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In honor of the 40th anniversary of Austin City Limits, the longest running live music show on television, we spoke to author Tracey E. W. Laird, author of Austin City Limits: A History, about the challenges the show has faced, the ways that it has adapted to a rapidly changing music industry, and what makes ACL perennially appealing to viewers.
What is the biggest challenge that Austin City Limits (ACL) has faced over the years?
One of the show’s biggest challenges for the first 25 years was funding. In the ups and downs of the public broadcasting world, largely dependent on fundraising and philanthropy, Austin PBS affiliate KLRU could never be certain that the show’s current year would not be the last. This anxiety peaked during the mid-to-late 1990s with a change in structure for PBS program distribution. Stations that once received Austin City Limits as part of their basic subscription package suddenly had to pay extra for the show. To make matters worse, a PBS competitor, Sessions at W. 54th, launched around this time, with slicker production and full Sony underwriting (I still recall seeing Beck on that show, where his performance was interspersed with footage of him walking down the street, looking hip in an all-white suit). Ultimately, for reasons I talk about in the book, Sessions survived only 3 years. That whole crisis time — when Austin newspapers ran stories about whether or not Austin City Limits would endure — led to a major turning point when the people behind Austin City Limits made the radical decision to redefine its modus operandi.
How has ACL managed to transcend the many changes that have taken place in the way we listen to and discover music?
ACL producers made a conscious decision right around the 25th anniversary to operate differently, recognizing that changes in the television industry and in the way people engage with music demanded flexibility and openness to new ideas. The alternative was obsolescence. They very deliberately articulated the core vision and mission for the show in broad musical terms that crossed a wide range of genres. Sincerity and quality are characteristics that might apply equally to, say, Esperanza Spaulding and Brad Paisley, Grizzly Bear and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. They also conceived ACL as a musical experience that includes the core television broadcast but expands outside it as well. Festival, venue, DVD, website, and so on, are all predicated on an outlook that is open to building on that core in new ways without diluting it.
How are the live performances on Austin City Limits different from other live performances?
That “live-ness” distinguishes ACL from other examples of televised musical performance. It goes back to the show’s beginnings. Its originators were motivated mainly by their own transcendent experiences seeing live music. Trying to capture that experience has been the central goal for Austin City Limits, despite any shifts in equipment, style, or genre. That differs from the central goal for most television productions, normally to produce a highly polished end result that fits the time constraints for commercial broadcasts. They require performers to repeat a song, sometimes multiple times, to allow the best possible camera angles and to tailor a song to fit time parameters shaped by commercial rather than artistic concerns. ACL, by contrast, lets its cameras and mics capture the music that has always been center. It is so unusual to see a televised performance unfolding according to the energy and communication between musicians and a live, interactive audience. It’s so simple, yet so rare.
What is your favorite ACL performance, and why?
If I had to pick one it would probably be Tom Waits in 1979 (Season 4). Most of all, it’s a fantastic performance, but it also represents an early turning point for Austin City Limits when it sloughed off any bounded, over-determined expectations for who might appear on its stage. It also shows how important the show’s PBS context is for its long and momentous history – no other media outlet in the United States would have aired an hour of Tom Waits. It is a treasure. But, then, over the years there are so many episodes about which I might say the same. Fats Domino is another one I will never forget. Oftentimes my favorite episode is the one I’ve just seen. I recently watched an episode with Raphael Saadiq that I had missed — they had it streaming on the “acltv” website — and I was excited about his music in a way that I wouldn’t have been if I had just heard a studio recording. I had a similar experience last year when I saw a DVD of a performance by Susan Tedeschi. This happens over and over again with Austin City Limits.
What’s one of your favorite behind-the-scenes stories about ACL?
