Adios to 'Austin City Limits' Studio 6A
From 1974- 2010 some of the world's greatest musicians played that stage
The Armadillo World Headquarters established the city's reputation as a place where music mattered in the ‘70s. But Austin City Limits took the taste of the town national, and has kept doing so for five decades.
For many, the night of Nov. 8, 2010 marked the end of an era. It was to be the final taping at 320-seat Studio 6A before moving operations to Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater, with nine times the capacity and 1/9th the quirky charm.
Since Willie Nelson wasn’t available, Lyle Lovett had the final night honors, and invited crew members onstage for a singalong of his "Closing Time," with its chorus of "unplug those people and send them home." The crowd swayed along, many wiping away tears. They’d have to pay for their beer from then on.
Before anyone besides his parents and a couple A&M classmates knew he was a musician, Lovett used to go to every taping of Austin City Limits he could, usually waiting in the standby line. Watching some of his favorite singer-songwriters, including Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt and Johnny Cash, the show was the model for the kind of musician Lovett strived to be. Studio 6A was the pinnacle stage.
He was such a fan of the PBS-affiliated show that when he first appeared, during the 1987 season, a crowd shot included a spliced-in Lovett from a previous show he attended.
Pulling material from his self-titled debut, as well as the upcoming second album Pontiac, Lovett's ACL debut was just perfect. The singer displayed no nervousness as he masterfully fronted only two musicians - John Hagen on cello and percussionist James Gilmer- and when the crowd leapt to its feet at the end, Lovett's eyes knew he'd just won a career.
That set was memorable for another reason: being challenged to a fistfight before the show started. I was working on a Lovett profile for Spin magazine, so I hung around soundcheck for some color, like watching retired Exxon exec Bill Lovett serve as his son’s defacto guitar tech. When the room was cleared, associate producer Susan Caldwell said I could stay under one condition: I had to save four seats in the back corner of the top row for Coach Darrell Royal. Wow, I’d be sitting with the legend!
As the place filled up, I could see people look up to that gaping spread of emptiness in the upper corner and start to trek up the stairs. "These seats are saved," I would say, over and over for half an hour, but a few kept squeezing down the aisle anyway. "These seats are for Coach Royal," sent most of them back, but two couples just kept coming. "We went to A&M," said the first guy. "We don't give a fuck about your coach." When I stood up to block their path, he said, "I'll knock you right over that rail" and took a puncher’s stance. “Those are our seats," said the other guy. The people around me took up my side, until an usher came up to verify those seats were reserved, and the asshole Aggies headed back down the stairs. They passed Caldwell who came up to tell me Coach Royal was a no-show, so I could stop saving the seats. I saw four friends who’d just arrived to the jampacked studio and waved for them to come up. Boy, were they appreciative! They probably still think I saved those seats for them.
Through the years, ACL has expanded its range of performers from the original “friends of Willie” to the likes of Phish, Coldplay, Kendrick Lamar, Pearl Jam, Lauryn Hill and Sonic Youth. But the focus hasn't really changed since Willie Nelson did the pilot in 1974. It's still about strength of performance- singing and playing songs that make you forget there's a TV taping going on. On a good night, Studio 6A transformed from a cold soundstage to a romping live music proving ground, which is also the case at the Moody Theater, where pop phenom Olivia Rodrigo drove away any doubts that she’s a legitimate artist with a stunning show in 2021.
At the 2010 finale, Lickona told me that the things he'd miss least about Studio 6A were the limited capacity and the difficulty in loading band gear to the sixth floor. Fans won’t miss having to take an elevator to the bathroom, but that was the price for the tables of help-yourself beer. And there was always a joint going around on the fourth floor.
Lickona has been the face and speaking voice of ACL so long it’s hard to believe he was living in Poughkeepsie, NY when the show launched. Using the DJ name Curly Collins, Lickona had a nightly radio show on WPDH-FM, where he could play whatever he wanted. That included a lot of the mainstream-bucking country coming out of Austin.
“There were probably more blues and jazz musicians here than country musicians,” ACL founder Bill Arhos described what was happening in Austin in a 1995 interview. “But the only moneymaking gigs were in country. So they played jazz and blues inside the country music, and that developed a new art form.” KRLU producers Paul Bosner and Bruce Scafe co-created ACL with Arhos to activate Studio 6A in the brand new communications building.
That was 1974, the year Lickona and his best friend Dan Del Santo, a bluegrass guitarist, trekked to College Station for the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic, then spent three days in Austin recovering. Hitting Texas Opry House and the Armadillo on successive nights convinced them to stop picking their toes in Poughkeepsie and to start living with the pickers of Austin.
