Under the Austin Sun at ACL Weekend One

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!

The Austin City Limits Festival can be intimidating for the uninitiated. I often shrugged at attending due to the logistic problems – flying into Austin, finding a hotel room, renting a car. Mostly due to the lineup and offer of a place to stay in walking distance of Zilker Park, this became the year. My friend Nancy and her friend Thomas were heading down from Dallas to Austin, and it didn’t take too much encouragement for me to join.

Having a place to stay in close range was key. We could reach the festival entrance in about 30 minutes, passing many Austin institutions on Lamar Avenue including Waterloo Records and any number of neon-signed restaurants. The walk into Zilker Park includes a street lined with small restaurants and bars. This would not be the weekend to check them out since crowds congregated early and late. I activated my festival bracelet on the walk, and was ready when we reached the security checkpoint.

For all 17 years, Asleep at the Wheel has opened the ACL Festival. This year, they played only on Weekend 1. They tore into their brand of Western swing, and a weekend stacked with live music roared ahead. With two fiddles and some rollicking piano, the Wheel played with the power of a headliner.

The Wheel starts ACL

Across the fields that would soon run thick with people, Natalie Prass completed a short set. On a mostly sunny day with low humidity and 90-degree temps, the heat affected performers all day. Short festival sets probably avoided any heat issues, which were apparently a problem when ACL was held in September and Austin still blazed with summer. In the past, I might have spent significant time crowded into the beer hall, but I deferred to the heat and regularly visited the water stations instead.

As Prass finished, we roamed back to Asleep at the Wheel. Without the crowds, we could jump between stages at our leisure. It wouldn’t last but freedom of movement enlivened the early hours. The Tito’s Vodka Tent quickly became a refuge from the heat. The bands weren’t bad either. We finished watching Cuco, a hard-to-pin-down band that seemed to jump and splice genres on every track.

The Weather Station was on the must-see list, and their jangling, dreamy rock music stood out in the early afternoon. Frontwoman-songwriter Tamara Lindeman stood firmly in control, crafting a moving vocal performance that elevated every song. Upon leaving Austin, their 2018 self-titled record was the first album I bought.

Carl Sandburg anyone?

With his floppy silver mane, David Byrne is turning into Carl Sandburg or Andy Warhol, I couldn’t tell which. Opening with Here from American Utopia, Byrne sat at a desk pointing out the features on a model of the human brain as he sang.

The 10-song set covers chapters across his career with enough Talking Heads tracks to please old-school fans and a group of songs from American Utopia, including my favorite song of 2018, Everybody’s Coming to My House.

Byrne seemed relieved to reach the song’s second set so he could put on sunglasses. But I couldn’t argue with his choice of Talking Heads songs – Once in a Lifetime, Burning Down the House and Road to Nowhere. Watching Byrne sweat in that gray suit while his funky band pounded away, I wished they played later in the day to avoid the heat.

Up-and-comers Greta Van Fleet get buzz as the new Led Zeppelin, and at times the sound is uncanny but never completely derivative. The vocalist shows elements Robert Plan, Bon Scott, Marc Bolan from T. Rex and several 70s rock vocalists. They hail from Michigan and a debut LP is due soon. ACL moved them from the small Barton Springs stage to the Miller Lite stage, and it was still as crowded a show as we saw during the festival.

As the shadows mercifully grew long, those no-line hydration stations swelled into 30-minute waits. Luckily the closest one was in earshot of the AmEx stage, where The National pounded through their moody piano-driven rock. Drawing from a mix of their last four records with a heavy lean toward 2017’s Sleep Well Beast, they peppered in favorites of this native Ohioan (Bloodbuzz Ohio and The Day I Die), a song for a dying relationship (Guilty Party) and an ode to past glory (Mr. November).

The National

The sun disappeared with day soon to follow. Anticipation bloomed as the audience swarmed upon the AmEx stage. Where would be without Paul McCartney? Eventually all 60,000 ticketholders convened on the AmEx stage as daylight dimmed. Hozier played on the Hideaway Stage and provided a mild soundtrack during the wait for McCartney.

In the middle of his big hit, Take Me to Church, the speakers on the AmEx Stage drowned him out with the string crescendo that ends A Day in the Life, followed by the most famous single piano note in rock history. A Beatle was about to perform.

 After the piano note faded, there came something equally famous – the chiming Rickenbacker chord that opens Hard Day’s Night. With the always-welcome Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, McCartney saluted Geoff Emerick, the Beatles studio engineer who died in the same week.

Tears were in many eyes on Here Today, his deeply personal tribute to John Lennon, the song a conversation the two old friends never had. When Paul showed up with a ukulele, it was time to honor George Harrison with Something. He played the ukulele solo until the band broke into the song’s driving bridge. He also delved into their pre-Beatles history with The Quarrymen’s In Spite of All the Danger.

