Oh momma is it hot. It was about 100 degrees as M and I took the bus down to Barton Springs Road and walked towards Zilker park with the masses. Flipnotics was handing out free iced coffee and we got all hopped up while talking to the cute coffee-chica. The line to get wristbands and entry wasn’t too bad. We headed straight for:
Mates of State
M’s product manager had recommended this band to him and as we were walking toward the stage M commented that they sounded like a three person Polyphonic Spree. Once we got there we saw that they were actually two people: a woman on an organ and a guy on drums, both singing. They were silly and bouncy and using some old-skool synth sounds. There were a lot of unusual rhythms and time signature+tempo changes mid-song. I liked them a lot. We heard the last 40 minutes of their set and at the end I declared that they Could Come to Dinner.
Mates of State (ACL Fest photo)
We headed from Mates of State to hear Lucinda Williams. Lucinda gets played on the radio a lot here and while I wouldn’t say it’s normally my kind of music, I’ve always heard she and her band were awesome live. I also dig on her extremely cultivated whiskey voice and old-country lyrics. (Sample song topic: you stole my truck and now you’re in jail — I’m cryin’ and heading down to the corner store to get a cold 6-pack.) Her guitar player was phenomenal.
We left a couple songs before the end of her set to see Theivery Corporation. They had a big band with them and the first tune was one of their better known instrumental songs (I rarely remember Theivery Corporation song titles). Then out came a singer who sang “Lebanese Blond”. She was OK. Then she left and another singer came out and sang in French. She was mediocre. She left and another singer came out who was smokingly hot but also so of ‘eh’ on the singing. She left and a couple of rasta guys from DC came out and the energy picked up again. Then they left and an instrumental song happened which was probably the best song of the set. Then they rotated singers some more. I had never realized how much I rely on a front man, any front man, even if it’s just the guitarist-who’s-not-singing to maintain a rapport with an audience throughout the performance. 1/3 of the set I really liked and the other 2/3 I just wanted then to settle on someone and quit playing with my attachments.
After that we took a break and headed to Flipnotics for dinner and sitting (AH!) and too many cookies. We came back in the dark to hear the Black Crowes.
Once again, the bastard chair people were the bane of our existence. It’s dark and there are 30,000 folding camp chairs between us and the crowd of dancing folks. We wandered up to a point where we couldn’t go any farther and resigned ourselves to watching the jumbo-tron for most of the action. The people around us were drunk yahoos who talked through the show. The highlight was a great version of “She Talks To Angels”. The band was solid, there was a lot of southern-rock Grateful Dead style jams and breaks. We left before they were finished.
We made our way with the throngs down Barton Springs Road again and managed to hop on a bus as it pulled up. Everyone was filthy, as Zilker has turned into a dust bowl without rain and 200,000 feet on it all day. Michael instigated a friendly crazy drunk into singing Willie Nelson songs and the back of the bus had a loud sing-a-long as we travelled up Lamar. It was a priceless Keep Austin Weird moment.