Infested! Music takes to the fields in the 2000s
ACL Fest led the way for Fun Fun Fun, Austin Psych Fest/Levitation, Pachanga and more
Austin has hosted multi-act, multi-day outdoor events since since 1964 when Rod Kennedy presented the KHFI Summer Music Festival at Zilker Park’s Hillside Theater. That lineup over six days in July included folk singer Carolyn Hester, country bluesmen Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb, plus jazz combos, Western swing, and a symphony orchestra. Admission was free.
The first big ticketed outdoor affair was 1966’s Longhorn Jazz Festival at Disch Field (next to City Coliseum), with a jaw-dropping lineup including the Miles Davis Quintet, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan and returning Austinites Teddy Wilson and Kenny Dorham. Kennedy co-promoted that one with Newport impresario George Wein.
We’ve had our Aquafests and our Sunday Breaks and Willie’s Picnics and Hill on the Moon, but Austin didn’t really get fest-crazy until the 2000s, with the Austin City Limits Music Festival leading the way in Sept. 2002.
The edgier Fun Fun Fun Fest, produced by Graham Williams and Transmission Entertainment, and Rich Garza’s Latin-themed Pachanga Fest, came to Waterloo Park in 2007 and 2008, respectively, though Pachanga moved to Fiesta Gardens the next year and Fun x 3 to Auditorium Shores. Austin Psyche Fest, curated by Black Angels, debuted in 2008, eventually changing its name to Levitation, but it didn’t move outdoors until 2013 at Carson Creek Ranch.
ACL Fest grew out of the victory celebration concert following Lance Armstrong’s first Tour de France title in 1999. Armstrong’s manager Bill Stapleton hired Middleman Productions, which was basically Charlie Jones and Lisa Schickel, to put together a big concert on Auditorium Shores with a week’s notice, and it was just one of those magical nights where everything went right. Then, Middleman confidently handled the city’s massive Y2K celebration and the world didn’t end, so Stapleton brought Jones aboard to head a new live events division of Capital Sports & Entertainment.
Before there was C3 Presents, the Austin-based company worth $250 million when Live Nation bought 51% in 2014, there was CSE and its booker Charles Attal. Affiliation with Lance gave all-access to starstruck Austin, so Zilker Park was made available to a new yearly festival based on the New Orleans Jazzfest model. The City Parks Department had turned down all other promoters after an MTV sports and music fest (snowboarding, Wu Tang Clan) in 1997 left the park looking like the site of a tank battle. But naming this new festival after Austin City Limits (making tea, Lyle Lovett) carried a lot of good will. Even the joyless neighborhood associations signed off on this one.
The announcement was made at a press conference at Zilker on April 30, 2002, five months from the festival kickoff, which didn’t give Attal a lot of time. Festivals are usually booked a year in advance. “I called in every favor I had,” said Attal, who made a lot of contacts- and enemies- by outbidding all the other promoters on shows at the 2100-capacity Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater, which he’s co-owned since it opened in 1996.
The first act to confirm at ACL was Colorado jamband String Cheese Incident, who’d just played to about 20,000 fans over three nights at Waterloo Park. Next was Pat Green, who had a similar draw, and the same lack of respect from music snobs. Then came acts who’d played the TV show: Emmylou Harris, Los Lobos, Nickel Creek, Wilco, Ryan Adams, Blind Boys of Alabama, Gillian Welch. Playing the final slot of the two-day event was the Arc Angels, who reunited for superfan Armstrong. They were the last Austin band to headline.
The 70-act lineup wasn’t firm until three weeks before the Sept. 29-30 event, which caused a lot of anxiety within the fledgling CSE. The break-even point was 30,000 a day at $25 a head, but when an initial allotment of wristbands went on sale for $20 each, just two months before the festival, they sold only 700. A midnight call from France, where Armstrong was in the midst of his fourth consecutive Tour win, had a semi-panicked Stapleton wondering if CSE should hedge its bet by announcing only half the lineup, then cutting back the other half if the tickets tanked. At the current sales rate, they stood to lose a million dollars. “It was gut-check time,” Stapleton told me in 2003. “We all knew it was a great idea whose time had come and it came down to this: Do we want to be the company that plays it safe, or do we want to follow our convictions full speed ahead?”
