[Article] Eclectic ACL lineup isn't built around headliners

ACL promoters say they book the fest from the bottom up

Call it the Coldplay problem.

In September 2005, the British rock band headlined the fourth Austin City Limits Music Festival. Three months earlier, Coldplay had released "X&Y," its third album, which went on to sell more than 8 million copies worldwide. Coldplay was the biggest band in the world and it was playing Zilker Park.

That hasn't happened again. Tom Petty and Bob Dylan headlined ACL the next two years; Foo Fighters have that honor at this festival, which opens today. All three acts are respectable crowd-pleasers, but none have the same juice as Coldplay did in 2005 or as Radiohead does now.

Many local music fans are incensed that Radiohead headlined last month's Lollapalooza, the other festival produced by Austin's C3 Presents, but they are not playing ACL.

"If Radiohead was available, they would absolutely be playing Austin City Limits," says Charles Attal, C3 Presents principal and main talent booker.

But theories and criticism abound.

When the lineup was announced in April, fans rushed message boards, such as that at the American-Statesman's Austin Music Source blog at Austin360.com, mostly to complain, which launched a debate:

"Not enough big names this year! Who are these people?" — Karen

"All the complainers who don't know who most of these bands are will be raving about them next year and complaining that they aren't playing ACL." — Grape Ape

"The headliners at this year's ACL are by far the weakest ever." — Ming

This sort of dialogue continued for pages of posts.

Coldplay was booked to play ACL the same way all the performers are, Attal says: "They wanted to play it, they were routing right through Austin, it was perfect timing, we were able to get it."

The festival obviously is doing something right. Three-day passes have been sold out for a month, and day passes are close to doing the same.

Attal credits this success to what he calls "the guts" of the event and its low price compared with other festivals.

In 2008, Coachella could set you back $249 to $269, plus fees. Bonnaroo cost $209 to $229, plus fees. Lollapalooza was $175 to $205, fees included. ACL was $135 to $170, fees included. Corporate sponsorships offset a lot of those costs.

"ACL is about the overall lineup," Attal says. "It's never been about the headliner. Ever."

The fest also succeeds because of an eclectic, family-friendly aesthetic that never gets too aurally extreme (thanks mostly to its connection with the TV show) and, of course, because of Austin itself.

For Attal and for many music fans, the heart of the festival lies in acts such as the Kills, Sharon Jones, Patty Griffin, Erykah Badu and Neko Case, mid-list artists who have strong followings but don't necessarily makes news on the charts.

"We always book from the bottom up, never the top down," Attal says.

This is practically his mantra.

"We go club level up to arena level," Attal says, adding that while he does the majority of booking for ACL between November and February, he's already getting calls about headliners for ACL '09. "As more festivals pop up, they're booking further out to get the prime slots. It's getting booked earlier and earlier," he said.

Tom Windish of Chicago has been booking bands for 16 years. His Windish Agency has a number of club-level acts playing ACL this year, including buzz bands Hot Chip, Jamie Lidell and Yeasayer. "As far as I can tell, it's almost never money and almost always logistics," Windish said.

The smaller a band is, the more likely they are to quickly confirm an appearance at a major festival. Bigger acts have much more to think about.

"Tour routing really is the No. 1 factor for bigger bands," Windish adds. "If they're touring in August and there's a festival in August, great. If there's a festival in September and they're not already out, they're not going to want to fly in dozens of people for their production crew."

In other words, you're not booking the five guys in a band when you book a major headliner, you're booking everyone they have on staff. If those people have been promised a break by their bosses in the band, the band is mighty unlikely to interrupt that break for a festival gig, even a headlining one.

Craig Saper, 22, is an Austin native and a TV producer living in Los Angeles who is coming to his first full ACL Fest.

"I'm a little less enthusiastic about the lineup this year than past years," Saper says, "but Austin is a very sacred place for me and I'm more than excited to experience the town once again."

For Saper, ACL is a homecoming as much as anything else. "Foo Fighters are going to be great, Beck will be amazing and there are some lesser-known acts I have my eyes on, but I'm really going because Austin is my true home. It's a vacation in this bohemian oasis."

Which might very well explain why ACL Fest sells out year after year, no matter who is playing — that and the continued popularity of the television show that inspired it.

"Austin City Limits," the KLRU series shown on many PBS stations, is still going strong in the middle of taping its 34th season.

And there's no question that the show is an attraction for bands. While Attal and "Austin City Limits" television producer Terry Lickona both said an appearance on the show isn't held as a carrot for bands to play the festival, ACL Fest does get a whole lot of bands in town at once. Two birds, one gig: They can play the festival and tape a show in the same weekend. This year, Foo Fighters, Drive-By Truckers, Manu Chao, Gnarls Barkley and the Swell Season are all taping ACL sets.

"Charles and I stay in close contact throughout the whole booking process," Lickona says. "Once we have serious conversations about who he has coming for the fest, I start making calls. By early to mid-spring, we have firm offers for taping."

And it might not be explicitly (or publicly) mandated from either party, but there's no question that ACL the show and ACL the festival rarely diverge in their aesthetics. You're not going to see much metal, hard rock, rap, avant-garde music or punk either place. (No wonder Paste magazine — advocate of NPR-ish rock, neo-soul and music that just screams authenticity — hosted an official ACL kick-off party Thursday night at Emo's.)

Every year, ACL is a bit different but feels essentially the same. It's eclectic within those nothing-too-extreme-please parameters. This year, there's more indie rock at ACL Fest than in years past. Buzz bands such as Fleet Foxes, CSS, Band of Horses and Antibalas are all over the grid. Other than Galactic, there are almost no jam bands, a staple of the first ACL Fest. The prog rock of the Mars Volta abuts the Barcelona soul of Manu Chao; Robert Earl Keen's country hits the stage at the same time as Erykah Badu's ultramodern soul.

So it's no surprise when Attal asserts, "I can tell you that I've already got stuff booked for next year that will make (ACL) a totally different scene."

We'll see.

J Gross

http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/acl_fest/acl_2008/stories/0926expectations.html