Coming soon: Best of ACL slideshow

M. Ward performs Friday (Mark C. Austin) Be on the lookout in the coming hour or two for a slideshow compiling the best of our ACL photo team’s work from the first couple days. For now, enjoy more work from festival photographer extraordinaire Mark C. Austin. Read more here…..

Old 97’s Sighted at ACL, All is Right with the Universe

Rhett Miller’s pants take the band’s “train wreck” motif to a whole new level (Dawn Jones-Garcia) It just wouldn’t be a Texas music festival without these guys. Check out more shots from our photographer on the scene after the jump, then, in case you missed it, read Jesse Hughey’s take…

Patty Griffin and Jenny Lewis: Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls of Fire

Jenny Lewis (Mark C. Austin) Blondes have more fun. Brunettes can read. Redheads, they sing. Friday afternoon of ACL saw two such enflamed songbirds. Sunday will feature two more, but until then… Local chanteuse Patty Griffin whipped up the fest’s first recorded breeze with opener “Heavenly Day,” from last year’s…

Soul Day at ACL: I Feel Good!

Sharon Jones (L.A. Reno) To be honest, I thought today was going to suck, but it’s been the exact opposite. After some ridonkulous partying last night at Heartless Bastards’ ear-splitting basement blues party – hey, it was my first time at Emo’s in six months – I set a new…

The Old 97’s at ACL Fest

The last time I saw the Old 97’s was at The Argo in Denton sometime in the last century. A gutter-punk couple was square dancing, which felt perfectly appropriate to the twangy yet gritty music that night. As the group got poppier and poppier with each subsequent release, they gradually…

Intergalactic Dance Party

They may live around the corner. They may come from a tiny town in the Midwest. They may live out in East Dallas where he coaches Little League while she designs baby clothes. But more than likely though, they live inside an dry ice block on the planet WTF?! surrounded…

Day Two Fashion Fest

(Dawn Jones-Garcia) A few more looks around the crowd at ACL, with this fall’s hottest fashion trend after the jump…

A Little Morning Dancing to Put You in the Mood

Morning. We’ll have more reports from last night’s ACL Fest shows up in a little bit, but for now here’s some quick video from Craig Hlavaty of a dude dancing during Gogol Bordello’s set. The straw hat. The fancy water pouch. The khaki shorts. It’s all kind of mesmerizing, really…

ACL Day One: More band photos

Manu Chao (L.A. Reno) A treacherous wifi failure in Austin’s Zilker Park (somewhere near bad Red Rope licorice in the pantheon of festival disasters) kept the posting slow yesterday, but here’s hoping for clear signals ahead on day 2. As Saturday morning rises over the hill country, we give you…

How bout some band shots?

The crowd may be where it’s at, when it comes to giant novelty cowboy hats, hula hoop circles and Lone Star tall boys. But ACL kicked off Friday with a respectable start to its all-star lineup. Gogol Bordello (Dawn Jones-Garcia) More from Observer photographer Dawn Jones-Garcia after the jump…

ACL Pix: More Scenes from Zilker

As the first night of ACL rolls on, a few more sightings from the festival crowds: He was from Scotland. Oddly enough. I was totally waiting to toss off some “Duh-Duh, what a loser” caption thing, but his being Scottish humbled me. Those guys are like Texans with brass balls…

ACL: Sunny Sweeney Yes, Vampire Weekend No

I think ACL has managed to squeeze all its country between noon and 3 p.m. today. Luckily Sunny Sweeney, a Longview native now based out of Austin, was part of it. Sweeney, a former improv comedienne, has a winning stage presence and a wicked way with a lyric. After the…

Setting the Scene

Of course, a humongous outdoor festival like ACL is as much about the parade of sweat-soaked, under-dressed humanity as it is about the bands. With that in mind, here’s just a brief look around Austin’s Zilker Park this afternoon. This guy wanted me to chug my Lone Star tall boy…

ACL Is Underway, Rootsy Early On

Paula Nelson (Chris Gray) The hordes of shirtless (or soon-to-be shirtless) camp-chair toters are streaming into Zilker Park, and the Rocks Off team is up and running. Us media types got a nice surprise this afternoon; there’s a separate entrance from the rest of the behind-the-scenes goings-on this year. The…

ACL, Meet DC9

It’s beginning to look a lot like Austin. (Mark C. Austin) ACL has just kicked off (let me hear it, Dan Dyer fans!), and we wanted to drop yet another hint that DC9 is the place to keep your browser parked, and refreshed, all weekend. With a team of DC9…

Last Night: Del tha Funky Homosapien at the Granada Theater

Del tha Funky Homosapien Granada Theater September 26, 2008 Better than: The GZA’s show a few weeks at ago at The Loft, despite a less-hip-hop-friendly venue. Del kept the fans at the Granada happy. (Bill Ellison) Del tha Funky Homosapien raised eyebrows recently when he moved to a new label…

Houston’s Hayes Carll wins Americana Song of the Year

Congratulations, Hayes. Although he won’t be playing our area until November, Houston singer/songwriter Hayes Carll deserves some Texas-sized kudos for recently winning the Americana Music Award for Song of the Year with his satirical “She Left Me For Jesus.” Carll was also nominated for Artist of The Year at The…