ACL 2019: Weekend One: Sunday: Schedule and Thoughts

I was thinking to myself, as I scrolled through the bickering, sniping, angry hellscape that is Twitter right now, that one thing I am definitely not looking forward to at this year's fest are all of the diatribes from stage about politics.  I'm no fan of the moron in the White House right now or anything, but I absolutely don't need for the youngest sister from Joseph or some Canadian guitarist to spend eight minutes of my music-hearing time railing on Trump or Pelosi or Hillary or Bernie or impeachment or immigration or whatever.  Shut up and play me some jams.

Sunday is always a slow day for me, just because I'm old and tired and I'd probably rather watch some football and drink beer in air conditioning than mess around and watch the 11:30 band at ACL.  Sadly, this year is different, as I really like two of the early bands, but have a feeling that the inertia of my past many years of Sunday patterns will hold me to the usual and I will miss cleopatrick and Otis the Destroyer.

A few prelude thoughts:

• The comments for each band are those "One Liner" things that I added to my reviews. It helps me to remember who they are (sometimes) and provides some detail on the kind of music they play.  
• I've made each band name a link so that you can go read the full review and listen to some tunes if you are unswayed by the One Liner.
• The first column in each box is the stage where the band is playing (in case you thought I was just playing a weird word association game).

Here is a playlist of my suggested tunes for Sunday.

Here we go.

11:45

Miller Lite	Kevin Garrett: Unmemorable, but perfectly pleasant, R&B and blue-eyed soul over piano
VRBO	Otis the Destroyer: Local dudes bashing their way into my heart with rock and roll
Tito’s	Shields of Faith: Gospel!
BMI	Cleopatrick: Hell yes, fellas, bring me all the Royal Blood crunch.
T-Mobile	Taela: Run of the mill R&B pop for one song

Honestly bummed that Otis and Cleo are both here in this time slot.  Unless something goes very differently than I expect, there is no way we are going to be in the park by 11:45 in the morning on Sunday.  Which sucks, because I really like both Cleopatrick and Otis the Destroyer.  If you dig some rock and roll, then these are your correct choices.

Also, I can’t reach Taela’s name without wanting some paella.

What I want you to do right now, is to hit play on "san jake" from cleopatrick up there in the playlist, then go run through a brick wall, then come back and read the rest of this.

12:30/12:45

Honda	Julia Jacklin: Pensive indie folkie stuff very much like Big Thief from last year.
Kiddie Limits	School of Rock: Kids jamming cover tunes based on what they learned at private lessons
Tito’s (12:45)	Thomas Csorba: Americana from a kid at Baylor
American Express	Nilufer Yanya:  Good indie rock and OK alt R&B

Again, doubt I will be in the park for this hour, but if I am, I’d probably choose Csorba.

1:15

Miller Lite	Still Woozy: Mediocre electronic indie that reminds me of that awful "Gooey" song.
VRBO	Japanese House: More 80's inflected indie pop!
BMI	Faye Webster: Americana singing photographer leaning towards R&B now.
T-Mobile	Duckwrth: Surprisingly good rap and mediocre R&B

Have zero recollection of what Still Woozy sounds like.  Not a good sign.  Err, same for Japanese House and Faye Webster.  This is the black hole hour.  I remember Duckwrth, but the problem with Duckwrth is that while two or three of his raps jam, his R&B stuff (which is the majority of his tunes) is blah.  My Spotify mix keeps trying to get me listen to more of his music, and I don’t want any of it.

1:45 / 2:00 / 2:30

Honda (2:00)	Idles: Semi-punk English dudes making catchy blasts with humor
Tito’s Tent (1:45)	Delacey: Successful pop songwriter coming out from behind the curtain for one "Jolene"-ish track
Kiddie Limits (2:30)	Koo Koo Kanga Roo: Electronic goofy kiddie music
American Express (2:00)	Joseph: Beautiful harmonies from a trio of sisters

Joseph is the best actual music of these four, but Idles might win just because I might want to go get my face bashed in for a while instead of hearing angelic harmonies.