When the Star Wars theme came out of the speakers big and loud as the gates opened, it was the sound of success, a tradition for years to come. The maiden ACL Fest drew 42,000 people on Saturday and about 35,000 on Sunday. Walkups snaked in lines 500 yards long, but as soon as everyone got in, all that frustration disappeared, like arriving home to your sweetie after a horrible flight.
There would be much bigger lineups (and crowds) in the next 20 years of ACL Fest, but in terms of sheer joy, that first year will never be topped. Everybody was just so goddamned happy to be out at the park on a perfect day, listening to good music and eating food a big step up from turkey legs and funnel cakes. Even security was in a good mood.
Most euphoric moment for me was from a medium-sized stage on the first night. Sacred steel wizard Robert Randolph and the Family Band were on a Pentecostal high, practically levitating the crowd, which went almost all the way back to the main stage. Backlit behind the drummer, a girl of about 12 in a white communion dress was dancing a fluid hippie hula, just lost in the spirit. It felt like being on LSD, the way the power of the music came in waves.
The skyline of the city sparkled in the background like possibility. It looked quite different than the one we see today, but the view has always been glorious from Zilker Park.
Every year there’s a call from cranky Austinites to move ACL out of our downtown jewel, especially when a second weekend was added (with an identical lineup) in 2013. Move it to the F1 track! They don’t get that the thing that makes ACL Fest special is that it’s right in the middle of town. What a way to show off Austin, and to make two million dollars a year for the Parks Department. It’s a model that C3 used to revive the rotting carcass of Lollapalooza at Chicago’s Grant Park in 2005. The Austin company also handled Barack Obama’s election night celebration at Grant in Nov. 2008 and Inauguration festivities in Jan. 2009 in D.C.
That area of the park where ACL is held used to be the Zilker Soccer Fields. The ground was hard and full of stickers, but after horrid dust storms the fifth year of ACL, CSE started irrigating and re-sodding the grass and named it the Great Lawn. Now you see it full of picnickers on nice days- because of the improvements ACL Fest paid for.
CSE became C3 Presents in 2007 when Charlie Walker left his job as president of Live Nation’s North America division to become the 3rd C. You don’t see guys leave a top job in L.A. for a medium market, but “I’m just an Austin kind of guy,” Walker said. Seven years later his old company bought C3- and the three Charlies banked an estimated $30 million each. And they kept their jobs.
Moving to Austin after high school in College Station, Jones became involved with the music business because he was infatuated with Little Sister, a funk jam band featuring Patrice Pike. He went from volunteer roadie to manager in record time. Jones produced his first big outdoor shows in conjunction with KLBJ or KGSR so he could get Little Sister on the undercard in front of thousands.
A budding auctioneer from an antique family, Attal became the booker at Stubb’s because was in a band (the forgettable Clown Meat) and the other partners figured he knew about music. Outdoor concerts were going to be just an occasional sideline to the barbecue of legendary Lubbock pitmaster C.B. Stubblefield (who sadly passed away before the opening). But the Fugees, or “the Fudgies” as Attal initially mispronounced the name, changed all that. They were the hottest group in hip-hop when they played a SXSW showcase at Stubb’s in 1996- months before the joint was officially open. But they had to leave the uncovered stage when rain came pouring down midway through the second song. As word circulated that the show was over, singer Lauryn Hill came face-to-face with Attal. “But we want to play!” The greenhorn promoter did everything he could to see that it happened, and after about an hour delay, the Fugees came back onstage and rewarded those who’d stuck around with a show they’ll never forget. Attal had been baptized. Stubb’s would become known more for music than smoked meat.
Sharing a 600-sf office on W. Fifth St. in the late ‘90s, Charlie Jones and Charles Attal started out as nobodies on the Austin music scene. But they were willing to do whatever it took to find their place, and now they’re flying private.
