The official Austin City Limits Festival Radio. Highlighting performing artists from the 09 festival and live cuts from past years.
Tags: Live, Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, Blues, Singer/Songwriter, Roots, Country, Americana
This is the long awaited third and final blog from the big trip to Austin. And it’s a big one. This is the blog that will answer all you questions. Who are The Henry Clay People? Is Ingrid really from outer space? Who was on the losing end of Fight or Fuck night? How many Lone Stars did I drink? And did we ever make it to Juan In a Million for Don Juan breakfast tacos?
The short of it; Some guys, I dunno, Moby look-a-like, 69, we drove by it.

The long of it. After I posted my last blog on Saturday, God decided to whiz all over Austin City Limits. Remember that piss Austin Powers took in the first movie? Saturday was a washout. The Goom tent was used more for shelter then for interviews. They did serve some good BBQ though, and The Henry Clay People stopped by. Apparently Henry Clay ran for president 300 years ago and he was the “great compromiser.” Why would you want to name your band after a compromiser and not an innovator is beyond me. While I was chatting with The Heartless Bastards, I personally stopped two interlopers from hopping the fence and seeing music for free. Did you know that Alberta Cross is a band and not a chick? I had no clue and was somewhat bummed, because Chubby Guy #2 told me Alberta was a smokin’ hot broad. The Airborne Toxic Event were too booked to talk to us. Dennis from Flogging Molly was nice. The STS9 guys used our tent as their own personal smoking den! And Donald from The Virgins had gold glitter all over his face. You know like when girls go out and put it all over their boobs. So, I can’t figure out if he put it there or he was motor boating some honeys right before the interview. Oh and I met some girl named Lindsay that looks like an adult Miley Cyrus.

I wouldn’t say I’m the biggest Dave Matthews Band fan in the world, but they opened with the one song I really like from them. “Don’t Drink The Water.” I was jazzed and then some DMB-head told me “they open with that all the time.”
After we headed back to Austin and did the usual beer, shot, beer, beer, shot, beer, beer, beer, beer, shot, beer, shot, beer, beer, beer, beer, beer, shot, we headed back to the hotel. The sorority girls from the first night were up on the roof hooking up with some meatheads, so I hung around and cockblocked for a while. That got boring and as I was heading down to the room, I met Ingrid.
Ingrid was beyond belief fucked up on something. Our security guard friend Kent surmised it was most likely “shrooms or goofballs.” She was sprawled out on the floor of the hallway carrying a copy of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and talking about time being linear. It was at this point that I decided to do something nice. Kent was going to call the cops and this girl was probably going to spend the night in jail or something. I grabbed two of the sorority girls and we dragged her down to my room, where Chubby Guy #2 and Moby look-a-like were attempting to sleep. Needless to say CG#2 and MLAL were not happy. And after about 30 minutes of talking to Ingrid we came to the conclusion that in addition to being completely whacked out of her mind on drugs, she was totally bat shit crazy! There’s a video, but it’s more sad than funny. MLAL and I decided to walk her down to the street and release her back into the wild. She talked to a flag pole in front of the hotel about alternate universes for about thirty minutes and the cops showed up and took her away. Exactly what I didn’t want to happen, but I feel we’re all richer for the experience.
Sunday – Last day of the festival. The weather cooperates completely but the previous day’s rain has made the entire park a field of stinky mud. Mike Posner and Big Sean dropped by. I developed a crush on the girls from Jypsi. I talked cake with Clutch. And Michael Franti is a class act! He had the flu, was exhausted and yet still humped over to our tent and did a great interview. The Dead Weather is such a great idea for a band, but their set was long and boring. And from what I heard of Pearl Jam, about six songs, all hits!
As is customary, in the south, the last night of our trip was Fight or Fuck night. Meaning, you get laid, or you start a fight. I conveniently paid for an HJ, CG#2 “claims” he got some and as the 2AM deadline passed we had to drag MLAL out of bed to start a fight. A local Austinite was more than happy to kick the shit out of him. As we drove to the airport the next morning, our cab passed Juan In a Million, but we didn’t have time to stop for the breakfast tacos that I’d been dreaming of since I saw some unfunny fat guy eat them on TV.
THE END?

