Austin Texas’ two weekend music extravaganza Austin City Limits started it’s 2019 edition hot. And when I say hot, I literally meant HOT. With headlining performances by Mumford & Sons, Childish Gambino, Guns N’ Roses, The Cure, Tame Impala and Cardi B plus buzzworthy performances by Lizzo, Billie Eilish and Kacey Musgraves in front of 75,000 people per day, it was a weekend of fun and sun.
Here’s my experience attending ACL and visiting Austin for the very first time.
Parking:
Austin City Limits is in a public park with residential and commercial areas all around. There’s no festival run parking facilities. The festival does provide a free shuttle from the downtown core of Austin just across the bridge from the festival site. Some local businesses minutes from the grounds offered parking for $30 per day or as low parkades further away for $10 a day. One of the days we parked at Austin City Hall which was a 40 minute walk which was a little painful at the end of the night after walking around in the heat all day.
On Sunday we parked at the Palmer Events Center on Barton Springs Road which was just a 20 minute walk straight down the road to the east entrance. It was a much more manageable trek. One tip about that parking location is to expect to wait a very long time to get out of the parking after a headliner ends. Sunday night, we moved maybe six feet in 30 minutes in the queue of cars trying to leave at 10pm. So either leave before 9:30 or don’t be any rush.
There are a couple ways to shorten the commute from parking. One would be to use the rentable electric scooters that are randomly lying around Austin, but be aware there are areas near the festival venue where you can’t parke the scooters.
Another highly visible option is hiring one of the dozens of pedicabs going up and down the roads. Rates will vary depending on the time, distance and pedicabber. According to a reddit post by a pedicabber, a standard rate for a reasonable distance at peak times is about $20 per person. If you’re being quoted $50-$100 you probably want to try another one.
Entrance:
Entering the festival in the early afternoon each day was easy with the lines being maybe five minutes. According to the festival, the longest lines getting into the park happen in the mid-afternoon between 3pm and 5pm. The security check lines range from ones for people with no bags, people with bags, media and VIPs. If you have a bag that’s allowed into the festival, the bag is first searched by one person. Then when you’re passed that checkpoint, another security person does a pat down. Then there’s another level of security with metal detecting wands who will randomly check followed by a security person standing near the wristband checkpoint who will randomly select people to do an additional pat down. Finally you swipe your wristband on an RFID reader with more security looking on as you are finally in the festival with some armed police officers observing in the distance.
Weather:
Having never been to Texas before I didn’t really know what to expect with the weather forecast. I knew it would be hot, but I’ve been to a decades worth of Coachellas and rarely felt overwhelmed, so how bad could it be? Well, the heat kicked my ass all weekend. With temperatures around 97°F/36°C all weekend with very little clouds, it’s the humidity that gets you. I also had to lug around a few pounds of camera gear, so that didn’t help me. ACL Weekend One was reportedly the hottest edition since 2015 and the hottest ever edition of the festival to happen in October.
Having water with you at all times is a must. You know it’s hot when you find yourself drinking three cans worth of water or beverages in general in an hour and and have no desire to pee. It’s probably why the festival has hydration stations at various areas of the grounds with either volunteers or employees filling water bottles and camel packs with fresh water through spouts.
In that heat, if you can access some ice and have a towel or bandanna with you, wrap a fistful of ice with the towel and dab that on your head and neck. The ice surprisingly will melt relatively slowly while wrapped and because it’s so hot, the towel won’t get overly wet.
As someone from the west coast of Canada not used to ever experiencing that kind of heat, there were a couple hours on Saturday and Sunday where I essentially had to take a knee. That point where even though you want to go see another band, but you can’t bear the thought of walking across the park in the sun.
Weekend Two festival goers will likely not have any of these issues as the forecast look downright pleasant comparatively.
Merchandise:
The old saying is, “Everything is bigger in Texas.” That was true when it comes to Austin City Limits merchandise. Just pased the east entrance is the standard artist merch booth, but beside that booth was an air conditioned building that was a giant store for ACL branded merch. From shirts to hats to beer koozies, stickers and pins, there was an excellent selection of items and designs. My only criticism about the shirts is that they didn’t offer versions without the lineup on the back. I personally don’t like wearing a lot of words on my clothes so having even a small percentage of the t-shirts be just the graphic designs would have been nice.
