With tickets I had bought two months ago, a one-day lead on my homework, and a friend, I left for Austin last Saturday night after work. I even washed my car to make it sleek and shiny for the two-hour drive down. We eventually arrived at the hotel room he had reserved and slept well despite the realization that the Motel 6 was in a bad part of town. (The office had bulletproof glass and a stainless steel ditch under the window to slide cards and papers through, bank-style.) In the hotel room I kind of wished that I hadn’t washed my car after all — dirt is nature’s theft repellent — but my car survived, and the area looked considerably safer in the morning. We left early to get breakfast, hit an ATM, and see all of the last day of Austin City Limits at Zilker Park.
With a sky like this, I was surprised to feel rain a couple of times, but it turns out it was just the people around me misting themselves.
ACL is a yearly music festival, but the actual lineup of performing musicians differs every year. This time it was Bob Dylan that was the main attraction, at least for the two of us. He wasn’t due to play until 8:30 PM, and when we entered the park at 11:20 AM it was relatively empty. After a little wandering around I checked my wallet’s cards, as I often do, and I realized I had left my debit card at the ATM. I had all the cash I needed, though, so a two-minute call to my bank’s “lost card” number (which I had cleverly stored in my phone for such an occasion) was all that was needed to get my old card cancelled and my new card in the mail. (It’s still on the way, but I still have money.) I bought an ACL shirt at the shirt tent and a Yo La Tengo album at the album tent. It was pretty sunny outside, so I bought sunscreen, too. It should have come with a warning: “Does not work on foreheads.”
DeVotchKa’s accordionist on a screen to the right of the stage
For most of the day there were multiple artists playing at any given time, but for noise reasons, nobody played at adjacent stages. In general, each show was due to end just as a show on the stage next to it was due to begin, and the bands and crews did an excellent job of being punctual throughout the day. Since there was music non-stop in most areas, some people camped in their lawn chairs in places within good hearing range of two stages. Of course, you could barely see an actual band from that distance, but that’s what the big screens were for.
Left to right: James (bass and vocals), Georgia (drums and vocals), and Ira (guitar and vocals)
The first band on our schedule was Yo La Tengo. I wore my Yo La Tengo shirt all day, since they’re my favorite band and the shirt is so cool. The set was just one hour long, but they were really into it, and so was I. When it ended we walked back to the record store and got in the line for autographs by the band.
When I bought the album at the record store’s tent, the cashier asked if I would be getting it signed. After I said “yes”, he unwrapped it and stuck a little green sticker — one of the single-color, penny-sized stickers you can get anywhere — on the album. The autographs were to take place in the record store’s tent, so I’m guessing they were sponsoring the signings and were trying to limit signings to things they had sold. I had, in fact, brought an album from home, and nobody checked for stickers in the autograph line, so I got both of them signed.
My well-loved, now-signed copy of the band’s 3-disc compilation album. I’m not a fan of compilation albums, but this one is great.
The band members were smiling at everyone who came by, and when I made it to the autograph table I was grinning wider than they were. Georgia thanked me when I gushed that I loved her voice, Ira asked me where I had gotten their shirt (it was a 2005 concert, also in Austin), and James smiled and told me he’d seen the shirt from the stage. Without Bob Dylan’s show, my day would have been made right there.
Pound for pound, one of the cutest girls at the festival. At one point she got up and “danced” with her mom (right).
As the day wore on, the park became packed. The event was for people of all ages, and kids under 10 got in free with their parents. I saw an official interpreter doing sign language at many of the stages, so I guess some of the attendees were hard of hearing. The interpreter was fun to watch: she played air guitar during a couple of guitar solos, threw horns when the crowd made noise, and jammed along with the rest of us whether she was signing or not.
The other bands we saw included DeVotchKa (who was interesting, but not really my type of music), Robert Earl Keen, Lucinda Williams (who was awesome), Regina Spektor (who had a huge crowd and was pretty silly in between songs: “I can’t believe I get to be here! You’re beautiful!”), and Ziggy Marley (who was pretty good). The Decemberists were one of the last bands to play, but we really wanted to get a decent place to stand when Dylan played, so we skipped them. It was a good choice — we showed up an hour early and were still a couple hundred feet away. I couldn’t tell how big the crowd was behind us, but I’m guessing we were about in the middle.
The man, in black
Like all bands that day, Dylan and his band started right on time, opening with “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35″ to the crowd’s delight. He released his first album in 1962, and while his voice has never been good, it’s always been captivating, even now at the age of 66. His vocals these days are dark and gravelly, so when he sang “It Ain’t Me, Babe”, I couldn’t help but compare it to the more melodic folk version he recorded in the 60s. I’ll admit that the newer rendition wasn’t as good, but he had a hard act to follow, and it’s precisely because he’s not the type of person to do the same thing for 45 years that his music is so special. It took a few songs for me to fully warm up to the music, but after that I was captivated.
His set was scheduled to end at 10:00 PM, so when the stage went dark and quiet at 9:50 I knew he’d be back, but I still cheered as much as I could. He graced us with a couple more songs, the second being “Like A Rolling Stone”, which is one of his current encore staples and among his most famous songs. (It was also the number 1 song on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest rock songs of all time. The magazine’s name may make them a little biased, but I can’t say I blame them for the pick.) I was sure it would be the last song — I remember thinking, “How do you top this?” When it ended he looked out over the crowd and said “Thank you, friends” to everyone’s cheers. He introduced each band member and then started his final song: “I Shall Be Released“. It’s not often that I cry when I listen to music, but when I heard him sing, and mean, that song, I wept at how beautiful it all was. When he finished the stage went dark for a moment, and when light returned he and the band were standing to receive our applause. After one more moment they turned and left the stage, and the audience lights came on to signal the end of the show and to guide us all on our way out of the park.
As singer-songwriters go, Bob Dylan isn’t an extraordinary singer, but I do think he’s the greatest songwriter ever to have lived. It was well worth the price of admission just to see his art in person. I hope I’ll have a chance to see him again some day, but if I don’t I’ll be happy, because right now I’m still wondering, “How do you top this?”
