is proud to announce a pair of back-to-back livestreams with two of today’s most thrilling live acts. We will be streaming the upcoming tapings of Seattle’s The Head and the Heart on May 22 and Austin’s own The Black Angels on May 23, live and in their entirety, directly from the Austin City Limits stage at 8pm CT/9 pm ET on ACLTV’s YouTube channel.  Both acts are making return appearances to the ACL stage armed with acclaimed new albums.

When Seattle band, The Head and the Heart, who first appeared on ACL in Season 37, regrouped in 2016 to start writing together again after a sabbatical, “it almost felt like we were a new band, trying things we hadn’t tried,” bassist  Chris Zasche recalls. “We stayed at a bungalow on the beach. We’d wake up, have coffee and go boogie boarding. We were ready and excited to be back together.” That renewed sense of purpose can be felt throughout their major label debut, Signs of Light, the group’s third album and first release for Warner Bros. Records. “This album isn’t about us now having achieved our dreams,” says vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Charity Rose Thielen. “The day we started being able to live off our art was the day we achieved our dreams, in my mind. This is the album where we really fell into our true voices as those artists.” Recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Cage The Elephant), Signs of Light crackles with the upbeat, singalong energy of the band’s finest work. Throughout, the colors are brighter, the electric guitars are louder and the musical touchstones more universal. Lead single “All We Ever Knew,” written during the Let’s Be Still era but never captured to the band’s satisfaction until now, is sure to be a crowd-pleaser, while “Turn It Around” seems primed to be a future concert staple, matching its inspirational message with a lush and multi-layered soundscape. Blurt say the album “fulfills the aim the band’s handle appears to indicate. This is after all, music that connects with the head and the heart, and imparts a dual sense of resilience and delight in its wake.” Join us on May 22nd for The Head and the Heart’s highly-anticipated second ACL taping.

BlackAngels_Livestream_43_squareAustin psych rock masters The Black Angels appear with charged new songs from Death Song, their first full-length release in four years, and their debut for Partisan Records. NPR raves, “The Black Angels have delivered an enormous and frighteningly timely fifth album full of uniquely trippy anthems to oblivion.”  Written and recorded in large part during the recent election cycle, the music serves as part protest, part emotional catharsis in a climate dominated by division, anxiety and unease. Recorded between Seattle and Austin, the eleven-track collection offers a sharply honed elaboration on their signature sound – menacing fuzz guitar and cutting wordplay, steeped in a murky hallucinatory dream. Since forming in Austin in 2004, The Black Angels have become standard-bearers for modern psych-rock, and the New York Times has said they “play psychedelic rock as if the 1960s never ended, and they are absolute masters of it.” The Black Angels made a stellar ACL debut in 2013 and we look forward to their return.

Please join us May 22 and May 23 for these full-set livestreams on our ACLTV YouTube channel. The broadcast versions will air on PBS later this year as part of Season 43.

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ACL to stream Benjamin Booker taping live

Austin City Limits is proud to announce a livestream featuring red-hot rocker Benjamin Booker, taping April 27 as part of our 43rd season. The taping will be streamed live in its entirety directly from the Austin City Limits stage, and fans worldwide can watch the concert Thursday, April 27 at 8pm CT/9 pm ET on ACLTV’s YouTube channel as it happens.

Singer, songwriter, guitarist and rocker Benjamin Booker comes to ACL in advance of his greatly anticipated sophomore platter Witness, out in June. With Witness, the New Orleans-based Booker has created his most ambitious work yet by digging deep into his passion for eccentric soul, R&B, and blues – drawing on everything from William Onyeabor’s 70s African psych-rock to Freddie Gibbs and Pusha T, while never straying too far from the garage-punk intensity that made his self-titled 2014 debut such a creative breakthrough. Born in Virginia Beach and raised in Tampa, Booker attended a magnet school for the arts before matriculating at the University of Florida, studying music journalism. After self-releasing his 2012 EP Waiting Ones, he signed to ATO, who released his eponymous debut in 2014. “Singing with a maturity beyond his years,” said The Guardian about the critically-adored LP, “he crafts hooks that pay homage to Robert Johnson, Sam Cooke and the shambolic punk he grew up listening to.” Following the album’s release, Booker hit the road and the festival circuit, touring with Jack White and Courtney Barnett and playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival and Lollapalooza. Now Booker is ready to unleash Witness on the world, preceded by the title track, released as a single and featuring gospel legend and ACL alum Mavis Staples.

Please join us April 27 for this full-set livestream on our ACLTV YouTube channel. The broadcast version will air on PBS later this year as part of Season 43.