Saturday Morning – Austin Texas. Chubby Guy #2, Moby look-a-like and I hit the free breakfast at our hotel. Chubby Guy #2 is nursing a swollen nose after he took a header off a table and into a pipe on the roof of our hotel the night before. I had the camera ready for pictures of the initial bloody nose, but he got all bent out of shape. So, we make a plate of terrible free hotel breakfast food and sit down.
As I read the local Austin Bugle, or whatever their local rag is called, I notice the picture and front page headline. It reads “Happiness & Harmony,” and shows a picture of a jubilant young man with his arms raised in the air (waving them like he just doesn’t care) enjoying his time at the Austin City Limits concert. I can’t help think to myself what that headline would be like if Austin had a paper like the NY Post. I assume they’d have a picture of a topless broad in the crowd with a headline that read, “Austin Titty Limits.” But I digress.
So, to keep a chronological theme going here, I believe I left off with Thursday afternoon. Sometime around 7:00 we got seated at the world famous Stubb’s and decided to get the three meat, three sides all you can eat family style thing. It was glorious! I think I have pictures, I’ll have Moby look-a-like put them in this blog. After dinner, Them Crooked Vultures were playing outside but Chubby Guy #2 and I, me being Chubby Guy #1, went straight into a food coma, picked up a case of beer and took a disco nap. Sometime around 11:00 I hit the pool deck to smoke a cigarette and ran into eight sorority girls from Kappa something or other. They finished our case and talked about their boyfriends for the next half an hour.
Friday was a full day of interviews. Nelo, Raphael Saddiq, Phoenix, Trail of Dead, Sarah Watkins, K’Naan, Low Anthem, The Greencards and Mishka. All should be up on ACL Festival Radio soon. I’d post pictures of me with all the bands, but I’m Chubby Guy #1 and I look like a turd.
From there it all went downhill. Lone Stars and flaming Dr. Pepper shots fueled our way back to Stubb’s for STS9 and The Virgins. It was during STS9 that I captured that cute little freak dancing, she caught me taking her picture, loved it and made me promise to email it to her. And then that led to the drunken header into the pipe on the roof so eloquently by Chubby Guy #2. And here we are, back at the media tent waiting to interview bands in the rain.


Smell ya later.

We touched down in Austin last night to much fanfare. Try to envision The Beatles landing in America and then forget that image and try to think of two chubby guys and a Moby look-a-like deplaning in an empty airport. A quick cab ride dropped us right in the heart of downtown Austin and me and me mates were off on an adventure in Texas.
Leebo, Chubby Guy #2, decided he needed some “alone” time, so Adam, Moby look-a-like, and I, Chubby Guy #1, hit the streets in search of a case of beer and a flaming Dr. Pepper shot! A quick walk to 6th Street and we found our place – the awfully named Touche. Our bartender, a spritely Suicide Girlsesque 24 year-old named Liz greeted us at the bar and gave us quite a show. She set up the shots, I really wish I had taken a picture, dosed her hands in rum, gulped a big shot of it and lit our shots with an enormous fireball. Moby look-a-like swooned. Shots were downed, tip was left and bartender was now our friend.
We picked up a case of Lone Star cans, headed back to the hotel and picked up Chubby Guy #2. Our local contact, another guy named Brad, was about to pick us up for a trip to a local bar. As we hopped into Brad’s car a leggy Asian girl tried to bum a smoke, I rebuked her, Brad lied about his smoke situation and Moby look-a-like jumped out of the car to give her a smoke. Turns out her name is Kimmy and even though Moby look-a-like’s chances of bedding her shot up by 10% just for lighting her cigarette, that 10% wasn’t enough to reach 100%.
We landed at Luster Pearl and started drinking some extremely cheap beers. I ordered Chorizo and Chicken tacos and we wrapped it up early. On the walk home I surmised that Moby look-a-like was a lightweight and that I am a really cool guy. We got back to the room and feel asleep to a really cool episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. It was the one were a Picard from the future foretells the Enterprise’s doom. Good stuff.
6:30AM. Moby look-a-like’s freakin’ iPhone starts ringing. Some shitty Glitch song. After he spilled a beer on my phone, broke his toe, and knocked over the coffee table, he was able to shut it off. Ten minutes later it rang again! Arm punches were doled out.
11:00AM. We hit the venue, set up the tent, rode in a golf cart and ate free food.
Then we went back to the room, drank some beers, watched SVU and here we are. I’m planning on eating Ribs, Brisket and Cole Slaw in the next two or three hours. And then listen to Them Crooked Vultures from OUTSIDE Stubb’s. We don’t have tickets, but outside seeing Grohl on drums, I just want to hear some of their songs.
Current consumption tally:
Lone Star Beers – 18
Tacos – 5
BBQ Meals – 0

Very big news from Goom! We are really excited about the launch today of ACL Festival Radio-The official radio of the 2009 Austin City Limits Festival! Whether you are making it down to Austin, TX this year or not, you can get the full ACL Festival experience from your computer. We've got music from all the genres of performers at the festival as well as live performances from past ACL Festivals.
There are a ton of Tastemaker bands playing this years festival including Kings Of Leon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Phoenix, Passion Pit, MuteMath, and Airborne Toxic Event. To see the full line up, check out ACLFestival.com.
I want to take a second to thank C3 Presents and everyone associated with the festival for all their help. We're really excited about this station and hope you do too. We'll see you in Austin October 2-4th!
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