I love the stories the crew tells about their work, like when sound engineer David Hough explained how they cover up the tally lights on the cameras so that performers never know which one is feeding into the master cut. A little trick like that helps insure that the performer stays focused on performing for the audience in the room. I also love to hear crew members talk about particular shows that stand out to them. To hear them talk underscores the very personal nature of musical performance; a performance that might leave me flat can deeply move someone else. Everyone there loves the work, so it’s a joy to listen to a staff member reflect. To return to Hough, for instance, when I interviewed him he went into a kind of reverie talking about his approach to mixing the sound for a given show. He’s a wizard – the end results sound good whether you listened through a mono TV speaker in 1976 (as in the first full season) or a digital 5.1 Dolby surround sound. He has been with the show that long, and listening to a wizard talk about his magic is fascinating. Many other crew members are equally inspirational to talk with. Outside that, there are well-traveled stories, the most famous of which describes how the electricity went off just as a performance (by Kris Kristofferson) was about to begin. 800 or so people filed down six flights of stairs and out the building via flashlights and cigarette lighters, amiably singing “London Homesick Blues” together. Anecdotes don’t get much better than that.
Featured image: Night view of Austin skyline and Lady Bird Lake as seen from Lou Neff Point. Photo by LoneStarMike. CC BY 3.0n via Wikimedia Commons.
I basically took the summer off from blogging, so feel a little wobbly about it, my palms sweating on the handlebars, not sure I remember how to do this. I don’t know what happened, exactly, just somehow tired of the “James Preller” corporate thing. Ha. Mostly, I wanted to concentrate on other writings, as I’ve been deep in a new series that I’m writing for Feiwel & Friends. It won’t launch until The Fabled Summer of ‘13, but I’ve nearly finished the third book in the series.
NOTE: I just reread this and had a chuckle about that “nearly finished” line. It only signifies that I’m an old pro when it comes to deadlines and editors: a manuscript that has not yet been handed in is always “nearly finished.” Any writer who says otherwise is a fool and a boob.
As for my new series, it feels like I’m that kid behind the snow fort, busily stacking up a supply of snowballs. Can’t wait to fire ‘em out there. More on that topic another time.
I’m usually a one-book-at-a-time guy, but I’m now reading three very different but equally remarkable books concurrently: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem, and Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor.
Normally I don’t do that to myself, the three-books-at-once bafflement, but the mixture of long novel, short nonfiction, and poetry seem to complement each other nicely.
I have a long and sordid relationship with poetry, and I’m especially happy to find this sweet collection by Keillor, based on poems featured on “The Writer’s Almanac.”
Writes Keillor in the introduction:
Oblivion is the writer’s greatest fear, and as with the fear of death, one finds evidence to support it. You fear that your work, that work of your lifetime, on which you labored so unspeakably hard and for which you stood on so many rocky shores and thought, My life has been wasted utterly — your work will have its brief shining moment, the band plays, some confetti is tossed, you are photographed with your family, drinks are served, people squeeze your hand and say that you seem to have lost weight, and then the work languishes in the bookstore and dies and is remaindered and finally entombed on a shelf — nobody ever looks at it again! Nobody! This happens often, actually. Life is intense and the printed page is so faint.
Keillor, as curator, has a point of view. He likes poems that tell a story, poems that are direct and clear, that don’t sound too “written.” Poems that communicate. He quotes Charles Bukowski, “There is nothing wrong with poetry that is entertaining and easy to understand. Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.”
And I put a big star in the margin when Keillor described his former English major self — a tender self I identified with, all those lessons that have taken me so long to unlearn, the bad habits of academic thought, “back when I was busy writing poems that were lacerating, opaque, complexly layered, unreadable.”
I have a file drawer jammed full with opaque and unreadable poems.
Now I see that as my writer’s quest, this effort to write clearly (and yet, even so, to write interestingly, to achieve moments of “lift off”), to overcome my own big stupid fumbling ego, those temptations to craft “look at me!” sentences that dazzle and bore readers. Perhaps that’s the great gift of writing for children of all ages. They don’t go for the bullshit. You can deliver any kind of content — really, there’s nothing you can’t say in a children’s book — but please don’t overcook it.
