The day has come to an end, but Austin City Limits is just getting started. I’ve got the scoop on 3 other great shows I saw today.
Bobby Bare Jr.
The audience at this show was a lot more laid back than the ones I saw before. I think the alcohol was beginning to kick in. They stayed laying down until the band stepped on stage.
The first two songs were haunting, as Bare and the bassist howled into the mics, howls which bordered on shrieks, which caused some people near the front to leave. Between songs, the bassist, a good looking girl with firey hair, exchanged playful banter, arguing over who the audience was cheering for.
The band repeatedly blew the roof off of Zilker park with several intense solos by the lead guitarist who played while teetering on the edge of the stage, the most beautiful guitar I’ve ever seen.
I left that stage deaf, and headed over to the stage Jenny Lewis was going to be performing on. The stage was essentially a barn, and was filled to the max, there was no way I was going to get a good view, so I decided to go grab something to eat and wait for David Byrne’s set to start.
David Byrne
(Web)
I sat and ate my fish tacos while hundreds and hundreds of people filled every available space around me. When Byrne and his band approached the stage they had attracted the largest crowd of any artist today. He and his backing band were dressed all in white, right down to the wristwatch. During the set, three dancers (who weren’t very good) gyrated and grooved around Byrne while his band laid out Latin and African beats.
At one point Byrne sat down and the dancers pulled up office chairs (the rolly kind) out of nowhere and danced while sitting down in them. Not a single person in the crowd wasn’t dancing as well.
After Byrne I headed over to one of the smallest stages at ACL to see. . .
Alejandro Escovedo
During the sound check I ran into Uncle T who sometimes writes for <a href=”http://jnicolas.newsvine.com/_news/2008/02/13/1293307-they-bring-the-music-to-us-speed-of-dark”Speed of Dark, we chatted for a while and then enjoyed the show together.
Alejandro came out to a crowd of mostly older people, I don’t think anyone there didn’t know who they were about to see. I’ve been wanting to see Escovedo live for a while, and it was just my luck because this is his first time at ACL.
He stopped in the middle of his set and talked about how he and his band (which included a cellist and a violinist) played at the Democratic National Convention. He then played the song that he played there, People, for us.
Throughout the set Escovedo’s small frame was able to match the intensity of Bobby Bare Jr.’s guitarist, despite being at least twice as old.
He closed the set with Castanets, which he said was on an old album that he used to play a lot until it was found out that it was on George W. Bush’s, iPod top 10 played tracks. Escovedo then joked, saying that they stopped playing it for a while, trying to figure out what they did to deserve such bad karma.
After the set the crowd roared in approval, and Uncle T said that it was one of the best he’s seen Escovedo perform.
Time to go back and catch some much needed rest before waking up and doing the whole thing over again.
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