Austin City Limits Music Festival 2015
Another year of ACL fest is already gone! This was my third time attending the festival, and it’s always one of my favorite weekends of the year. This year was especially fun because I got to perform as an artist at the festival!
In case you don’t know, Austin City Limits Music Festival is a giant music festival in Austin. There are 2 weekends, 8 stages, and 130 bands, and 75,000 people attend each day. It’s madness!
Local Austin band Mother Falcon asked if I could sub in place of their normal violinist this year, and I was happy to do that!
The weekend started on Thursday night. I taught violin lessons for 5 hours before rushing to a 4 hour rehearsal. If you’ve ever read this blog, you probably know that I’m not a night owl, so rehearsing at 11:00 on a Thursday night is a major #struggle.
But I was totally geeking out over my ACL Artist wristband! It felt legit. 🙂
Friday morning started with my normal orchestra teaching job, and then I got changed and headed to the festival. Perk of being an artist: parking spots and transportation to the stage! No mile long walks!
After dumping all of our gear behind the stage, the band headed to the artist village for some freebies. Actually, it was mostly just to enjoy one of the few shady spots in Zilker Park!
There’s a catering tent for all the ACL artists and crew members, which was a nice change of pace. ACL has lots of street food for the festival go-ers, which is fun, but it sort of makes you feel “blech” by day 3. I kicked off the weekend with a kale salad and watermelon for lunch for a healthy change of pace.
We went behind the Austin Kiddie Limits stage to get our instruments ready and get on stage.
Mother Falcon is a big band (about 13 members) with lots of classical instruments. They’ve been playing together for about 7 years, and it was a wonderful to get to play with them!
We were collaborating with another artist from New York: Tim Kubart. He’s a family entertainer, which means we were playing kids pop tunes. How much FUN?? Seriously. I had a blast!!
After the afternoon show, I was free to hang out at the festival all day!
Leon Bridge gave a great performance.
Talk about great weekend weather!
This picture was taken around 4 pm, before it got very crowded. By 8 pm, it’s so packed you can hardly walk.
Nate showed up after work!
George Ezra under the night sky.
ACL is equal parts fun and exhausting. I started Saturday morning with a fritter and a cappuccino at Radio Coffee and Beer.
Then I went to the festival to play the Saturday show!
Another stop at artist village to get caffeinated with High Brew Coffee. In my opinion, coffee plays a vital roll in a successful ACL weekend.
After Saturday’s show, I only had time to see Shakey Graves before leaving the festival to play another show up in North Austin.
Mother Falcon and Tim Kubart played at The Domain on Saturday evening to a crowd of kids who were wired on cupcakes and magic shows! It was such a fun show!
I could have gone back to ACL to see the headliners, but I didn’t care about either of them enough to deal with the crowds. Sorry, Drake.
Sunday morning: slept in, got bagels at Wholy Bagel, went to church, taught a violin lesson, practiced for an hour, and then ACL round 3!!
It was a pretty cool weekend (upper 80’s), but the sun was still so bright! Hat + sunscreen + water.
Since I wasn’t performing on Sunday, I couldn’t park in the artist parking lot. Boo. Artist perks were over and I had to take an UBER and then walk a mile with the crowd of people.
The first show we saw on Sunday was The Decemberists from Portland. This was one of my favorite shows of the weekend!
Getting some beer in the craft beer tent.
For my own memory, here are the bands I saw this year:
Day 1
Leon Bridges
Brandon Flowers (lead singer of The Killers)
George Ezra
Gary Clark Jr.
Foo Fighters
Day 2
Shakey Graves
Day 3
The Decemberists
Vance Joy
Of Monsters and Men
Hozier
I was sad to have missed most of the shows on Saturday, but it was also really cool to get to play this year. It’s crazy how quickly that weekend goes by!
I’m not sure if I’ll do all 3 days again next year… I’ll cross that bridge next fall!
Have a great Wednesday, everyone!
Kelsey XO
I think it is just the coolest thing that you played there! And were able to get some of those perks…so fun!
It was lots of fun!