One last phrase from Keillor, in praise of Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton and, for that matter, all Good Poems:
“They surprise us with clear pictures of the familiar.”
So that’s how I’ve vowed to begin my days, by reading a few poems each morning. To sit in the chair, coffee at hand, and try on the silence. My favorite from today was Charles Simic’s “Summer Morning.”
You might enjoy it, too.
As a final treat, here’s Tom Waits reading “The Laughing Heart,” a poem by Charles Bukowski. Full text below.
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
Tom Waits has made a beautiful, surrealist video for the song "Hell Broke Luce" from his Bad as Me album. It's one of my favorite of his songs, a coruscating view of war and soldiering. Play it loud. (Note: Some strong language.)
Doing classroom visits with young writers is probably my favorite part of being a writer, narrowly edging out the actual writing. Kids inspire me; they give me new ideas for characters and stories; and, most importantly, they crack me up.
Plus, when it comes to doing classroom visits and giving “writing prompts” to the kids, I’ve got a head start: my first middle-grade book, The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, actually has a writing prompt as a central plot element. The ogreish Social Studies teacher, Mr. Melville (spoiler alert: he has a heart of gold) assigns his seventh graders to deliver a report that solves some mystery in their lives. Our enterprising heroine, Bethesda Fielding, tackles the assignment by digging up some dirt on a particular teacher (spoiler alert: her name is in the title), and all heck breaks loose.
The problem is, the teachers who invite me to their classes wouldn’t be too happy if I assigned their students to dig up dirt on them. Thankfully, I have an alternate prompt, one that touches on another big theme in Ms. Finkleman and its companion novel, The Mystery of the Missing Everything: Music. Long before I was a fiction writer, my early efforts at creative expression came in the form of song lyrics, written for various bands in which I played bass, beginning in middle school and extending through my college career. (One of my former bandmates, a guy named John Davis, is today the driving force behind a terrific pop band called Title Tracks).
Music has remained one of my primary wellsprings of inspiration, and I love to bring it into the classroom and see how it can inspire and excite young writers. So here’s the prompt, which never fails to generate some excited conversation and really interesting writing.
1. I give them the quote, often attributed to Elvis Costello, that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” We bat this around for a while, eventually landing on some version of the main idea, that the sublimity of music is basically impossible to express in words, and then I deliver the punchline: “but we’re going to do it anyway!”
2. I play some tunes. I then plug my iPod into some speakers and play two pieces of music, one after the other, pointedly not revealing the titles or artists. (You should pick stuff you know and love; I usually do the fourth movement of Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major, followed by the deeply weird Tom Waits song “Kommienzuspadt.”) The students are to be either listening carefully or writing the whole time the music is playing. They write either…
a. about the music. “What instruments do you hear? how fast or slow is it?”
b. about how it makes them feel, or
c. a little story INSPIRED by the song.
3. We share.
The sharing is always the really fun part. I never tire of hearing the incredible sentences that come pouring out of young writers when they let themselves be carried away by songs:
“I hear trombones, and about a million violins, and I think someone hitting a piano with a trash can lid.”
“This song makes me feel like I’m super excited, but in a sort of sad way.”
“There’s a bunny, and she’s hopping in circles around a bonfire, and then a train comes rolling by and it’s got her a carnival on it.”
These gems cue up a long and wide-ranging conversation about the special way that music makes us feel, and also the vocabulary of writing about music, the specificity that’s required — and, hey-what-do-you-know, it turns out that that kind of specificity should be a part of all great writing. Other le
Songwriter and singer Tom Waits has raised almost $90,000 to support homeless services through a special charity edition of a poetry chapbook.