2:45 and 3:00

Miller Lite	Bea Miller: Forgettable pop with indie pop girl voice
VRBO	Shura: Perfectly pleasant electronic indie pop songs for making out to.
Tito’s (2:45)	Kaina: Chicago R&B like she just kept the hooks from Chance songs
BMI	TOBi: Sing-song rap sort of thing from Toronto by way of Nigeria.
T-Mobile (2:30)	Koffee: Young reggae lady with a super catchy sound and a Rihanna co-sign

A bunch of weird one word names here.  I liked TOBi more than I should have, but Koffee is the winner in this time slot.  Pretty weak hour.

4:00 / 4:30

Honda	Rosalia: Converting traditional flamenco into modern R&B, all in Spanish
Tito’s Tent	GoGo Penguin: Jazzy piano beat-focused instrumentals (is a phrase I never knew I'd write)
American Express	Rebelution: Reggae rock for the college bros to chill to.
Kiddie	Special Guest

Another weak hour.  Come on!  Put cleopatrick in one of these slots and let me unleash the rock and ROLL!  I guess I would pick Rebelution out of these three?  Maybe go to Rosalia just to see the hype?

5:00

Miller Lite	Banks: Relatively generic alt R&B pop songstress
VRBO	Caamp: Folksy Americana with a bunch o' banjo.
BMI	Billy Strings: Pretty kickass bluegrass with a made-up name to match
T-Mobile	Fisher: Another EDM guy

How you gonna put Billy Strings and Caamp in the same time slot?  This is how you create the perfect country/bluegrass lineup before Mumford – go back to a few years ago when Kacey Musgraves, Chris Stapleton, Willie Nelson, Nathaniel Rateliff, and St. Paul and the Broken Bones leading up to the Mumford show!  2016!  You could have done the same here, with Mugraves, Billy Strings, Caamp, Rob Baird, Tyler Childers – hell, even Judah & the Lion could have joined in.  Instead you put these two against each other?  I’d choose Strings, but it would have been fun to see both of them.

6:00

Honda	Third Eye Blind: Doo Doo Doot!  Doo Doo Dooot Doooooo!
Tito’s Tent	Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers: Surprisingly jammy new tunes from the 80's piano soft-pop mastermind
American Express	Kacey Musgraves: Bad ass country chick with legit lyrics and cool sound

This is the hardest hour of the whole Festival.  On the one hand, it is actually pretty simple, because I’m seeing Kacey play any time that it is possible for me to see her play.  On the other hand, I would have really enjoyed both of these other two shows, which is just annoying.  Why y’all gotta do me like that?

7:00

Miller Lite	Lizzo: Boss queen rapper, singer, twerker, and flautist extraordinaire
VRBO	LANY: 80's pop redux balladry like The 1975, but more 80's
T-Mobile	Griz: The EDM guy with the saxophone

Lizzo.  Don’t be stupid.  If you skip that show, then you are stupid.

HEADLINERS:

Honda	Cardi B: Unapologetically brash New York hip hop gal with some good tracks, some annoying sounds, and a bunch of forgettable lines.
American Express	Mumford & Sons: Roots rocking Americana revivalists with two great albums and then ...

I could see doing Cardi B, just for the pure spectacle of it all.  But if I’m doing it for the music, then I’m for sure going to go see Mumford again.

Rob Baird [late addition]

One Liner: Classic-sounding Americana/country music with good lyrics

Wikipedia Genre: Americana
Home: Austin, Texas (but originally from Memphis)

Poster Position: late addition

Both Weekends.

Thoughts:  Has anyone ever moved from Tennessee to Austin?  Has that ever actually happened?  I thought the pipeline of country artists was forever tipped the other direction, but cool to hear about a guy who [reads his bio] lives in Austin but still goes back to Nashville to record his new album.  What the heck, dude?

I kid.  Ol' Rob moved from Memphis to funky town Fort Worth to attend TCU.  While there, he recorded his first album, produced by my man Scott Davis and featuring some of the musicians from Hayes Carll's band (who Scott also used to play with).  That first album, Blue Eyed Angels, included one of his best tunes, like a young Pat Green playing something righteous.  "Fade Away."  922k streams.

