tagged w/ Austin City Limits Music Festival
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Both Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Festivals will stream live, YouTube announced on Friday.
The three-day festivals - Lollapalooza Aug 5 -7 held at Grant Park in Chicago and ACL Sept 16 - 18 at Zilker Park in Austin, TX - will go viral as YouTube announced it was teaming with the Austin-based event planning and production company C3 Presents - producer of Lollapalooza since 2005, Dell and AMD.Both Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Festivals will stream live, YouTube announced... more
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Most days, the staff members of the Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau hear a variation on the same two queries from tourists who are curious about “Austin City Limits,” the longest-running music series in American television history: Is it really shot outside? (No, it’s taped indoors on a soundstage.) And how can we get tickets? (You can’t, most likely.)
“People from around the world are fascinated by the show,” said Rose Reyes, the bureau’s director of music marketing, who said “Austin City Limits” questions outnumber those about University of Texas football, the Governor’s Mansion and the State Capitol. “They want to be in the room. They want to be able to leave Austin with a classic music memory.”
Tonight, with the first of a pair of grand-opening concerts by Willie Nelson, Austin’s proverbial $64,000 questions will be met with a $40 million answer: ACL Live at the Moody Theater, a state-of-the-art, 2,750-seat facility. The site will serve as both the new home of its broadcast namesake and a music venue that is expected to host an annual run of 75 to 100 ticketed, nontelevised concerts from the likes of Diana Ross, John Mellencamp, Tony Bennett and Janet Jackson. A show on Feb. 26 by Steve Miller will serve as the first official “Austin City Limits” taping at ACL Live, with Widespread Panic, Flogging Molly, Mumford & Sons and Adele soon to follow.
In November, Lyle Lovett taped the final episode in KLRU-TV’s Studio 6A, a smaller-than-it-appears space on the University of Texas campus that earned landmark status from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009. The Austin public television station — which had taped more than 500 episodes in the studio over 36 years, featuring more than 800 performers — hatched plans in 2004 to relocate the production downtown.
The station began talks with a group of investors that included the local real estate developer Stratus Properties Inc. and Freddy Fletcher, Mr. Nelson’s nephew and a veteran musician, studio owner and record producer. KLRU executives were eager to design a well-financed studio and performance space from the ground up.
“In 1974, we moved into what they call in television a ‘black box,’ ” said Terry Lickona, the co-creator and executive producer of “Austin City Limits.” “It simply wasn’t designed for live music with a live audience. We spent 36 years dealing with inadequate restrooms and fire exits. But we knew if we moved someplace new, we couldn’t compromise what we created in any way, shape or form or we’d be run out of town on a rail. The acoustics had to be pristine. It had to have the same intimate vibe.”
During the show’s final decade in the original studio, fire marshals had slowly cut the seating capacity from 800 to just 300. Despite ACL Live’s significantly greater capacity, Mr. Lickona said, the balconies will be draped off and the audience will be capped at 800 for TV tapings.
“We’re getting back to the way it was supposed to be,” he said. “We need more hard-core fans off the street in there. We need to get back to that level of energy.”
For ACL Live, a year-round venue, intimacy is also a selling point.
“The furthest seat in the house, up on the third level, is still only 75 feet from the eyes of the performer,” said Tim Neece, the facility’s general manager, who previously helped inaugurate one of the few other venues in recent memory designed expressly with live music in mind: NextStage Arena, in the North Texas city of Grand Prairie (now the Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie). “That’s pretty amazing for both the artist and the patron.”
Although ACL Live has high-tech options and patron amenities (12 bars, 14 restrooms) on a scale that other Austin venues are not currently offering, representatives for both the television and venue sides are quick to acknowledge that one of the biggest things going for it, at least initially, is the “ACL” part of its name.
“You assume the same level of care as what’s been there since 1974,” said James Moody, an Austin nightclub owner whose marketing firm, Guerilla Suit, has been consulting on the opening of the new venue. “Add all of the amenities and resources to the name and you can make a case to huge artists who play much bigger places in other cities to underplay in Austin because it’s a great room with great history. You simply can’t do that if you called it Bob’s Rock ’n’ Roll Emporium.”
While KLRU and “Austin City Limits” licensed the Austin City Limits name to the new venue, Mr. Lickona said they decided to protect the brand by retaining one of the show’s principal trademarks: the wood-and-cardboard skyline that has for so long fooled viewers into thinking the show was taped outside. A newly commissioned skyline set, reflecting the high rises and condos that have sprung up as part of Austin’s downtown growth, will be unveiled later this month, just before the first taping.
“It will only be on display for tapings and special occasions,” Mr. Lickona said, adding that a lower stage will be used to create even more intimacy and better camera angles. “Obviously, no matter who is playing, people will be taking pictures. And they have so many multimedia angles built into the theater, like the ability to live-stream shows online, that we thought at some point it would all start to blur. Everything would look like the show. It’s our hope to preserve the distinction.”
Mr. Lickona said the new venue might offer new opportunities for brand extensions down the line, like a show focused on Latin music or a comedy showcase. But what music fans shouldn’t expect, he said, is a dramatically different product on their television.
“If we do our job right, people will still be looking for the ‘park’ we do the show from,” he said, joking. “Hopefully, it’s ‘new building, same old illusion.’ ”Most days, the staff members of the Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau hear a... more
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Chris talks to Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop abt bicycle culture at ACL. There are also great shots of the massive bicycle parking at the music festival.Chris talks to Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop abt bicycle culture at ACL. There are... more
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Chris and crew hit up Austin City Limits Festival for Day 3 in Zilker Park. Video includes highlights of live performances by White Lies and Passion Pit. PLUS: Learn the sacred art of umbrella cooling.Chris and crew hit up Austin City Limits Festival for Day 3 in Zilker Park. Video... more
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Chris and Ari hit up ACL Fest 2009 to see Phoenix, Thievery Corporation and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Video includes highlights of the day!Chris and Ari hit up ACL Fest 2009 to see Phoenix, Thievery Corporation and the Yeah... more
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Ya, it’s like that kids. RollingStone.com is throwing one hellava good party during the Austin City Limits Festival- with The Cool Kids, Voxtrot, and Belaire. The Cool Kids- maybe you’ve heard of them. I saw them 6,743,923,792 times during SXSW, and every show was packed and bumpin. Ya, it’s like that kids. RollingStone.com is throwing one hellava good party... more
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