Here’s more from Waits’ blog: “Thank you to all of you who purchased a copy of the Tom Waits ‘Seeds on Hard Ground’ chapbook. Your purchase contributed to the nearly $90,000 raised for the Redwood Empire Food Bank, Sonoma County’s Homeless Referral Services, and Family Support Center. These funds will help provide vital services for people in need during these difficult times.”
Waits (pictured) has promoted the chapbook through his official Twitter feed. The poems were inspired by portraits Michael O’Brien took of homeless men and women–the poems and images will be printed in the forthcoming Hard Ground book. The response was so strong that the singer released a second printing of the charity chapbook.
Another awesome animated music video from Montrealers, Fluorescent Hill (Previously on Drawn). Slick, highly stylized, fun + Tom Waits as a toxic cloud tormenting an urban landscape.
I'm still computerless at the moment and am using my wife's laptop way too much but at least I can update my blog! Things are good here. There was a big change in my plans for the next few months today that I'm still processing. Harry and Silvio is coming along really well and with the advice of Toronto's own Ramon Perez I think I've made some major improvements in my storytelling, especially by inserting more moment to moment actions in my stories. Also, Marvel was bought by Disney. That's crazy huge news which my instinct says is positive.
Whenever I work on Harry and Silvio stories I end up listening to more and more old timey music. I've come to think of it as the soundtrack for the comics. Banjos, mandolin and twanging voices suit the stories. I actually think the guys come from the south, at least Harry does. Silvio started off in New York State.I thought it would be fun to share the soundtrack with everyone. I know this music's not for everyone but that's fine. Here is a preliminary side one: Freight Train-Elizabeth Cotten Wednesday Night Waltz-Clarke Kessinger Anchored In Love-The Carter Family Suagr hill-Tommy Jarrell Cheroke Lady-Sam Bush Buckeye Jim-Elizabeth Mitchell White Winter Hymnal-Fleet Foxes Sukey Jump-Lead Belly Cuckoo Song-Kristen Hersh Lie to Me-Tom Waits
I've provided links to the songs where I could.
7 Comments on A Purple Boat And Some songs, last added: 9/5/2009
Thanks Caitlin! I'll be there handing out minicomics.I'll look for stuff next time I'm downtown, I'm in Etobicoke right now.And I'll look for you at WOTS. Also~I want to see your puppet show!!
Thanks so much C.B! I think we're on similar pages creatively.
For years I've used a Hunt nib, number 101 I think, with FW Speedball acrylic India ink, which this piece was done with. But recently I've found the dipping and cleaning extrememly time consuming so for this project I swiched to technical pens.I am using a variety of pens and brushpens right now including Staedtler pens,Copic pens and Copic brushpen (multiliners),Pitt Pens and sharpies. I am still using FW opaque white ink for corrections as well as Windsor Newton white acrylic paints. Also, I draw on Arches 300 lb paper so I can really go at it and not worry about damaging the paper.
Cool–this was shown at TypeCon last month along with a bunch of others. They were all done by design students. I wonder if any of the others have been posted online.
Afansy Fet, Russian poetChristina Rossetti, English poetMargaret Cho, Korean-American comedienneJ. J. Cale, American songwriterJames Lee Burke, American mystery authorJoan Didion, American authorSony Boy WIlliamson, blues musicianCalvin Trillin, American authorJosh Malihabadi, Urdu poet of India and PakistanWalt Disney, American filmmakerFritz Lang, Austrian film directorMartin Van Buren, 8th
0 Comments on Poetry Friday: The Piano Has Been Drinking as of 1/1/1900
This is great! I love Tom Waits. I saw him in concert about a year and a half ago, and he was incredible. I especially like the lines "the light man's blind in one eyeand he can't see out of the other." Happy birthday!! Hope you have time to celebrate.
thanks for the wishes, everyone!eisha, back then tom might have been blitzed and i wouldn't have minded; i understand he runs dry now and i still don't mind. i can do a pretty fair imitation of him circa "rain dogs," not that anyone is really looking for a tom waits impersonation.