Before they landed on “Austin City Limits” as their festival name, Jones and Stapleton approached Jimmie Vaughan to see if he would license the name of his brother so they could call their event the Stevie Ray Vaughan Music Festival. Jimmie said “no” between the two syllables of “music.” Which actually turned out to be a good thing for CSE. Could you imagine Iggy Azalea doing her Nicki Minaj impression at the SRV Fest?
During the ‘80s, the biggest outdoor music event in Austin was T-Bird Riverfest, attracting about 15,000 to Auditorium Shores on a Saturday in June. Produced by French Smith from ‘83- ‘91 and booked by the headlining Fabulous Thunderbirds through manager Mark Proct, the Riverfest had stellar line-ups, seemingly picking five names out of a hat containing Bonnie Raitt, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Carlos Santana, Los Lobos, Little Feat, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Nick Lowe, Dwight Yoakam, Robert Cray, and Delbert McClinton. The T-Birds headlined, and opening the show was whoever Stevie’s Irish publicist Charles Comer maneuvered onto the bill.
The legendary Comer had first come to the States as tour publicist for the Beatles. His office was in a Manhattan hotel you’ve never heard of, and you’d have to go through the front desk when you called. But don’t worry, he’d call you whenever you wrote something even slightly negative about Stevie or the T-Birds, who hired him during the “Tuff Enuff” campaign in ‘86. Comer wielded great power in the Austin media because he handled passes for backstage at the Riverfest, which was where one found self-worth and kegs of free beer. It’s where I got the idea for my “Heaven is Backstage at Hell” column.
When Rollo and I moved to the Cypress Hill apartments on S. 1st St., we were just about three blocks from Keith Ferguson’s crib behind his mother’s house. Rollo and Keith were really tight, especially with the tattoo connection. Keith got a tattoo on his bald spot and his hair grew back, which made those guys think they’d found a new billion dollar industry! Rollo was one of the greatest storytellers, but Ferguson’s the only person I’d ever seen hold court when Rollo was in the room. Keith was dark and funny, plus he did great impressions, once recreating an argument between Etta James and Mick Jagger that he had witnessed. Both voices perfect.
Keith was a heroin addict, as we all know, fired from the T-Birds in ‘85 because he hated going on the road and wouldn’t rehearse. “Our Jew needs money” is how he explained a dreaded upcoming tour. His energy was devoted to procuring smack, which also lost him beautiful girlfriend Conni Hancock. At a Los Lobos show at Liberty Lunch, Cesar Rojas asked the crowd, “Where’s Keith Ferguson? He owes me fifty dollars.” Conni yelled out “He owes me five years!”
But Keith was cool as hell. His record collection was categorized into three sections: Mexican, Negro and Other. He was the only white guy who could school Los Lobos on Mexican music from Texas, and they listened. He really resented the T-Birds for taking away his ability to afford his habit, so he was hilariously ragging on them all the time. Especially since they replaced him on bass with another junkie- Preston Hubbard. The whole scene was kinda pissed off at the T-Birds, but nobody turned down a backstage pass to Riverfest.
Keith stayed away out of principle, instead hosting a party at his house for Los Lobos. I think Xalapeno Charlie catered it. The food was great, but the guests of honor didn’t show. I left about 1 a.m., when Keith went to bed, feeling very sad for him. No longer a T-Bird, no longer The Man.
But Keith was awakened at about 2 a.m. by the members of Los Lobos standing around his bed, serenading with an old Mexican folk song.
Keith Ferguson made it to age 50, which was about 100 to him. He’d gotten Rollo addicted to heroin, but the old man still admired his friend. “He never tried to quit or get help,” Rollo said. “He didn’t whine or make accuses. He just accepted that it was who he was.”
Keith Ferguson had lived a remarkable life. He slept with any woman he wanted to. He played in a bad ass blues band that opened for the Rolling Stones. What do you do when the good times are over?