ACL Festival 2018

October 7, 2018



David Byrne



With Alexandra

The National

ACL Festival 2018

The Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival is the reason that I return to Austin every year, it is easily my favorite large scale music festival, and I have attended a bunch of them. ACL is always so well organized, well run with a fantastic diversity of musical acts booked and an awesome crowd that really is a step above most that attend such events as they seem to actually appreciate and respect all manner of musical styles.













The crowd is as diverse as the types of musical acts that appear with fans of country, rap, rock, alternative, indie, edm and classic rock all finding something to enjoy at the festival. Friday was the opening day of the festival and for me it was probably the longest day of the weekend as I got to Zilker Park for the opening and stayed literally till the last note had sounded making for a solid twelve hour day on-site and a ton of music to see.











I was thankful to have VIP access as it allowed me to take advantage of the shady and cool VIP grove and as much free drinks, free food, air-conditioned restrooms and free swag as I could want. It was not only a long day, but day one was brutally hot and sunny and having that access to continuous AC, ice and water made it bearable.





I was there nice and early again this year to make sure to catch the early performance in the Austin Kiddie Limits stage by the Barton Hills Choir. The Barton Hills Choir is led by Barton Hills Elementary School music teacher and choir director Gavin Tabone. The choir is comprised of 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students from the school and accompanied by professional musicians, including guitarist Don “El Cento” Cento, bassist Jason “Mr. Boom Boom” Brint, and drummer Jake “Mr. Bubbles” Perlman. For the past few years, I have made sure to catch the annual performance by the amazing kids in this choir.









There is just something magical about seeing these young people so enthused by music and performing classic rock songs. This year, in honor of two of the performers scheduled to play the festival, David Byrne and Paul McCartney, the choir sang a couple of Talking Heads tunes before a wonderful performance of the entire eight song medley from the Beatle’s “Abbey Road” album. It was a great way to get the festival kicked off.





Deciding who to see is always an issue at ACL, as there are eight stages and often four or five active at the same time, complicating my decision making process. Sometimes you just have to make sacrifices or only catch portions of some sets so that you can rush over to another stage to see something else. This was tough at times as I had to pick between such options as Big Thief and Lovelytheband for example.



Bishop Briggs





Later I had a second choice between Bishop Briggs and Gang of Youths who played at the same time, in that case I split the difference watching half sets from each, which is great on the one hand as I got to see two fantastic performances, yet at the same time having the disappointment of missing a portion of each act. I must say that Gang of Youths backed up their club performance of the previous night easily translating onto the much larger stage at the festival.

Gang of Youths

David Byrne







Perhaps my favorite performance of the day was a spectacular set by former Talking Heads frontman, David Byrne. I had never seen Byrne before but his current tour has been getting rave reviews and having now seen it, it is easy to see why. It was a magnificent performance that was at once entirely unique, engaging, thoughtful and brilliant. None of the instruments were attached by any sort of wires or attachments, each having to be hand carried and the stage itself was a blank slate which meant no distractions from the wonderful style and flair of the men and women on stage.









Performing a nice long set that was complete with all the Talking Heads classics as well as his solo stuff which held up really well, the performance was really unlike anything that I had ever seen before. I absolutely loved it. It sort of made the next few acts I saw immediately following his set pale in comparison but I still enjoyed sets by Jungle, Alvays, Manchester Orchestra and a portion of Greta Van Fleet.

Alvays



Manchester Orchestra





I opted to see The National over going to see Khalid, which may have been a mistake. The National were excellent, but from what I heard later, Khalid delivered a devastatingly good set, that I completely missed. I can’t complain over what I did not see, preferring to celebrate the acts that I did see. Of course, I was not about to miss the day’s headliner, Paul McCartney, but I saved that performance for its own blog entry.







The National





https://bartonhillschoir.org/