I'm going to want to hear that impersonation in January, David. Meanwhile, here's a Tom link, for the absurdist in you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IaNaQHjIRE
I was painting page two of the Robot Museum late last night and Julie came into my studio on her way to bed. I was painting a panel of Quentin levitating a bunch of robot parts while smoke billows out of the robot. I was listening to Tom Waits album Real Gone and Julie says " Tom Waits really suits Quentin." and she went to bed. Hmm... I wonder what the other characters theme music is? I think I've been listening to music as I work that is appropriate to the characters or the scenes without even being fully conscious of it.
13 Comments on Shake It Baby........, last added: 6/29/2008
I listen to movie soundtracks when i write, based on the type of mood in the scene im writing. when i draw and paint at my drawing table, i listen to radio dramas like the twilight zone, the hobbit and LOTR, or starwars. its something that i have done since i was little and i find it just gets my creative brain really going. sometimes i throw a DVD into the player (which has no TV attached) and i just listen to a movie. not sure why it helps me, but i really enjoy it. im a huge radio drama fan.
I agree with you on all accounts here, Joe! I do much the same. I just finished a page the other day while listening to the audio book of Hitch hiker's guide to the universe. It really works, keeps you at your drawing table and keeps you entertained. I always thought it was funny but made sense how Jack Kirby used to watch Spanish language TV while he worked, it kept him company but didn't distract him. The only thing I can't listen to while working is Beethoven, because it's so powerful and distracting. I was listening to the Gremlins theme the other day while I worked....
For a second, I thought you were going to say, that the baby was coming. So, when is your little baby due? I love Tom. I need a movie going when I work. Something I have seen a 100 times or so works well.I don't like to be off by myself when I work, I have a little studio that I never use, it is a little sun porch, just outside the living room. I prefer to have the kids around driving me crazy as I work. Crazy...But, true. amy
Thanks Amy! Not yet, October 20th or there abouts. Ambera Wellmann used to watch movies when she worked too, really bad ones, but she got some of the most beautiful paintings I've ever seen done. The kids thing sounds nice actually, I don't mind kids running around making noise but when adults do it i can't stand it. Especially drum practice and construction...
Thanks Viviane!I think Quentin's all clang-y and boom-y so it really suits him. I picture stuff crashing and thunking around him as he tears robots apart with his telekinesis.
I love to listen to music when I'm working - the whole process of drawing along with the music is a complete ticket to "Neverland." Suddenly, hours have passed.
I listen to all kinds of different things. Ok - I'll admit, once in a while I even cross-over into dancing while drawing.
Never tried anything like an audio drama. Wonder if it would be distracting or if I'd remember any of the story. Hmmmmmm - worth a try.
Congrats on the upcoming baby! Your first?? They're such an adventure.
That's an interesting little discovery! When I think about your illustrations, I picture anything by Mark Mothersbaugh. Or maybe that's just the music I picture you drawing to. Either way. How's Julie doing? What kind of music do you suppose the baby likes?
Thanks Diane! The dancing thing is a good reason to have your studio on the top floor! It is our first...
Thanks Paz! I find it so funny that Beethoven is too distracting to have on. Apart of me thinks he did that intentionally.
Thanks Ambera! I was listening to Devo yesterday, they do an odd-ball cover of the stone's Satisfaction. Julie's great, she keeps expanding. That's normal tho'.
I love it when author/illustrators include a 'play list' of things they were listening to when they created that particular book.
I 'listen' to movies a lot when I work. Then when looking back at certain illustrations, the flavor, music and textures of whatever movie it was come back full force... Wierd, but cool phenomena.
Thanks Tara! Yeah, it would be really neat to read people's unofficial soundtracks...I'm making mixed "tapes" on my computer for the first time and rediscovering some old music so there would be all sorts of eclectic stuff on it. I'll make a note to do that at some point and I'll ask you for the soundtrack to the Fairy Chronicles...
