Austin City Limits '09

For my birthday this year, Jeff Clark, a.k.a. “Lev the Lion,” bought me a three-day pass to this year’s Austin City Limits. This wildly fantastic music extravaganza has been an annual production of the weird and spectacular city of Austin for 30+ years. I flew into Wichita from LA, and Jeff and I road-tripped it from there. We joined thousands upon thousands of fellow peace-loving music worshippers in a celebration of life, liberty, and the pursuit of rock ‘n’ roll. The concert lineup included headliners Pearl Jam and the Dave Matthews Band, as well as phenomenal festival rockers such as Flogging Molly, Ben Harper, DeVotchka, Blitzen Trapper, !!!, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and State Radio, among many many others.

Turns out though, in spite of our excitement for this event, Jeff and I are terrible concertgoers. Austin weather pulled a fast one on us and, needless to say, we were completely unprepared. The first day, we both got completely burned from standing out in the sun all day. The next morning, as we were lining up to board the shuttle, we laughed at the pansies buying ponchos from vendors. An hour later it was pouring, and it didn’t stop till late in the evening. We seemed to be the only ones without some kind of rain gear and after spending most of the day soaking wet and cold, we eventually begged a trash collector for some extra bags. Still, Flogging Molly in the rain and mud (pre-trash bags) was awesome.

I have to say, ‘though the fish tacos were amazing, as far as number one highlight of the weekend, Dave Matthews Band takes the cake. Their performance absolutely blew my mind. I heard one guy say he’d seen DMB play 17 times and this was hands down the best set he’d seen them do. Jeff’s also seen them play a couple times and he said the same. As a first time witness to the live brilliance of a truly incredible jam band, I can’t imagine it any better than it was. They played plenty of their good old material and threw in a cover of “Burnin’ Down the House” (someone told us afterwards that David Byrne is from Austin, but our sources tell us that's a lie and that Dave just played the song 'cause he wanted to). It was the final show of a long tour and they were just so on. Tim Reynolds tore it up, Dave was in a super dancey mood, and Carter wowed the crowd with a five-minute drum solo as they wrapped up their set with a twenty-minute version of “Two Step.”