On Friday, October 12, join KUT at the Four Seasons Hotel as host Kevin Connor kicks off ACL Fest in style. There’ll be live music by Quiet Company, First Aid Kit, Jovanotti and Antibalas plus gourmet breakfast tacos and coffee. Your donation of $10 supports the Seton Shivers Cancer Center. It’s great music for a great cause. Mark your calendar and make sure to join us starting at 9 a.m. Friday, October 12, on the lawn of the Four Seasons Hotel. Not planning on heading to Barton Springs for the Festival? Bring a blanket or lawn chair and hang out with us and get a little bit of the ACL experience.
9 a.m. Quiet Company
In 2011 Quiet Company spent the majority of their time writing & recording their most ambitious & thought provoking album to date, “We Are All Where We Belong.” In late summer they were approached by Grooveshark & signed to their new Artist Development program. Since July 1st, Quiet Company has garnered a global audience, thanks to their partnership with Grooveshark. Quiet Company’s Facebook fans jumped from 2,800 in July to 30,000 by Thanksgiving & their video for “Fear & Fallacy, Sitting in a Tree” reached over 100,000 plays in under 3 months. Quiet Company is averaging well over 50,000 song plays a day on Grooveshark alone all across the globe. Last Year, the band won Band of the Year, Best Indie Band and Best Rock band at the Austin Chronicle’s 30th annual Austin Music Awards.
10 a.m. First Aid Kit
Bittersweet is the word the Söderberg sisters prefer. “We like bittersweet songs, songs that affect you differently depending on how you interpret them,” says Klara, the younger of the Swedish siblings that make up First Aid Kit. “Making the melodies and lyrics head in different directions is very deliberate,” adds big sister Johanna. “A song like ‘Emmylou’ sounds cheerful, but the lyrics are the saddest thing you ever heard.” First Aid Kit’s first US-recorded album, The Lion’s Roar, juxtaposes sadness and beauty in the best traditions of folk and country music. They even cite the Louvin Brothers’ cheerfully brutal version of the old murder ballad “Knoxville Girl” as the perfect example of the sweet and sour they adore. And this new carefully constructed collection deftly succeeds in setting references to their hometown of Stockholm and long, dark Scandinavian winters against a backdrop of country-rock swing.
11 a.m. Jovanotti
Until now, American audiences have had to make do with mere glimpses of the brilliant career of one of Italy’s most famous contemporary artists, the Tuscan singer and songwriter and rapper Lorenzo Cherubini, professionally known as Jovanotti. Over the past twenty years his recorded and live collaborations with Michael Franti, Ben Harper, The Beastie Boys, Juanes, Sergio Mendes, and Bono, among other well-known names, have occasionally caught the ear of the adventurous listener. Delivering lyrics in a half-sung, half-spoken style that pays homage to the Beats, Jovanotti uses the rhythm and the ricochet of consonants and catchy melodic hooks to create songs that are instantly accessible to an international audience.
12 p.m. Antibalas
“Rhythm is what makes a good Afrobeat record,” says Gabriel Roth, Daptone Records co-founder, producer and connoisseur of all things funky. “Not just the rhythm section, but the rhythm of the horns, the rhythm of the vocals, the rhythm of the keyboards, everybody’s rhythm. It’s not just being about being right or wrong in your rhythm, or being good at it, but it’s about feeling something the same way, swinging the same way, anticipating things the same way, and hitting things the same way — everybody hearing music the same way, and being able to turn all those instruments into one voice.