The line to enter the store was long, but moved quickly as people were let in dozens at a time as 20+ cashiers at the other side efficiently completed transactions at a constant pace. The store never felt overcrowded and there seemed to be plenty of stock. A popular item among the group I was at the festival with was the ACL logo’d stainless steel Yeti lowball rambler, a short 10oz insulated mug perfect for keeping a rum and Coke cold or a coffee hot.
Lockers:
After getting a bag into the festival and/or buying a bunch of merch, the last thing you want to do in the heat is lug around extra stuff all day. The lockers offered by Entertainment Lockers at ACL are well worth the $20 a day or $45 for the full weekend. The rental price was higher if you didn’t reserve before the festival. Having the locker for the full weekend and being able to leave things overnight was a great help. Also since the lockers used combination locks, you can easily share the cost with multiple people if you choose. The lockers are not very big but were big enough for what I was using it for.
The Grounds:
Austin City Limits has seven major music stages on the grassy fields of Zilker Park and two smaller stages for kids entertainment and a new podcast stage that featured various live podcasts and interviews including one with Billie Eilish Saturday afternoon. The ‘Austin Kiddie Limits’ stage also had a separate entrance and only ran until 5:30pm
One thing that’d different from quite a few festivals is that both folding chairs and flags/totems were allowed. Chairs were allowed to be placed at the back of the viewing areas of stages up to a designated point. With 75,000 people at the festival each day, the chairs surprisingly weren’t as much of an obstacle to get around from stage to stage. The festival even offered a free chair check to look after your chair should you want to store it for a period of time or for the night.
Totem flags were everywhere. You’d might have thought you’d mistakenly stepped into an EDM festival with so many poles, flags, balloons and faces in high in the air. At times it was fun seeing how creative people got with their totems, other times they were a distraction and blocked the view of the stage.
The grass at Zilker Park became progressively browner and the air became dustier as the weekend went on. My nose was not a fan, as it was running like a faucet each day I was at the festival. Thankfully the festival had stands with general items like Kleenex and sunscreen and even had fresh fruit for purchase.
The grounds stayed fairly clean most of the weekend thanks in part to a to the Austin Parks Foundation’s Rock & Recycle program. Festival attendees participating in the program fill up a large bag full of recyclables picked up off the grounds and are awarded a commemorative ACL Festival t-shirt designed by local artists. Participants also get entered to win a bicycle and 2020 festival tickets.
The festival venue is large, but not quite large enough to allow all stage to be going at the same time. The Honda and Miller Lite stages are in close proximity to each other and the AMEX and T-Mobile face right at each other which would have caused significant sound bleed had anything been scheduled at the same time. There were times during The Cure’s set on the Honda stage that I could clearly hear music from Childish Gambino bleeding in from the AMEX Stage.
For those seeking, shade there are few trees and also a central rock formation. The Barton Springs Beer Hall is underneath a large tent that has two giant screens for watching playoff baseball and NFL football on Sunday, plus a view of the Miller Lite stage. Over by the AMEX stage VIP pass holders can watch from the two level VIP Grove. American Express credit card holders have access to an American Express Experience lounge and viewing deck. in the lower level, the air conditioned building features a small Waterloo Records shop, a tattoo parlour, a chance to get a free monogram, and a booth serving beverages.
Sponsors such as Honda and Bumble had stations onsite providing their own freebies.
There were also a few fun photo ops for festival goers. Near a small hill heading towards the AMEX stage there is a photo frame with Austin’s city skyline and the AMEX stage in the background for that Instagram moment. In the middle of the park there was a large white balloon-like structure with the festival logo that lit up at night and at the rocks there was also a large ACL Fest sign.
Food and Drinks:
There were two main food courts at ACL. One between the ACL Festival Store and VRBO stage on the south end and one between the Barton Springs Beer Hall and the Tito’s Handmade Vodka stage on the north side. You have a wide selection of food by roughly 36 vendors ranging BBQ sandwiches to tacos, burgers, Korean fried chicken, mac & cheese, rice bowls and even deep fried avocados. There was also ice cream, popsicles, shaved ice and chocolate dipped frozen bananas for those with a sweet tooth.
