The Distinctive Flavor of Austin City Limits

© Andrea Barrack / RumBum.com

Vince Mira at ACL 09.

Rock n' roll is a staple for most large musical festivals. For a country music festival, travel to Chicago or Porterfield, Wisconsin. Want bluegrass? Best go to Tennessee or Georgia. Aside from the Gospel Music Festival in Millennium Park, people will be hard pressed to find a big named gospel festival anywhere else. Usually, to get a taste of New Orleans, you have to go there. However, Austin, Texas is a very eclectic city. It's only fitting that Austin City Limits festival would offer a little bit of everything different.

While not solely its purpose, the Wildflower Center stage was home to many of the acts uncommon to mainstream festivals. Over the course of three days, the Wildflower Center stage transformed into a tent revival four times. The Gospel Silvertones, River City Christianettes, The Soul Stirrers, and The Durdens performed beyond the heights of the canvas rafters to extremely energized audiences. All except for The Soul Stirrers hail from Austin, but local loyalty could hardly be responsible for the singing, hand clapping, and people leaving their seats to dance in front of the stage.

But every performance under the white tent wasn't a religious experience. Many of the Wildflower Center stage performers were New Orleans blues and jazz artists. Walter "Wolfman" Washington, Henry Butler, Rebirth Brass Band, and Preservation Hall Jazz Band all brought a little bit of New Orleans, typically reserved for New Orleans's Jazz Fest, to an Austin festival.

Although Ben Sollee represented bluegrass music on the Wildflower stage, most of the bands associated with a distinct Texas sound, bluegrass and country, made it onto the larger venues. The Greencards were the only bluegrass band from Texas (now based in Nashville), but that southern twang and rapid fiddle linked with cowboy hats and western boots still conjures images of Texas. And this year's lineup had more fiddle music than most people could shake a stick at. The Avett Brothers, part bluegrass and part punk, attracted a sizeable crowd, as did soft-singing Sarah Watkins. Sarah Siskind, The Felice Brothers, and Jypsi did their part to bring bluegrass even more into the mainstream. The two major country acts of the festival were the much anticipated Asleep at the Wheel and the Zac Brown Band. The audience attracted by Asleep at the Wheel demonstrated the growing acceptance of traditional country music by all ages, while the Zac Brown band showed country's ability to adapt, toeing the line between jam bands, country, and southern rock. Vince Mira also represented country with a sound so close to Johnny Cash that it earned him the nickname "Juanny Cash."

Another sound coming from Texas is Latin music. But whether Latin music is becoming more mainstream or if it's just becoming more popular is hardly a question that could be answered simply by judging who landed a spot at ACL. Federico Aubele, categorized as Latin fusion, brings together electronic, reggae, hip-hop, and Latin. Raul Malo, once a front man in a country band, fluctuates between old standards, Cuban music, and more popular country. Los Amigos Invisibles while unmistakably Latin have incorporated a lot of disco, lounge, and funk into their music.

However, these uncommonly heard genres at a major festival still doesn't cover the weird, wild, and fantastic that also had a spot in the lineup. One of the most notable was Ghostland Observatory, a blended combination of pop, dance, funk, techno, and rock, pitted against the quintessential festival performer, the Dave Matthews Band. The size of the Ghostland Observatory audience illustrated not only the eclectic taste of the crowd but the respect ACL gives to artists that fall outside of mainstream genres. Add Andrew Bird on the violin and glockenspiel, Mishka putting a very different spin on reggae music, and Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9), who is a mixed bag in themselves, and what you have is a music festival willing to go outside of comfortable and easily defined expectations to find the sounds that define it.

Ask any non-Texan what typifies the state, and you might hear about tumbleweeds, cowboys, and six shooters. The very existence of Austin challenges the stereotypes and expectations about Texas.  Likewise, the existence of a music festival where such radically divergent musical performers can harmoniously coexist on eight stages for three days challenges both the stereotypes of the pop music industry and some of our more cynical expectations of human nature.