My weather app only read 89 degrees Friday afternoon, but Weekend One of Austin City Limits started off so hot that I could feel the sun burning through the leather of my Doc Martens. Sure enough, as I marveled at the low (for Texas) temp, alt-country belter Katie Pruitt confirmed I wasn’t crazy. “My mantra today is ‘drink water,’” she declared from the Miller Lite stage.
It sounds too obvious to bear repeating, but the heat remained a universal talking point throughout Zilker Park. Just as native Texans continued to sweat (and pass out, as is festival tradition), out-of-town artists proved to be so unacquainted with the Lone Star sun that many acts took notable breaks in their performances to catch their breath. Marisa Dabice of Mannequin Pussy, using her band’s interludes to get political (she was the only artist I clocked who addressed the ongoing genocide in Palestine), ran off stage to ditch her heavy dress for a crop top. Dua Lipa disappeared for a couple of dance breaks herself, but never emerged in a new costume. Maybe she just needed to sit down.
Of course, more went down at ACL than sun-stroked concertgoers. Among the madness:
A Year for the Queers
Even before Chappell Roan made the entire park her audience, LGBTQ+ artists – and fans – showed out. “If loving her’s a sin, I don’t want to go to heaven,” Pruitt crooned Friday; on Sunday, masked cowboy Orville Peck covered Ned Sublette’s satirical waltz “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other,” which he bragged about covering with Willie Nelson on new duets album Stampede. “No idea why” the outlaw picked the song for the duet, Peck smirked. Saturday performer Reneé Rapp was less outwardly vocal about her sexuality, but her white button-up (emblazoned with the words “BLEACH BLONDE BAD BUILT BUTCH BODY”) and Mean Girls hit “Not My Fault” (“Can a gay girl get an ‘amen’?”) spoke for themselves. On the other side of the barricade, I spotted shirts repping the Stonewall riots, artist and AIDS activist Keith Haring, and Kamala Harris – the latter donning a series of suits in the colors of the rainbow.
Boots Galore
Cowboy boots, combat boots, even medical boots (I saw at least two devoted festival attendees with broken feet): ACL’s footwear of choice was obvious off the bat. Less universal were the rest of folks’ fashion choices. Besides a bunch of expected cowboy hats, I laughed at a Shrek bucket hat and a fuzzy chicken cap; a teenage boy dressed up like a Despicable Me minion; and two ladies who cut bra-revealing holes into their tank-tops à la Regina George (surely on their way to Rapp). Sun and dust-protecting bandanas abounded – as did, for some reason, Barbie merch, even though Barbenheimer summer was last year. Knowing his audience, Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus pulled up Friday sporting a Franklin Barbecue tee.
Dua Lipa’s Austin Antics
Speaking of barbecue: Dua Lipa tried out East Cesar Chavez haunt La Barbecue before her Saturday headlining set. Besides the usual fixings, the English-Albanian singer posted a TikTok of a more unusual concoction she came up with herself, featuring Diet Coke, pickle juice, and jalepeños. Instagram posts show she hit up a slew of other tourist-friendly spots as well, from the dance floor (and George Strait-themed bathroom) at Broken Spoke to the original Jo’s “I love you so much” mural. She even captured the “She’s beautiful… She’s from Texas” street art painted onto sidewalks across town – which means I can now say I’ve plastered the same image to the grid as an international pop star.
TikTok Discoveries
Stephen Sanchez and Lola Young are two performers I thought I was unfamiliar with until their sets prompted the same ridiculous exclamation: “Oh, I know this song from TikTok!” I recognized 21-year-old blue-eyed soul crooner Sanchez’s 2022 song “Until I Found You,” then immediately clocked Austin-based influencer Ken Eurich walking by, singing along. Young’s familiar song was the bitter, bass-heavy “Don’t Hate Me,” which – like the rest of her catalog, I later discovered – is hard to pin a genre onto. Mixing masculine and feminine airs with a bikini top and saggy cargo sweatpants, the saucy, 23-year-old Brit reminded me of a mix of Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen. One of her bandmates donned a cowboy hat while another wore a Davy Crockett coonskin cap – a funny reminder that the English truly have no idea what Austin is like.
Lineup Shuffles and Sound Issues
Unlike past years – like when “plane issues” allowed Kendrick Lamar to play for only 15 minutes before ACL’s hard 10pm sound curfew in 2023, or when Megan Thee Stallion no-showed completely in 2019 – most of this year’s first-round, big-name performances went off without a hitch, though fans far back at Dua Lipa’s American Express set complained that poor speakers made her performance nearly inaudible when away from the stage. British indie rockers Catfish and the Bottlemen were supposed to play Friday afternoon, but quietly canceled all of their upcoming tour dates without making a proper statement. Originally slated to perform at 6:25pm at the Honda stage on Sunday, Ohio folk trio Caamp got pushed back to a 4:20pm Saturday slot to make room for growing superstar Chappell Roan – but then dropped out of the festival altogether.
For Next Weekend
If the Weekend One lineup for ACL 2024 didn’t strike your fancy, I’d check the bill for Weekend Two one more time before deciding to skip the festival. A large number of acts fly into Texas for round two only, including: genre-hopping game changer Santigold, trap pioneer Jeezy, and pop duo Royal Otis, playing Friday; pop singer Remi Wolf, Palestinian-Chilean artist Elyanna, and indie songwriter Joe P, playing Saturday; and country rockers the Red Clay Strays, Thrice frontman Dustin Kensrue, and self-proclaimed honky tonk woman Emily Nenni, playing Sunday. The shaded Big Tent, formerly the Barton Springs Beer Hall, offers a reprieve from the heat – and showed football during Weekend One, which inspired at least one internet poster to call it an “enrichment area” for the bored boyfriends of girls camping out for Chappell Roan. And if you’ll be partying on the festival grounds, remember traveling overdose prevention nonprofit This Must Be the Place is on site with free Naloxone.
Catch up with all of the Chronicle’s ACL coverage – including interviews, reviews, and an ACL fashion photo gallery – online at austinchronicle.com/acl.
This article appears in October 11 • 2024.