"Dan thought his music would fit right in, but when he saw that everyone else was doing the same progressive country style, he decided to do something new," Lickona said. Del Santo became Austin’s king of “world beat,” as he tagged the mix of African, South American and Caribbean music he’d play on KUT every Friday night. He also fronted a passable Afro-Cuban group, the Professors of Pleasure, who were the surprise big winners at the 1983 Austin Music Awards. The band’s Sunday night residency at Club Foot drew only about 100 fans a week, so the joke was that Del Santo made his marijuana customers fill out a ballot before he’d send them off with a green-filled mason jar. Del Santo’s weed was better than Willie’s, but he might’ve went too far by posing in a marijuana field for an album cover. He was busted in Virginia in 1992 on a conspiracy to distribute charge, and, facing serious time, fled to Mexico. Del Santo lived the last nine years of his life in Oaxaca where he died at age 50 from internal bleeding.
Lickona also got a show on KUT soon after arriving, but moved to TV as public affairs reporter for KLRU’s Newsroom Nine nightly broadcast in late ‘75. He also started volunteering at ACL, and when producer Charles Vaughan left after the third season, Lickona convinced Arhos to hire him. There was no money to recruit someone with experience.
"By the fourth season, the progressive country Armadillo spark had begun to fade along with the view of Austin as the anti-Nashville, and the show had already begun to recycle the acts," Lickona told Kevin Curtin of the Austin Chronicle in 2014. "It seemed like time to start shaking things up and take it in a different direction." His vision of Austin City had no Limits, so taping 85-year-old blues primitive Elizabeth Cotten and psychedelic Mexican accordion player Steve Jordan made sense. Tom Waits was also a first-year booking for Lickona, who had to wake up the singer from the greenroom couch when it was time to go on. Here’s that entire show.
"Without Terry, I don't think the TV show would still be around," Robert Earl Keen said in 2008 when the Americana Music Conference gave Lickona a lifetime achievement award at the Ryman Auditorium. "Artists love to play ACL because Terry pays attention to what they need." Sometimes the requests are simple, as when the great Leonard Cohen answered can-I-get-you anything with “a bottle of tequila would be nice.” The singer and his band did shots of Cuervo before this 1988 show, Cohen’s national TV debut.
In 2003, Austin City Limits became the first TV show honored with a National Medal of the Arts. That was also the first of five years that Capital Sports & Entertainment, which later became C3 Presents, co-produced the show with Lickona, who gave their Austin City Limits Music Festival credit with "breathing new life into the brand." But Terry and his staff were used to doing things their way and there was some butting of heads on that 30th anniversary season. Minutes before Ben Harper’s taping in 2004, CSE’s top clientele (and Harper friend) Lance Armstrong called to ask that the starting time be held up because he was still at dinner. That shit didn’t ride at 6A.
But Lickona was relieved to finally have some financial stability, as CSE guaranteed funding even if it had to come out of their own pockets. ACL parent company KLRU had to take a bank loan in 1999 when main sponsor Agillion went under. The Austin City Limits name and all rights to its programming are owned by KLRU, which recently relocated from UT to Austin Community College’s Highland Campus. Terry’s Lickonavision production company is a contractor.
It was KLRU program director Arhos who wrote a proposal to do a live music show from Austin and received $7,000 from PBS in 1974 to produce a one-hour pilot starring B.W. Stevenson and Willie Nelson. Hardly anybody turned up for Stevenson’s poorly-promoted taping, so Willie got the whole hour. Three years later, Gary P. Nunn's 'London Homesick Blues' (AKA “Home With the Armadillo”) was chosen as the ACL theme song. And then along came Terry.
It wasn’t until 1982 that the show first used the Austin skyline backdrop, which has fooled many TV viewers into believing the show is taped outdoors.
Austin City Limits bet on itself in 1998- and lost. The show started charging for programming and was dropped by 30% of its PBS affilates. ACL went back to being free the next year and regained the stations it lost.
This all led up to the 2002 launch of the music festival that licensed the Austin City Limits name for a percentage of ticket sales- about $100,000 that first year. Promoters were praying to break even at 30,000 fans each day that September weekend at Zilker Park, then were elated- and overwhelmed- when 42,000 bought $25 tickets on Saturday and 35,000 on Sunday.
Terry Lickona was sky high when he saw the culmination of his previous 25 years fill the fields with music lovers. The Austin City Limits name had value! He was walking through the crowd when a young hipster couple spotted his “all access” producer’s badge and asked Lickona what was his connection to the festival. “I produce Austin City Limits, the TV show,” he said, to which the kids responded, incredulously, “There’s a TV show?”
Lickona tells that crashing-down-to-Earth story with a big laugh. There’s no laurel-resting in public TV. The challenge is always there to keep working hard to turn folks onto great music. And to give acts the stage many dreamed of playing when they hit their first C chord.