ACL 2019: The Recap

What a crazy ass set of weekends.  The music was honestly great - I liked just about every single thing that I saw, and loved some of them.  The weather was freaking schizophrenic.  Weekend one had a day hit 99, and weekend two had a day that started in the 40's.  Like, what in the hell is going on?  I ate a bunch of good food, I drank a few too many Elysian Space Dust beers, and I heard some great music.  Let's get into it.

Friday, Weekend One.

• Holy smokes, this feels like a month ago!
• Disappointed that Sam Fender dropped out of the Fest at the last minute.  I really liked his music and was looking forward to seeing him in action live.  BUT, him bailing out meant that my buddy and I got to go gorge on good food and beer at ABGB, so not a total loss.
• Caught the last song of FIDLAR, from far away, and while I wish I could have seen more, it definitely allowed me to repeatedly yell "I DRINK CHEAP BEER, SO WHAT, FUCK YOU!" into my friend's face repeatedly.  Which was nice.
• Walked over and heard a song or three from Cherry Glazerr.  They sounded really good.  Better than I expected, to be honest.  I thought the lead singer's voice would sound too feathery, but instead she sounded just right in the mix with the band blasting stuff out.
• But then we needed to move along because my buddy was all in on the Black Pistol Fire experience, which did not disappoint.  I'm always a little bit amazed by these guys, like Reignwolf or Jack White, who can turn their guitar into a one-man band type experience.  This band has a drummer, so it isn't actually one man, but the drum mans one station while the singer/guitarist handles the rest of the band's job.  I loved this show.
• Heard the last four or five songs of Tyler Childers, which included "Feathered Indians," and it was highly cool to see the folks in the crowd just smiling and dancing and singing along to that excellent song.  Cool moment.  I heard from another friend, whose opinion I trust, that this was boring to them, but I disagree.
• TacoDeli tacos for dinner.  Yummo.
• The Raconteurs were SO FREAKING LOUD.  But they played "Level," which is my top track, so I'm all about it.  This show was good times rock and roll bashing fun.
• Guns n' Roses.  Great show.  Now, I'm not going to try to blow smoke and tell you that Axl was perfect or sounded just like he did when he was 18, but the vast majority of the show sounded like real Axl, screaming and wailing, while Slash and the rest of the band never missed a beat.  I loved this show.  They played "Coma," man!

Saturday, Weekend One.

• Took our time to get to the park today, with a pretty long sojourn at Pluckers to enjoy football and beer, mainly because there wasn't much lighting me up in the early hours.  
• Made it in time for Sigrid, who I love.  Just exuberantly running around the stage in a plain white t-shirt, singing her fun songs and throwing hands like a gangster.  She was fun and lovely to watch.
• Tierra Whack was a little disappointing.  Part of this is not her fault.  She sent her hype man out there to play some other random music on his laptop, and it was so freaking hot that the computer wouldn't do it.  The laptop just stood up on the table, flipped a double-bird at the sun, and passed out.  Once he got a couple fans going, he was able to play a few songs, but I'm not here to see you play an old 2LiveCrew song on a laptop while you yell on a mic!  I'm here to see Whack spit her inventive rhymes and be cool!  Once she started her real show, it was good.  She was cool, too, in that she gave away her sneakers to some kid in the audience, and interacted well with the crowd.
• Heard some Lauren Daigle from far away as we queued up for Judah & the Lion.  My buddy wanted to be close.  She's got such an amazing voice.
• Judah & the Lion.  Despite myself, this was a fun show.  These guys sometime try too hard, with some of their videos they made for the screen behind them, or their coordinated clothing changes and stuff, but the show itself was a ton of fun.  The crowd was very into it, and the band members were all really into it, felt like I was caught up in a good time, so why be a sourpuss and blame them for naming an album Folk Hop and Roll or whatever, just go with the joy!
• My buddy went for Eilish, I went for Gary Clark, Jr.  I was late to the party, so I ended up way back, but I'll be damned if that dude can't just freaking slay his guitar.  It is very cool to see.  Although I'll say that the experience way in the back is not nearly as visceral and fun as the time I saw him a few years ago directly in front.
• Fish tacos from Peached Tortilla were solid.
• Metric.  Great show.  Pretty straight-forward pop rock blast, but it felt vital, like they truly cared that I was getting it and the crowd seemed to be giving it right back to them.  I wish I knew their music better, other than the two or three hits I'd re-listened to.
• The Cure.  Another great one.  We managed to squeeze pretty close, up the side of the crowd, and these guys still sound awesome, look ridiculous, and know how to pick the perfect setlist.  Well, not perfect (I could do with "Caterpillar" and "Friday I'm in Love") but they played a ton of Disintegration and other classics that we needed to hear, and left out junk like "Love Cats" and I loved it.  Ran into some friends in the crowd and we had a great time singing along and dancing around.

Sunday, Weekend One.

• The rest of the weekend was pretty hot, but today was when it truly got brutal.  High of 99 degrees, without a single cloud anywhere in the sky.  We wanted to be there for an early show, and so we just baked in front of the BMI stage, saving spots up against the barrier, while chatting up some young guys from Boston who had come all the way down because they were huge Cure fans.  Sweat just ran down my whole body before the show, and by the end of it, when I reached my hands up to clap, water sprayed from every clap like I was in the pool.  It was something amazing to behold.
• cleopatrick was fantastic.  As noted above, we were up against the metal barrier for the show, just front and center with these two dudes slamming through some chugging rock and roll.  Two Canadians, and they look about 17 years old.  The guitarist runs his guitar through a massive panel of pedals and knobs and whatever, that he is continually tweaking either by bending down to manipulate with his hands, or even with the tips of his toes, as he is shredding.  Freaking great show.  "San Jake" is my anthem of the weekend.
• One annoyance with this show?  There were about six photographers/ videographers buzzing around the stage, shoving their gear up into the space, and they became an actual distraction to the show.  Like, if the guitarist knelt down to get all mad scientist on the effects pedal board, three ladies with cameras would immediately cluster like moths to a flame to get just the right angle of his angst as he tweaked a knob and plucked a string.  It was annoying.
• Thomas Csorba, heard from the food court area (out of the Tito's tent) sounded very good.  I like his stuff.  Had a Salt Lick brisket sandwich.
• Idles were freaking wild.  I'm not sure that I loved the actual music, but the show itself was mesmerizing.  One guitarist kept tossing his instrument into the air for no apparent reason, not even trying to catch it.  The lead singer just seemed pissed off, stomping the stage and spitting at the crowd.  When I say stomping the stage, I don't mean like keeping time to the beat, I mean like he was Michael Bolton in Office Space trying to stomp that printer into the core of the earth.  At one point, he pointed out the pit down by the stage, and told everyone in there to be cool to each other and watch out for those on the edge who didn't want to mosh, and then the other guitarist went down into the center of the pit (with roadies holding up the cords) and jammed the next song from in the middle of the scrum.  Wild show.
• Watched some football for a bit here, nothing too inspiring on the schedule and the shade of the tent was very welcome in the heat.
• Billy Strings was freaking amazing.  Like, jaw-dropping, shaking-my-head-in-fascination amazing.  He was on guitar, but his banjo guy and mandolin guy were also top notch, just highly technical, fast-fingered, beautifully complex bluegrass stuff.  I'm very glad I got to see that one.
• Kacey Musgraves put on another great show - I think this is the 4th time I've seen her, and I love it.  My only major quibble is that she didn't play a single track off of the first album.  I get it, she loved Golden Hour, and I do to, but skipping "Follow Your Arrow" and "Merry Go Round" is a big bummer.  I felt empty when I realized that I had gotten to sing along to Whitney Houston and Brooks n Dunn, but I'd never gotten to tear up as I sang that "just like dust, we settle in this town."  Still a good show.
• But then, the biggest disappointment of my weekend, was that I couldn't get back from Kacey to see Lizzo.  The crowd for Lizzo was the biggest thing I think I've ever seen at ACL.  The two I could compare it to were The Lumineers at the height of their initial popularity when they were at that tiny rock stage right in front of the food court, and no one could get any direction because of the crowd, or when Iggy Azalea was popular for eight minutes and they had her at the stage that kind of faces AmEx, and we just wanted to walk through at the back to get to the other side of the park, and it was physically impossible.  So, I could get as far as the beer tent towards the Miller Lite stage, and no one would move anymore, so we just bailed and went to Mumford.  Which SUCKS!  I heard that it felt actually dangerous in that crowd, that it was just too much of a crush and people couldn't get out when they needed to.
• Mumford & Sons.  They did a great show.  Even though some of their songs aren't my favorite, and I still wish they would have stuck to straight bluegrass, they did a very fun show that included a cool stage up in the midst of the crowd, which allowed me to be just a few people back from them for a few songs.  When the crowd sang along to "Little Lion Man" it was a goosebump inducing experience.

