Friday was a very long and busy day and after a well-deserved night of sleep, I woke up energized and ready for another day of music, sun, and fun.
I want to say from the very start, this was the best day of weather I’ve had at the fest in a very very long time. During the day it topped out at around 74 and sunny and at night it got down to around 54, it was absolute bliss in Zilker Park. Making my lap around the park before any music started felt absolutely incredible.
My music day started at the American Express Stage with BigXThaPlug, a Dallas rapper who’s been making waves from his viral song Texas. A trap banger all about how he’s from this state and it’s honestly a pretty fun song. This set should not have been as good as it was. I can’t believe that I walked away from it think it’s one of the most fun rap shows I’ve ever seen at the fest. His energy was great, his DJ was hilarious and not very annoying (this is very rare for rap shows), and it was just a fantastic way to kick off the day. After him, I grabbed some food and some Juiceland and headed over to the Honda Stage for one of my most anticipated sets of the whole festival, Jessie Ware.
I am still reeling from this show. I genuinely believe this was the best set I was able to see all weekend. It’s a travesty that she was a 2 PM set because she put on a headliner-level performance. Her voice was perfection, her band was on fire, and her dancers and backup singers enhanced the show so much. Her setlist was extremely well-paced as well, striking a great balance between material from her last two albums That! Feels Good! and What’s Your Pleasure? There were a couple of omissions that stung, mainly not getting to hear Soul Control live but I can excuse that from how fierce performances of songs like What’s Your Pleasure? and Ooh La La were, it also helped to be reminded how great the song Mirage (Don’t Stop) was. The two biggest highlights of her set came from the songs Beautiful People and Spotlight. Her performance of the former was one of the best of the entire weekend, getting the crowd to do a choreographed dancing number for the song’s outro. I can’t believe she was able to pull it off but it showed just how well she commanded the crowd. Spotlight, on the other hand, was just a mind-blowing performance of a song that I’ve loved for so long. I will admit, I may have got a little teary-eyed as she sang the first verse before the full band entered. I want to stress again that this was only the second set I saw on Saturday, and I still had a full day ahead of me. My quest to find a set that topped this one began.
That quest began on the other side of the park with Philadelphia indie-rock mainstays, Mt. Joy. Before I talk about their set, I want to first say that I love the mid-day indie rock band mainstage slot at this festival so much. Wallows, Phoebe Bridgers, and Zach Bryan (okay not really indie rock but still) have all killed it in this slot and Mt. Joy continued that tradition. Their set was the perfect vibe for the perfect time. Opening with Sheep and Lemon Tree, the band brought the groove and anyone who wasn’t a fan of the band when they hit the stage was surely a fan by the end of the band ripping through Lemon Tree. The band has been trying to lean towards a more jam type of style as of recently and while they couldn’t fully expand upon that in the limited time slot, their extended intros and outros were very welcome, as was throwing in snippets of Old Town Road into a performance of Let Loose and snippets of Ain’t No Sunshine and Crazy into the performance of Julia.
After grabbing some food and running into a buddy on the other end of the park, I found another group of friends and posted up at the American Express stage again, this time for the one and only, Alanis Morissette. I saw Alanis for the first time at a festival in Dallas in 2019 while she was very pregnant. At the time, I only knew the song Ironic from my 8th grade English class and knew that her set was one I had to sit through to see The Killers headlining set. She absolutely crushed it and in hindsight, I think she made me enjoy The Killers less, just because I was still wrapping my head around how great she was. Ever since then, I’ve thought she would be an absolute slam dunk for this festival and this year, she finally made her debut. I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy it as much now that I’m much more familiar with her catalog and would have the high expectations of the last show to live up to. She crushed those expectations once again.
The only thing I have against this set is a six or seven minute long intro video that very much overstayed its welcome but outside of that, my intuition was correct, she was a slam dunk for this fest. Her band was fantastic again, Alanis herself, now four years removed from having the baby she was pregnant with at the time, was fantastic again, and the setlist was just perfect for this fest. Eight Jagged Little Pill songs anchored the show and led to a lot of loud sing-alongs and so much nostalgia for lots of attendees in the park. At one point, a mom looked down at her two younger daughters and told them, “When I was your age, this was our Olivia Rodrigo.” It was so great to see her again, especially since I knew the songs this time. From a laid-back belter performance of You Learn to the acoustic guitar led Head Over Feet to absolutely blistering performances of All I Really Want and You Oughta Know, Alanis’s golden hour set left few disappointed.
