Ryan Grimm

Last Friday was the first day of the Austin City Limits Music Festival and the beginning of my third year in attendance. My goal was to write about each day immediately after the day ended, but it didn’t take long to realize that this goal would not be met. But better late than never and I’ve got a few hours to kill before my flight back to San Francisco.

Part of the reason I didn’t have time to write at the end of each day is because my Dad, my brother Tate and one of my best friends Will made it to the festival as well and we were simply having too good of time hanging out together (wish you could have made it Alex and Amanda). This was the first year that my brother came along with us and I was excited to see what he thought of the experience.

Given how exhausted we all were from traveling to Austin, I was very proud of us for getting to Zilker park a bit after noon. The first show I wanted to see was Yeasayer at 1:30. I first heard of Yeasayer last January from Liz and I’d listened to their album All Hours Cymbals a few times but didn’t give it a whole lot of attention until leading up to the festival. However, in the last few weeks the album has really been growing on me. Their lyrics can be a little hard to follow along to sometimes so I wasn’t sure what the others would think of the show.

They played most of the songs off of the All Hours Cymbals album but without a doubt, Sunrise and 2080 were two of my favorites. My only complaint is that the base guitar was driven into distortion which cast a lot of the delicate and intricate details into the shadows. But that’s fine, it gives me a good excuse to see them again the next time they are in San Francisco.

Next up was Jakob Dylan, son of Bob Dylan. Last year Bob Dylan was the closing act on Sunday and lets just say I was disappointed with how he interacted with the crowd. Thankfully his son Jakob seems to have plenty of energy and spark in him to say hello to all of us. Knowing that it would be a fairly long day, Will and I kind of relaxed a bit during his set but still found it quite enjoyable.

At 3:30 we made our way over to see Del tha Funky Homosapien. I love Del. He is by far one of the most innovative and talented artists in the Rap/Hip-Hop world. Many people aren’t familiar with him under this name but chances are you’ve heard him without knowing it. His most well known work is likely on the song “Clint Eastwood” with the Gorillaz. But for me his greatest work is the Deltron 3030 album. We didn’t get very close to the stage which is a bummer because there was clearly a ton of energy in the crowd.

Going off of a recommendation from someone that Will chatted with on the flight to Austin, we decided to check out Patty Griffin. She didn’t seem too bad but given that we didn’t know much about her, it was kind of hard to really get into her set. So we headed out halfway through, got some food and then listened to the first half of the Slightly Stoopid set. I was hoping that G. Love would come out and join them for Mellow Mood and in fact G. Love did come out, but they sang a different song. Will and I decided that we’d leave early and get a killer spot for The Swell Season.

If you aren’t familiar with The Swell Season and you like folk music, make sure you do something about that. Many months ago Will suggested that I check out the soundtrack for the movie Once and that was the best music recommendation Will has ever given me. The soundtrack for the movie was written and performed by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová (they also starred in the movie). So when Will informed me that The Swell Season was made up of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, I was very excited. We managed to get some spots a few feet from the stage and the show firmly cemented the desire to see the two of them in concert again. Especially because we headed out fifteen minutes early to see Donavan Frankenreiter.

If you follow my blog, you may remember me blogging about how amazing the Donavan Frankenreiter show was at the Outside Lands Festival and that was an experience I wanted to duplicate, so I was very motivated to get a good spot for the set. My Dad and brother didn’t feel the same need so they hung out a bit further back in the crowd while Will and I managed to be close enough to touch the stage. Once again the show did not disappoint. Donavan was as fantastic as always and clearly seemed to be enjoying himself.

But what made this show special for me was when G. Love joined Donavan on the stage. I passed on seeing the G. Love show in favor of The Swell Season, a choice that wasn’t easy to make. So it warmed my heart to be able to see him join in on both “What’cha Know About” and “It Don’t Matter”.

Normally at shows I spend a good amount of energy taking photos. But for this festival I took a grand total of 15 pictures, 15! Last year I took ten times this many photos and frankly it felt very strange to not have a camera in my hand the entire time. But I have a good excuse, I promise.

Shortly before the festival this year I went to a JJ Grey & Mofro concert and during the concert I was wishing that I could share what I was hearing with others. Then it hit me, I could totally share what I was hearing if I got some recording equipment. I did some research online, got myself a portable recorder and I already had a mic so it was easy to get something simple going (I’ll share the details of my setup in a later post).

I played around with the recorder and various mic positions earlier in the day and by the time the Donavon show came around I was feeling fairly confident that I could get a good recording. So Will and I stood right up front, me grabbing the audio and Will grabbing some video. Not only was the set better than I expected, the quality of my recording exceeded every single expectation I had, almost to the point of tears :). Here’s the video of “It Don’t Matter” that Will shot:

Friday ended up being a very long day for all of us and we were all ready to get back to the hotel for some much needed rest. Between the sun, moving about and the music, one tends to feel pretty drained at the end of the day. But that’s actually a pretty good demonstration of exactly how amazing these festivals are. It’s the memories that are made hearing so many amazing artists with such amazing friends that makes it all so worthwhile.