This was the first time in a few years where I felt like every single headliner I watched was awesome.  Last year, McCartney and Metallica were great, but Arctic Monkeys were very disappointing.  In 2017, the Chilis and Killers were good, but Jay Z and The Gorillaz were not.  In 2016, you had Radiohead doing whatever it was that they tried to do up there.  So, it was refreshing and fun to have all three of the headliner experiences feel good this time.

Second Weekend, Saturday.

• Took my wife and daughters back for the second Saturday because they really wanted to see Billie Eilish.  First off, the weather was freaking fabulous.  In the 60's when we got to the park, with a nice cloud cover and a few small showers.  Felt glorious after baking to death the week before.
• Took them to Sigrid first, and she didn't disappoint.  When I first saw her, at SXSW a few years ago, she reminded me of my older daughter up there, and so I was excited for the girls to see this young, pretty (but without a ton of makeup or pretense) girl who had the confidence to dance and sing and absolutely beam pure smiles at a big crowd.  Good show, and I think they liked it too.
• We also had the idea, stolen from others, and pure genius, to bring little collapsible stools for the girls to stand on so that they could see over the adults, and it made a huge difference.
• Grabbed a popsicle and exceedingly overpriced t-shirt, and then took them to catch a little Tierra Whack.  Not sure they really comprehended what was going on over there, except when she threw snacks to the crowd, which they thought was cool.
• Later that night, when we got home, I showed them the potato video for "Unemployed," which they enjoyed and were terrified by, which I also enjoyed.
• Lauren Daigle was next.  I think they were so taken aback by her freaky clothing choices that they were distracted from the music.  They kept looking at me and being like, "is that really her?"  She had huge, sparkly, weird, fake glasses on, and big weird cape/robe thing.  Her voice sounds great, but I'm not entirely sure that they enjoyed it at all.  My older kid kept asking if it was time to go see Eilish.
• Now, to the main event.  We went over and tucked ourselves into the Billie Eilish crowd - pretty close, but still a good ways to the side but in front of the sound stage thing.  It was PACKED.  My wife hated every second of it.  People would try to squeeze past us, but there was no where to go, and with the girls on stools, we were not very mobile.  There was a nice group of weirdo megafans right in front of us who were bossy and sweet about protecting our girls from the crowd.  I'm very grateful for how cool they were to the girls.
• Such a weird show.  One of the megafans in front of us was screaming, as the opening video and music started playing, how she was "GONNA FUCKING RAAAAAGGGGGEEEE!" but then the music started, and everyone just kinda sang along and stood there.  For the most part, Eilish's music really isn't dancing or raging or grooving music.  Its just her quietly, creepily, singing about killing herself or how she wishes you were gay.
• Also, when the music started and people pushed forward, my wife looked at me with fear in her eyes and said "I gotta go, I can't do this."  I talked her down and she stayed, but then she also looked at me about halfway through and whispered - "this is really boring, isn't it?  Is this fun?"  Which made me laugh out loud, because yes, it was a pretty boring show, even if the crowd was hyped up to 11 for the greatest thing ever.  I bet her ACL taping the night before was the right way to see her show - less hype, more pure performance...
• At one point, Eilish asked for mosh pits to open up, and about 5 feet away one sprung to life and I got into box-out position to make sure I could shove people back who came towards us.  I needn't have worried, it was the lamest most pit of all time.  The moshers all got circled up, flexed their knees, started their cell phone video recording, turned their ballcaps backwards, pointed at someone across the circle and smiled, and waited through the first few stanzas of "You Should See Me In a Crown."  When the chorus kicked in, they all just yelled the first seven words, jumped in the air, rushed to each other, and jumped for another 20 seconds, before calming down and just standing there some more.
• I get it.  I'm old.  I am not in the right demographic for her music, but I actually enjoy some of her tunes, some of her lyrics, but I got zero enjoyment out of that live show.
• We forced the girls to watch two songs from the Cure, and I was pleased that the second one was "Pictures of You," so that they got to see a classic before we bolted back to the bus.  The girls were hilarious, making fun of Robert Smith's makeup and the drummer's big hair.  I told them that if Billie Eilish is still a thing in 30 years, that this will be her, wearing hilariously unflattering basketball jerseys and singing depressing music that they remember from childhood.

Whew.  Hell of a good time.  Other than the heat first weekend, and the overcrowding for Lizzo, I didn't hear many complaints about the weekend.  I think it really went off well.  Time to get to work on predictions for next year!