As the sun continued to set, one of the most hyped sets of the weekend began on the T-Mobile Stage when Noah Kahan entered the stage. Every year there’s at least one artist on the lineup that plays a set while they’re on top of the world, in 2021 it was Phoebe Bridgers and Billie Eilish, last year it was Zach Bryan, and this year it was Noah Kahan. Kahan is one of the most talked about artists not just in alternative music or folk music right now, but one of the most artists talked about in all of music right now, period. His shows are getting bigger and bigger and are still managing to sell out quicker and quicker. He sold out two shows in Boston’s Fenway Park the days they went on sale and his entire amphitheater and arena tour next year is nearly completely sold out. While ACL Talent Buyer Margaret Galton didn’t tell me exactly when he was booked when I talked to her a few weeks back, she did say they grabbed him before this massive explosion in popularity. While him being on a stage as small as T-Mobile wasn’t as disastrous as I thought it would be, the crowd was still very full and very loud.
Kahan and his band are a force to be reckoned with. They rock live and it’s not hard to see Kahan’s lyrics resonating with the crowds he draws, but about halfway through his show is when I had my biggest takeaway from his set. After running along the barricade and giving high fives to whoever wanted one, Kahan came back to the stage and grabbed a mandolin and began strumming the opening chords to All My Love off his 2022 breakout album, Stick Season. It was there that it struck me how wild his success is. How many artists who have had giant breakouts in the past five years can say it’s because of folk music? Hell how many songs have been on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the same time frame that have a banjo in them? Getting to the level he has in this lane has been wild to watch unfold.
The last thing I’ll say about Kahan before I start raving about the night’s headliner. He is the funniest person that was given a microphone the entire weekend. Whether it was him introducing himself as “the Jewish Ed Sheeran” and “Folk Malone,” introducing the song All My Love by saying it’s a song about a divorce that “was probably your fault” and later saying after the line about his parents speaking in two-word sentences, “but we get two Christmases!” He also gave a motivational speech to a young audience member on their parent’s shoulder saying, “If you ever see anyone on the playground or in your life that looks happy and has everything going for them, do the world a favor and drag them right back down with you.” However, the peak came before his performance of The View Between Villages where he just nonchalantly said, “Awwwwww. That girl right there has a sign that says spit in my mouth. How cute!” If music ends up falling apart for Kahan, he’ll do just as well as a comedian.
To end my day, I headed to the Honda Stage to see that night’s headliner, Shania Twain. Shania’s show this tour has been subject to lots of mixed reviews. Touring on the heels of her new album Queen of Me, a record that sold well but was an absolute dud critically and among fans, there have been so many TikToks and social media posts of people leaving the venues she’s playing in droves, complaining about the setlists, and asking if she’s alright because of a yelp she does multiple times through the show. Even walking to the park on Friday, a buddy told me that the show is weird but it might work at a festival. Well, I don’t know if my expectations were extremely lowered or if I just caught her and the band on a great night but Shania Twain is one of the best headlining shows I’ve ever seen in Zilker Park.
I think the main thing that helped her during this show was having 30 minutes shaved off of her usual two-hour long show. Usually playing five Queen of Me songs, her ACL set featured two and it helps that it’s two of the strongest with Waking Up Dreaming and Giddy Up! It’s a fatal mistake that The Chicks made a year prior, playing nine of 12 songs from their album Gaslighter during their two-hour set and losing the crowd extremely quickly. Shania went in the opposite direction and it paid off big time. I think it also helps that I’m a bigger fan of Shania but either way, I still think knowing nothing about either, I would’ve enjoyed Shania’s set way more. For starters, it wasn’t just a performance, it was a show. Shania and her band were super animated and the show felt super theatrical. This made the set feel like a giant party. So many people were bouncing around, singing to people in their groups, just having the times of their lives.
But above all else, it should be criminal to have as many hits as Shania does. Just about every song she played, I would just get reminded of riding around with my parents when I was little hearing all of her songs coming through the radio speakers. Songs like Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under? and Forever and for Always spring to mind in that category. The bangers banged and slower songs like You’re Still The One and From This Moment On were captivating and still somehow energetic. You can tell Shania is having a blast on stage, whether she was spinning in a circle stomping her feet during Honey, I’m Home or spanning the length of the stage for sing-alongs to Any Man of Mine, That Don’t Impress Me Much, and of course, Man! I Feel Like a Woman. If anyone was going to top Jessie Ware on Saturday, it would’ve been Shania Twain.
Professional photos provided by C3 Presents and ACL Fest.
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