In his post-Beatles tracks, he sprinkled in a few numbers from new album Egypt Station but pleased the older crowd with a James Bond theme (Live and Let Die) and several key numbers from the Wings years (Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five, Let Me Roll It and I). For 1970s epics that still ring out, it’s hard to beat Band on the Run.

If McCartney ignored Wings and his solo career, no one would have cared, great as those songs often are. Everyone was there for the Beatles songs. Paul is the last keeper of the Beatles flame. He knows the emotional power of this tributes to George and John. He led the crowd where he wanted to go, explaining most songs with brief intros (Blackbird turned the audience stone quiet).

Sir Paul

When he asked for participation, it was granted. During Hey Jude, McCartney asked for an audience sing-along to the outro. Then he changed gears and asked just the men to sing before asking the same of the women.

Being in the middle of such a group outpouring was beautiful and sobering. Here was this man, one of the world’s richest and best-known musicians, a guy who doesn’t need to prove anything anymore, and he seemed to relish bringing all those voices together.  A floor ticket to a McCartney show costs as much as an ACL weekend pass, so this headliner alone validated the purchase.

I think McCartney knows he’s the only way to experience this music live and doesn’t shy from being that being that vessel. I never thought I would hear I’ve Got a Feeling or Can’t Buy Me Love in concert.

The track I appreciated most was Let It Be; upon discovering my parents' Beatles records at age 11, it was the song I gravitated toward. McCartney wrote the song after a dream of his dead mother, and the messaging is clear. It's a song for a friend going through a rough patch and the simple words can thread the needle of a dark time.

At 76, you can hear the age in McCartney’s voice, a little grit that seemed unimaginable a few years ago. The songs never suffered. He didn’t go for those growling passages in Maybe I’m Amazed. I was thrilled he played Helter Skelter and just as thrilled that he didn’t strain his vocal chords trying to hit notes now out of range. He played for all but a few of his allotted two hours and 15 minutes.

For an encore, McCartney stuck with the Beatles. The reprise of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band started the end of the show, with Helter Skelter raging close behind.

The last songs could only bring the whole affair to an aching, emotional conclusion. The soft piano chords of Golden Slumbers foretold his last steps, the final three songs of the Abbey Road Medley. There was no sign of age in McCartney’s voice as he belted the chorus to Golden Slumbers before sliding into Carry That Weight then an extended version of The End. I mean, how else would anyone end so epic a show? When McCartney tours, the Beatles’ magic moments can live anew any night.

Rare selfie for a Texas-y outfit

The first day’s toll on our feet, backs and legs led us to scale back Day 2 plans and explore Austin (Blog to come). We covered north of 22,000 steps across the festival route, and all the standing in the sun took its toll.

For Saturday, we started in the late afternoon with Scottish synth-rock band Chvrches. Their highly theatrical set didn’t hit me hard as their album The Bones of What You Believe did many years ago, but was still an incisive introduction to an ACL Saturday.

Nancy and I decided to check out the Deftones, easily the only band lumped into the nu-metal category able to transcend that subgenre’s ugly trappings. As we arrived they just began Digital Bath, one of the key tracks on White Pony, easily their best album. The Deftones bounced nimbly between aggression and melody

Rather than sprint over to catch a snippet of St. Vincent - a set I had great interest in seeing – the rush from the Deftones’ aggressive music prepped me for Metallica. I found a viewing spot that would work till they emerged after twilight.

As the group always does, Metallica entered to Ennio Morricone’s Ecstasy of Gold then plowed into several tracks from Hardwired ... To Self-Destruct, their 2016 album and best studio record in several decades.

After talking barbecue and commenting on it finally playing ACL, Hetfield easily won the Saturday award for best banter. “I love you too,” Hetfield said. “How about that for heavy metal?”

The set divided starkly between the old and very new. Fuel was the lone track from the 25-year span between the Black Album and Hardwired. Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and the Black Album comprised the bulk of the classic material, with a few vital pieces from Kill 'em All and ...And Justice for All. Along with a snippet of Stevie Ray Vaughn, the band dropped in a few solos, including a tribute to founding bassist Cliff Burton.

What amazed me was how fresh most of Metallica’s music still sounds. As a genre, metal can age poorly. Tracks from the Black Album and the four classic records that preceded it still sound as relevant in 2018. Battery and Master of Puppets have lost none of their power. Enter Sandman might be an obvious closer, but it raised the intensity through its final notes.

Sunday’s music would only involve some distant percussion, bass notes and indecipherable vocals. After brunch, we had to return to Dallas. For all the missed Sunday acts, from Kruangbin to Parquet Courts to Janelle Monae, I had zero qualms about how those ACL hours were spent.

Saturday night sunset