Are you an author looking to get school visits? Are you an educator looking for an author to do school visits? Check out Kim Norman's new site that lists authors by state. Our local reading council is always looking for authors to come for our events. This is like one stop-shopping. If you are an author and would like to be listed, check out the site and find out what you need to do to be listed.
This book is about poop. Well, actually about kids who go to see a poop fountain, but still, if you tell any boy that it’s a book about poop, he’ll read it.
Lyle, Marilla, and Dave are friends and they hang out together, usually at the Quikpick. The Quikpick is a local gas station-slash-convenience store where Lyle’s parents both work. They get tired of just hanging out in the break room at the Quikpick, so they really want to find something interesting to do. Lyle’s parents have to work all day Christmas Day, so they plan to do this really-interesting-adventure on Christmas Day.
They read in the paper that the local wasterwater treatment plant is getting ready to get a new upgrade. They will be closing down their “sludge fountain” and opening new equipment. The timeline for this upgrade? Jan. 2. So they have time for their Christmas Day adventure.
They venture out on Christmas Day to the fountain of poop, as they call it. Yes, there are poop-related disasters. There is messiness. There are several “ooh, gross” moments. I’m telling you…give this to a boy you know!!!
Lyle is the narrator and he types his account of their adventure on his used typewriter his parents bought him for Christmas, but there are handwritten parts to the story too, and Lyle adds handwritten notes to his typed pages. It gives the story such a realistic journal feel.
Why do I love this book? 1) Most kids go on mini-adventures with small groups of friends. At least I did. Even if we never wandered far from home, we were able to create drama out of a mundane event. I even dated a guy once in college who showed me home movies of “adventures” he and his buddies had going from home to the local “Orange Market” (Quikpick-ish). 2) Most kids love to get grossed-out with bathroom humor. This book is not raunchy. The whole thing is not poop jokes. It’s poop--well done. (BTW, I can’t believe I just wrote that). 3) It’s set in Crickenburg, a fictional town based on a real place—Christiansburg, VA. I live only 20 minutes from there, so this book is close to home. And it’s written by a local author (and blogger) Sam Riddleburger (who is married to another local author, Sock Monkey writer and illustrator, Cece Bell). In fact, I got this book at a local Barnes and Noble event with Sam and Cece. 4) The kids write poetry—they even write haiku about their poop experience! Awesome!
Do you know a reluctant boy reader? Then go, buy this book!
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The Quikpick Adventure Society
Good luck!
Hugs.
Hi Eric:
Thanks for the comment on my blog.
There may be a few spare copies of my comics at The Beguiling, altho I do need to do another print run of all my comics soon.
I'm super busy with school and trying to finish up my puppet theatre.......thanks for reminding me about word on the street!! Will you be attending?
~~~Caitlin
What a fun list of songs. I can totally see that going along with Harry & Silvo.
Hope your computer is feeling better, as well as *you* - and that you are all recovered now.
love this great composition. i really love the whimsical nature to your work. full of awe and magic.
i have a question, what kind of pens do you use when you ink?
Thanks Juliana!
Thanks Caitlin! I'll be there handing out minicomics.I'll look for stuff next time I'm downtown, I'm in Etobicoke right now.And I'll look for you at WOTS. Also~I want to see your puppet show!!
Thanks Tara! Stuff is better than it has been in monhs. Jut more stressful.
Thanks so much C.B! I think we're on similar pages creatively.
For years I've used a Hunt nib, number 101 I think, with FW Speedball acrylic India ink, which this piece was done with. But recently I've found the dipping and cleaning extrememly time consuming so for this project I swiched to technical pens.I am using a variety of pens and brushpens right now including Staedtler pens,Copic pens and Copic brushpen (multiliners),Pitt Pens and sharpies. I am still using FW opaque white ink for corrections as well as Windsor Newton white acrylic paints. Also, I draw on Arches 300 lb paper so I can really go at it and not worry about damaging the paper.