Austin City Limits Music Festival opened its gates to Zilker Park for the 22nd year this Friday.
My day started at 2:15 with Gabriels. While I only stuck around for about 25-30 minutes, the band kicked off the day on a great note. I had never listened to them before but I think I’m gonna need to now, I only checked them out after they had gotten rave review after rave review opening for Harry Styles at the beginning of this month. Frontman Jacob Lusk has an incredible voice and incredible stage presence, starting the show in a cape and a black suit with white stripes on it. I could’ve easily stayed for this entire set and been more than thrilled.
However, on the other end of the park, cowboy hats, boots, and cow print were quickly filling up the crowd at the American Express main stage. At around 4:10, Zach Bryan took the stage to a huge reaction. For the next 50 minutes, Bryan touched on just about everything from his massive catalog. He was also super humble and appreciative of the opportunity to be on stage, saying multiple times throughout his set, “Thank you so much for having me, we don’t deserve to be here, thank you for showing up.” Bryan drew a huge crowd for his mid-afternoon set time and he had everyone singing along. Songs like Something in the Orange, Godspeed, and Heading South were all loud moments along with the rowdiness of Revival near the end. Before the set, I had told my dad “If Zach starts doing Revival for 20 minutes we can take off early.” He did, yet somehow the chorus got even more hype each time he launched back into it and kept me hooked. Bryan is a force to be reckoned with and I hope I can see him at a headline show with his own rowdy fans.
After Bryan, I crossed the park and headed back to the Barton Springs stage for French pop and disco band L’Impératrice. I am still struggling to find the words to describe how incredible this set was. Seriously, I’m still trying to process what I saw on that stage in that hour. The grooves were infectious, frontwoman Flore Benguigui is a bundle of joy on stage, and just musically, the band is so tight. Part rock show, part dance party, my body just could not stop moving for this entire set. You could’ve pinned me to the ground during this set and I would still somehow be nodding my head or shaking my hips. The closer, Piano Track, built up and dropped 3 or 4 times and it was an absolutely magical release each time. This is going to be a very bold take given this is only day one of three but the French might be the best music makers on the planet and this set might not be topped this weekend.
However, if anyone was going to top their performance yesterday, it would’ve been Billy Strings, a bluegrass musician and the jam band scene’s newest darling. This set made me want to throw away my guitars because I will never be anywhere near as good as he is. He genuinely destroyed my confidence as a guitar player. It’s not just Billy though, his entire band is full of incredible musicians who can all pull insane solos out of thin air and blow your mind. While Billy battled some technical issues in the middle of his set, he made light of them and danced all around the stage while his guitar tech worked on his pedal board. Before and after though were insanity. His performances of the songs Away From The Mire and Hide and Seek made me laugh at points because they were too good. And of course, the biggest frenzy of his set came when Billy told that crowd that he saw a ton of people out in the crowd, “All of you are beautiful, some of you are party people, and some of you could use a cautionary tale like this one” and launched straight into Dust in a Baggie, an absolute barn burner that I think actually opened up a mosh pit near the front. If you take anything from this article, let it be this. If you are a guitar nerd, a country fan, or a music fan in general…honestly, you know what, if you’re a human being, go see Billy Strings live.
The Chicks headlined Friday night and…yeah that’s about all I can say about their set. I can give them props where props are due, their stage design was really cool and their show production was really high quality. Lead singer Natalie Maines still sounds fantastic and one of the coolest moments of the show was before their cover of Landslide where Maines introduced that her son, Slade, is part of the band now and said that there were three generations of Maines’ on stage between herself, her son, and her dad Lloyd, a legendary steel guitar player from Lubbock. Also, the closers Not Ready to Make Nice and Goodbye Earl were absolutely insane and I went so hard to Goodbye Earl. Outside of that though, I’m not sure if I was just so impressed by the two sets previous or if I was just so far back but The Chicks’ set just did not do it for me. A legacy headliner at the fest usually tends to stick to the hits, they’ll sprinkle in a new song here or there or maybe a fun cover, but you usually have a set full of songs that everyone knows and loves. The Chicks played 9 of 12 songs from their 2020 album Gaslighter and lost the crowd really quickly by doing so. I’m sure a lot of people really enjoyed this set and I’m fine being an outlier if that’s the case but their set was ultimately disappointing.
I’ll be back in Zilker today and tomorrow with more festival coverage.
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