Good stuff right there.  That's actually the closest comparison I can think of with this first album.  Pat Green.  His Wikipedia says that his second album, I Swear It's The Truth was ranked by SPIN in its top twenty albums of the year.  Which is kind of insane, right?  You look at the usual SPIN top albums list and its like all of the weirdest music around collected into one place.  Lots of, like, experimental electronic music played in 11/8 time by an Icelandic prison choir who was inspired by Quiet Riot.  So to choose a dude like this seems odd.  But they aren't wrong, its a very good country album.  Oh, wait, I just actually looked it up, and this was awarded their #3 spot in the "Spin's 20 Best Country Albums of 2012."  Wikipedia trying to pull one over on me around here!

He's been used a bunch on TV shows and whatnot, with spots on Nashville, Army Wives, something called Hart of Dixie on the CW, and The Ranch.  Other than that last one, which I only survived through about 1.5 episodes, I've never seen any of those.

"Run of Good Luck," from his third album, is his top track on Spotify with 5.7 million streams.

Very pretty tune.  I have never heard this dude's name before, but I have fully enjoyed listening to his tunes all day.  It's honestly good stuff.  Pretty basic on the underlying music - usually acoustic guitar, a little pedal steel, some basic drums.  But it works.

I'd go watch this.

Bayonne (2019) [late addition]

One Liner: Ambient electronic pop stuff from Austin

Wikipedia Genre: Electronic, Ambient, Dream pop, Americana
Home: Austin, Texas

Poster Position: late addition

Both Weekends.

Thoughts:  Dude came in 2016 as well.  Here were my thoughts back then:

"This is the kind of music that is ruining Discover Weekly for me.  I wish there was a way for me to tell Spotify to ignore certain bands that I listen to for this blog, so that it wouldn't think that I really want to listen to twee electronic indie by guys with face-spanning mustaches.  But because I've listened to eight of these kinds of bands recently for this blog, now I'm going to get a bunch of this kind of music - Spotify called his music "textured art songs," uuuuugggggghhhh. He's apparently from Spring, Texas, so hopefully his parents are currently swimming in their living room.

His top two songs for streaming are, confusingly, the same song, with "Spectrolite" (with a purple cover) at 349k streams and "Spectrolite" (with a white cover) at 243k.  That is either the influence of Prince's death, racism, or the fault of colorblind hipsters.  BTW, this video has 8040 (now 8041) views total.  So the guy isn't burning it up outside of Spotify.

[edit, up to 53k views to that video now]
However, if you read the YouTube comments about this song, this is "amazing," "incredible," "holy jesus fuck this is incredible," "my favorite song this month," and "bad ass!!!"  So I must be missing the boat on the unimpeachable amazing virtues of this music.  I feel so alone.

His Spotify bio says that he built an established fan base in Austin, Texas with his live shows, although Austin is not in his top five for Spotify streams (and he doesn't show up on a YouTube artist insight search).  Who knows, maybe there is a rabid group of Austinites who are PSYCHED about him coming to ACL.  He's got one album - 2016's Primitives, and his second most listened to track on Spotify is from that album, called "Waves."  Whatever.  This guy is not in my wheelhouse for tunes, I can get how this might be enjoyable to listen to but I'm not feeling it and likely won't go see him play live."

So...  I guess I wasn't feeling him at the time.  He has a new album, out in 2019, called Drastic Measures, that is kind of more of the same type stuff.  Pretty, fluffy, synth-y, poppy indie.  "I Know" is the top track so far from the album with 1.8 million streams.

Actually pretty catchy tune.  Makes me want to whistle and shimmy my shoulders a little.  Apparently it was used both on the CW's Supergirl and in some sort of conjunction with Miss France 2019.  Which is such a weird thing to type.

Also, Bayonne is a city in France - that is the top hit on Wikipedia - and a town in Spain, and a town in Nebraska and New Jersey, and a bridge connecting New Jersey and Staten Island, and this guy.  Real name is Roger Sellers, and Wikipedia says he is known for his engaging one-man live shows.  In all honesty, I kind of like the new album.  I know I wasn't much for him back in 2016, but the new disc is pretty fun.

ACL 2019: Weekend One: Saturday: Thoughts and Schedule [updated]

Saturday is the weakest day of this year's festival.  Of course, this is why I am going to Saturday both weekends.  Dammit.

I don't usually make it out there first thing on Saturday, in favor of eating good food (in the shade and with a seat, inexpensive drinks, plus college football, over catching the low level music slotted on a Saturday morning.  This year I'll probably take the time to go eat and drink well before making my way down to Zilker, as none of the early stuff is must-see for me.

The Kooks and Dylan LeBlanc are no longer playing today, so this has been adjusted to add in Bayonne and Rob Baird.  Now stop messing with my schedule, yo!

A few prelude thoughts:

• The comments for each band are those "One Liner" things that I added to my reviews. It helps me to remember who they are (sometimes) and provides some detail on the kind of music they play.  
• I've made each band name a link so that you can go read the full review and listen to some tunes if you are unswayed by the One Liner.
• The first column in each box is the stage where the band is playing (in case you thought I was just playing a weird word association game).
• A little earlier than Friday's start.
• Note that there is still a gap at the 2:00 hour where the Kooks used to be, so we might get a new artist added in before the Fest.

Playlist!

11:45 / 12:00

Miller Lite (12:00)	The Aquadolls: Surf rock like Best Coast listened to the Breeders
VRBO (11:45)	Stone Wheels: Jam band country
Tito’s (11:45)	Disciples of Christ: Four gospel ladies from Houston (not the rap group, the hardcore metal group, or the world music group)
BMI (11:45)	Ingrid Andress: Forgettable pop with indie pop girl voice
T-Mobile (11:45)	Diamante Electrico: Awesome rock dudes singing something groovy in Spanish

I have to note that the explosion of Spanish language artists this year for ACL is jacking up my Spotify suggested artists something major.  That being said, I might pick Diamante out of these five.  They really do sound pretty awesome.  If not them, then Stone Wheels for some jammed out country plucking.

12:30/12:45

Honda (12:45)	Bayonne: Ambient electronic pop stuff from Austin
Kiddie Limits	Q Brothers: Possibly not the worst Kiddie Limits band, if you believe Joseph
Tito’s (12:45)	Night Cap: Alt. rock with a slight jammy tilt coming from Austin.
American Express (12:30)	Flora Cash: Quietly generic dream pop with that one "You're Somebody Else" hit.

None of these are must-see stuff.  Looking like a slower morning to get to the park on Saturday this year.  I’d say that my vote for these is Night Cap.  I don’t much care for Flora Cash.

1:15 / 1:30

Miller Lite (1:30)	Finneas: Billie Eilish's brother singing generic blue-eyed indie soulfully
VRBO	Briston Maroney: Great basic rock and roll from a former American Idol contestant.
BMI	Superet: I'm mentally blocked from recalling their name, but kinda Spoon-ish indie rock.
T-Mobile	Taylor Bennett: Chance the Rapper's little brother

Superet has become annoying to me because, for whatever reason, my NPR/Spotify commute playlist thing that they make has been populated heavily with their music.  STOP IT!  Honestly, they are fine, but Briston Maroney is better for a rock vibe and Taylor Bennett is solid if you are wanting to see rap.

1:45 / 2:00 / 2:30

Honda (2:15)	Men I Trust: Dreamy psych pop from two guys and a girl who apparently trusts them
Tito’s Tent (1:45)	Madison Ryann Ward: Killer voice, but only one single so far to go with it.
Kiddie Limits (2:30)	Gustafer Yellowgold: Kiddie Limits alien with a nice, sweet sound
American Express (2:00)	Sigrid: Killer voiced Norweigian gal deserves more hype

Would have been a harder call if it was the Kooks vs. Sigrid, but with The Kooks dropping out for health issues, its Sigrid all the way here.  I also apparently really liked the adjective “killer” for my lady voices during this hour.

