Deezie Brown knows a seamstress. Off to the side of a cactus-adorned, desert-themed hole at Peter Pan Mini-Golf, the rapper, producer, and animator and Jake Lloyd, the other half of the nostalgia-infused Southern rap project Geto Gala, are scheming designs for her to stitch into the leather of their Austin City Limits Fest getups: a lightning bolt, maybe, or a question mark? The verdict remains under wraps until the pair steps onto the Beatbox stage on Sunday, Oct. 5, at 1:45pm.
“We’re also doing jackets,” Briscoe’s Philip Lupton laughs. “We’re hoping they’re ready in time.”
Temperaturewise, there’s no need for anyone to be wearing a jacket of any kind in the beginning of October in Austin. Both the hip-hop and the folk duos perform Weekend One of the festival under the full strength of that infamous Texas sun, unforgivingly broiling them in their all-black apparel.
For Western folk-rock singing and plucking partners Lupton and Truett Heintzelman, Briscoe’s 5:30pm Friday spin on the Lady Bird stage is their first time performing at the festival. Longtime Austin artists Brown and Lloyd have each played the festival before as solo acts and, though you wouldn’t guess it from this whole belabored jacket situation, their first piece of advice to the laid-back gingers is to take the heat seriously.
“Water. No, seriously, lots of water,” Lloyd recommends. It’s a cue those of us in the audience could stand to take too. “It ain’t nothing y’all ain’t used to already, but the heat was something that I definitely – I didn’t expect it to be as big of a factor as it was,” he says, shaking his head slowly.
Brown’s already practicing for the physical extremity – decked out in a longline vintage-style leather coat that, earlier, prompted a random man to approach our putt-putt group: “Did you lose a bet?” he asked Brown. “We’re out here sweating like nobody’s business and you’re up here with a leather jacket on.”
“Yeah, man. I got to stop gambling,” said Brown without skipping a beat. Eight holes in, he announces that his body has acclimated. “Now that I’ve done this, I think I’ll be able to survive the whole set with this coat on.”
“You think so?” Lupton asks, somewhat skeptically.
This mini-golf meetup isn’t really about preparing to survive near-triple-digit heat in inappropriately long clothing, though your humble Chronicle narrator is the only one wearing shorts. This is about introducing two Austin duos from different sides of the scene, so to speak.
Double Eagle: Hanging with Briscoe and Geto Gala at Peter Pan Mini-Golf Credit: John Anderson / Design by Zeke Barbaro
Brown and Lloyd grew up a stone’s throw from official city limits, driving into town to play Little League games and hang out with family. They’ve been living and playing in the Live Music Capital now for decades, working with a series of collaborators on projects past and present, of which Geto Gala is only one. The dyad came together after Brown happened to catch Lloyd soundchecking before a show in 2019. Since then their imaginative partnership has fueled an admiration-based tug-of-war, pushing each other to be better writers and performers. Even playing putt-putt, they’ve got an eye on how everyone else is playing, cheering for smooth shots and taking stroke inspiration with egoless ease.
Their work has always been about creating music for the Black community and bringing together artists across Austin’s at-times-disparate hip-hop scene. “Me and Jake wanted to make something that’s for everyone,” Brown told the Chronicle after the release of their 2021 EP The Geto Gala. “For the people in our communities – your janitors, your construction workers, the people working 9-to-5 – so we can celebrate the hard work we’ve been doing all year.”
Their 2024 debut album, Major League, oozes with Nineties falsetto and silky synth riffs punctuated by fuzzy stereo samples of everyday moments. “I’m tryna show Jake some music, hold on cuz,” Brown tells a young voice at the beginning of dog-days Texas ode “Lone Star Stadium.” The pair are back in that living-room-studio rhythm of trading tracks now, dreaming up beats that could grow up to be a second album.
“We are in production mode,” Lloyd explains. “[We’re] getting the pool of music going so when it’s time to sit down and actually write, track, or whatever, we’ve got stuff to pull from.” Major League, then, will make up the majority of the act’s ACL set, plus a few unreleased tracks pulled from their workshopping.
Lupton and Heintzelman are on the opposite side of that process, riding the rollout of their second album, Heat of July, released Sept. 19. They’re already taking the album’s desert-baked love songs and blue-collar reveries out on the road, with a few scattered dates ahead of ACL and a bona fide tour of the American West to follow. The album, written the last time the band hit the road, is a lyric-focused blend of Americana influences.
“We spent who knows how many hours in the van just driving places. A lot of that was writing almost like poetry-style, in the van without an instrument in your hand, and then sitting down later on with an instrument and kind of hashing it out,” Heintzelman told the Chronicle earlier this year.
Watching the two songwriters swat brightly colored golf balls across turf, it’s so difficult to believe that Lupton and Heintzelman aren’t related that crazy fan theories will certainly surface in the duo’s rise to stardom: twins separated at birth, IVF clones drawn to each other like magnets, aliens sent to become Texas’ next big country-inspired act.
The similarities run deeper than their red-tinged curls, often tucked under trucker hats: They met as kids at Christian summer camp, came to Austin from South Texas by way of UT, and married their respective college sweethearts last year. Lupton started making music under the name Briscoe in 2019 and Heintzelman joined the operation later on, pairing his own guitar and vocals with Lupton’s banjo and saxophone. Their rootsy influences and down-to-earth writing have earned them opening slots with Dave Matthews Band and Noah Kahan. In their music, you can hear that they grew up listening to classic Texas country, jam bands, and, of course, the Beatles.
“One of the best shows I’ve ever seen was probably Paul McCartney at ACL,” says Heintzelman. “He played 37 songs, like 2 hours and 30 minutes, and he sounded great. I mean, he was electric.”
This statement is met with gasps and questions from all mini golfers, which Heintzelman quells with an a cappella version of the “Live and Let Die” guitar riff, complete with mimed pyrotechnic reenactments. Everybody likes the Beatles – and Pitbull, whose innumerable backup dancers and laissez-faire attitude inspires reverence among this group and some conversational riffing about what it takes to give yourself numerous nicknames (time and confidence, in case you were curious).
Unless the theme is Texan duos, Briscoe and Geto Gala might not end up on the same show bill or playlist. The point of big festivals like ACL, and far-reaching music scenes like Austin’s, is to look past the neat boxes of style and genre, showcasing the wide range of music that’s taken root in Lone Star soil.
“I think that’s what Austin’s really all about: collaboration between different genres,” says Lloyd, winding into his pitch for a Briscoe x Geto Gala track.
For these four sports-loving, ever-hustling musicians, there’s more in common than meets the eye. Folk and hip-hop, in their contemporary forms, are sonic opposites, leaning into different theories of instrumentation. Yet they grew out of the same centuries of proletariat picking, culturally inherited guitar melodies, and oral storytelling styles. We might silo off poster styles, concert venues, and fashion choices, letting our eyes divide music by a whole other set of aesthetics, but at ACL, everyone’s on the same stage.
And, hey – they’re all wearing the same jacket.
Briscoe plays ACL Fest on Friday, Oct. 3, at 5:30pm.
Geto Gala performs on Sunday, Oct. 5, at 1:45pm.
This article appears in October 3 • 2025.