The best times to grab food are probably in the early afternoon and during the headliner performances as lines are shortest then. Food prices are fairly standard festival pricing. I had a hot dog with pineapple salsa from Lonesome Dove Western Bistro for $7. At the time it was a good quick bite to recharge, but I wish the mayo or whatever white sauce was on the bun had been listed as an ingredient because I would have asked to have is subbed out.
Sunday I tried a cucumber mint agua fresca juice from JuiceLand which was a juice made with cucumber, kale and mint and had a couple grapes in there too. It was a refreshing change from the bottled waters and flavoured beverages I had been drinking.
I think my favourite food item of the weekend was the Happy Chicks chicken tenders. three large juicy chicken strips for $8 with your choice of sauce. the honey Sriracha sauce as amazing. Just let the chicken cool for a couple minutes as the order I got was piping hot.
As for alcohol, general admission pass holders had access to beer, wine and hard seltzer. Pass holders with GA+ or higher had access to full service bars. Drinks were about $9 on average. Beer selection ranged from Coors and Miller Lite to craft brews. It was too hot for me to really partake in any booze. Considering how hot it was and that you could walk around the park with your beer I was pleasantly surprised at how there wasn’t a lot on of overly drunk idiots on the grounds.
The Music:
I can’t really go too in depth on thoughts of of any performances as being a solo media person and photographer meant I wasn’t able to take in any artist’s full performance. Most of my thoughts are in the Rocktographers Daily Recaps (Friday | Saturday | Sunday). Overall the festival struck a good balance of acts. There was a little something for just about everyone and also enough talent that there were some tough decisions on who to see.
Each night the Tito’s Handmade Vodka stage had a silent disco to close out the night. Walking by you could watch hundreds of people wearing headphones dancing in near silence to DJs performing on stage.
On Friday, friends walked away blown away how good Guns N’ Roses performed. Axl Rose may not be running around like he used to 20 years ago, but his vocals sounded great and Slash’s guitar work is as cool to watch as ever.
Tame Impala mesmerized their audience with a laser and light show with their performance.
On Saturday Brittany Howard took the thousands of teens camped out waiting for Billie Eilish to funky gospel church with her set especially when she covered ‘Higher & Higher’, a song many will remember from Ghostbusters II.
The crowd for Billie Eilish, was in a word, nuts. I don’t think I’ve ever been a crowd where every literally every cell phone around me was up in the air 2 minutes before the completely blocking the view of the stage. The start of mosh pits and jumping and shoving was reminiscent of rock festivals I’ve experienced 20 years ago, but this is a bunch of mostly teenage girls doing it. It took nearly 15 minutes to escape the massive crowd at the Honda stage.
Childish Gambino performed what may have been one of his final shows ever and made good for cancelling last year after breaking his foot and even brought fireworks in the middle of his set.
On the other side of the park, The Cure performed on an ACL stage for the first time since 2013. Many of the Eilish fans had ran off to find a Chilidish Gambino, but the void was quickly filled by Cure fans from all over the world.
The crowds for Lizzo going into Cardi B felt even larger than during Billie Eilish with humans filling the entire areas at both the Miller Lite stage and the right side of the Honda stage. Lizzo even remarked that it may have been the largest audience she has ever performed in front of. I was a little surprised I didn’t see any crowd surfing during either Eilish or Lizzo’s sets during the weekend.
Cardi B being about 25 minutes late annoyed the crowd left standing shoulder to shoulder with other sweaty people, but all seemed forgiven when she finally took the stage. She had a solid performance, but a word of warning to the parents out there. Her shows are probably not the best to have small kids watch with all her cursing and suggestive dancing on stage.
Final Thoughts:
Austin City Limits should hands down be on anyone’s bucket list festivals and if you do go, stay in Austin for a few days afterward. The city has lots to explore. As someone from the west coast of Canada, walking around Austin feels like Vancouver before the majority of its skyscrapers sprouted up.
If you’re looking for a festival that is nearly everything that Coachella used to be, go to ACL. The lineup is balanced, the attendance is less overwhelming, and the overall vibe is more relaxed. Here’s hoping the weather at weekend one was just an anomaly and not a yearly occurrence due to climate change though. At times it became oppressively hot.
Full photo galleries are available at the Victoria Music Scene Facebook Page: (October 4 | October 5 | October 6)