2:45 and 3:00

Miller Lite	Hippie Sabotage:  Chill (mostly) EDM by two brothers.
VRBO	Misterwives: That band with the infectious disco-ish “Reflections” song from 2017.
Tito’s (2:45)	Rob Baird: Classic-sounding Americana/country music with good lyrics
BMI	Patrick Droney: John Mayer-esque guitar and soft-blues-rock guy
T-Mobile	Tierra Whack: Philly rapper with those tiny tracks now making good long raps

Tierra Whack was my gut reaction to seeing this time slot – she really is good and interesting and different.  But I’d also say that Baird is good and Droney is also impressive.  Some good choices to be made during this hour.

Then my buddy Jason just texted and said he was down for just about anything this weekend so long as I wasn't thinking Cardi B or Tierra Whack.  We then exchanged potato emojis, which cracked me up (see the video for "Unemployed").  So sounds like I might be enjoying me some white guy rock and roll instead.  We shall see.

4:00 / 4:30

Honda	Brittany Howard: Alabama Shakes singer doing her own thing
Tito’s Tent	Pink Sweat$: Very basic R&B like young Beiber
American Express	Lauren Daigle: Contemporary Christian singer with a killer voice
Kiddie (4:30)	Koo Koo Kanga Roo: Electronic goofy kiddie music

Torn on this one.  On the one hand, Howard was amazing with Alabama Shakes, and I like what I have heard of the first few tracks from her solo stuff.  On the other hand, Daigle’s voice is beautiful and it would be nice to see her doing her thing live.  I probably lean towards Howard, but we’ll see.

5:00

Miller Lite	Kali Uchis: Mediocre R&B sounds with some Amy Winehouse tendencies
VRBO	Natalia Lafourcade: Mexican pop rock lady
BMI	Bones UK: Industrial pop rock ladies
T-Mobile	Judah & the Lion: Popular combination of bluegrass sounds into hip hop-tinged pop rock.

Pretty lame hour, IMO.  I guess I would do the Judah & the Lion thing?  Their live show seems pretty fun?  But I wouldn’t feel great about it.  More likely I’ll go get dinner and then get into position for Gary Clark Jr.

6:00

Honda	Billie Eilish: Dark pop phenom at only 17 years old.
Tito’s Tent	Masego:  Kind of fun jazz fusion rap/R&B guy
American Express	Gary Clark, Jr.: New school guitar legend from Austin

If you know anything about my musical tastes, you know that I’m going to go see the guitar God do his thing.  Also, I have the luxury of already making plans to see Eilish the next weekend when I take my girls for Saturday only.  Masego is actually pretty interesting, if you are not feeling either of the other options and want something that will be inventive and different.

Speaking of coming back next Saturday, what in the world am I going to show my 9 and 11 year old girls the next weekend?  I don't want to think about that yet, or I'm going to start getting nervous about what kind of clothing Kali Uchis wears in concert as she likely writhes around on the stage.

7:00

Miller Lite	James Blake: Falsetto-singing, glitchy-electronic R&B Brit
VRBO	Metric: Solid indie rock cut with electronic rock and their few hits about a decade old
T-Mobile	21 Savage: "Atlanta" mumble rapper who has a couple very good tracks.

I would pick Metric to see out of these.  21 Savage isn’t as terrible as some of the other rappers doing the mumble rap thing, but Metric is legitimately a good band.  When James Blake's most popular track is someone else's rap song that he schmears 14 or so words in the middle of, I say no thank you.

HEADLINERS:

Honda	The Cure: It's The freaking Cure, dude.
American Express	Childish Gambino: Inconsistently good rapper and R&B crooner

I would absolutely go see the Cure.  But I also feel like I just saw them a few years ago, and with no new music, am I just going to see the exact same show?  All I know is that when I re-listened to them a few weeks ago, I got excited about this show.  But then I think that Gambino has about 3 tracks that are worth seeing, so going to that side might be a waste?  But maybe he's an insane performer because there has to be some reason he is popular when his music kinda sucks?  Torn on this one for sure.  Have a feeling Jason will make this pick for us.

I said that Saturday was weak, but that is mainly based on the afternoon shows.  Watching Gary Clark Jr., then Metric, then The Cure - that is a super solid three hours of time.