Well, another wonderful ACL festival has come and gone.  This year, we had to find tickets from many places, but after a month of searching Facebook, Craigslist, and asking friends, we secured 5 tickets for Alisha, Krysten, Jason, Anil and I to attend.  We took Madison and Elizabeth Friday and the lawn was amazing.  Austin spent around 2 million to level and resurface the “Great Lawn” of Zilker park.  It looked like a golf course over the entire festival grounds.  Below is a picture of a small area, but image all of Zilker looking just like this.  Compare the aerial photo of the great lawn to the brown areas on top and top left in the image.

We arrived in time to see Sara Watkins and the Knux.  Then we walked over to Mishka and Avett Brothers before heading to Kiddie Limits stage where Maddy and Alisha caught Milkshake and were waiting patiently for the special guest.  K’Naan was set to appear on the Kiddie Limits stage and we were all very excited (see picture below).  We were no less than 10 feet from him and Lizzy really enjoyed dancing to the music.  He is a rapper from Somalia with some amazing lyrics and was honored with Mos Def as the first rap acts to play the Austin City Limits TV show, taping the same weekend as the festival.  If he’s in your area, go see him…amazing.  We finished the evening with John Legend, Thievery Corporation and Kings of Leon.

On Saturday we awoke to rain.  At the festival grounds, it rained for 20 minutes during Mute Math, then stopped and didn’t start again till Citizen Cope when it continued to rain for 2.5 hours straight.  That beautiful lawn turned into a mud pit and stayed that way for Dave Matthews Band closing out Saturday night and all day Sunday.  Through the rain, we saw Lunch Money, Ralph’s world, Bon Iver, Eek-A-Mouse, Mos Def, The Scabs and DMB.

Sunday presented mud and mud (see below).  Actually, it wasn’t mud, but rather “dillo dirt“, a type of Austin recycled fertilizer.  We saw Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, Ralph’s World, The B-52s, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Heartless Bastards, Arctic Monkeys, Ben Sollee, Brett Dennen, Ben Harper, Girl Talk, Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Pearl Jam. 

I was able to see two of my favorite bands from high school and college in DMB and Pearl Jam.  Both put on great performances.  In addition, I was introduced to some new artists I will enjoy in the future such as K’Naan, Black Joe Lewis, and Mute Math.  Enjoy some more pictures: