BlakeAtwood.com

I saw Derek Webb for the first time last night at Stubb’s in downtown Austin. I’d seen him before, but only as part of Caedmon’s Call. I remember thinking even then that he should go solo, with no disrespect to Caedmon’s. His songs ring true in my ears and call me to a higher level of living.

The show, although attended by 30 people or so, was great, even despite the hard cement floors, the three hours of standing, and the late midnight ending for a Wednesday night show.

My friend Stevie made the good observation that it takes a talented individual to hold the attention of anyone for two hours with just a voice and an acoustic guitar, which Derek did quite well.

My favorite moments of the show might have been the two times he talked extensively between songs. He went on a short rant, of sorts, about getting his music out to everyone for free because he wants to initiate a conversation. He said he’s

“not in the record business. I’m in the music business. The record business wants me to sell you little round plastic discs. I want to make relationships.”

That was heartening to hear.

They, being Derek and his wife Sandra McCracken, sold their CDs for $10 each in order to clear out their merch before heading back to Tennessee. Derek, who’s released his newest album for free over the internet without DRM, has plans to release all of his albums for free. He even told us that if we could find 9 other people at the show, each with a dollar, that everyone should chip in, buy one of his albums, and then make 9 copies.

Course, he told us this after I’d bought two albums and a DVD. Oh well. I’ve already offered to make copies for my friends.

Day three is always the best, and this year was no exception. It was the day I was most looking forward to, and, in hindsight, I should have just bought a one day pass instead of the three day, but…maybe next year I’ll be more frugal. Rachel had a soccer game, but it (fortunately) got cancelled, so we got to head down to Zilker Park early and managed to catch K.T. Tunstall. I’d only heard her single on the radio, and liked it alright, but was pleasantly surprised when the rest of her music was pretty good. She’s a Brit too, so that was fun.

After her was Matisyahu, an Orthodox Jewish Reggae Rapper. No lie. And his set was amazing. Especially his ad-lib when he somehow incorporated the people sitting on the porta-potties. I’ve got video of that, which will be uploaded soon. The rest of the set was almost worshipful. I was a fan of his music before, and the live show only cemented that.

After him was a band I’d also just recently discovered in the last year, The Flaming Lips. Their music and lyrics may be strange (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and At War With the Mystics are their last two albums), but it’s intriguingly uplifting and moving. Their shows are visual cornucopias, nearly overwhelming the senses with their absurdity and discordance. For example, dancing santas populated the right side of the stage. Their counterparts on the left side? Dancing martian women.

Also, I had hoped to see the Bubble Boy at the end of the show, but no, they surprised me and opened with it. Wayne Coyne, the lead singer and head Lip, climbs into a transparent bubble, then walks onto the crowd. It’s great. I’ve got video of that as well, soon to be uploaded. They shot confetti into the audience during almost every song. Their guitar techs were all dressed as superheroes. Their onstage camera woman was dressed as Wonder Woman.

For reasons beyond my comprehension, Wayne often puts fake blood on his face during his sets. This year, not to be outdone by Ben Kweller, who, on the previous day suffered a nosebleed which was stopped with a tampon, Wayne doused himself in fake blood and then asked the audience to throw tampons onto the stage, which the Austin crowd aquiesed to with much gusto, tampons flying through the air like so many tiny white missiles. Strange, yes. Funny, of course.

I was a fan before, and even with the aforementioned incident, I still am. I keep thinking back to that set and to Matisyahu’s, wishing I could go back and hear and see it again. That’s the sign of a good concert.

The closer for the Festival was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I’m not a huge Tom Petty fan, and I’m still not. The set was good, even though there was about a 30 minute rain break (which brought much needed coolness to the area). To me, most of his songs sound too similar. But we stayed the whole way through.

The Festival was great, and Sunday was the best.

Saturday was a bust, in our humble estimation. We were tired from the day before, not to mention a long work week for my wife. We only saw one and a half bands, The Raconteurs and Willie Nelson.

The Raconteurs, Jack White’s new band, were good. I was only familiar with their current radio single, which I like, and there were moments that I got into, but I wasn’t overly thrilled with them.

Willie, unfortunately, got the short end of the sound check stick. Although we were pretty far in the back of the crowd, there were repeated shouts of “Turn it up! Turn it up!” but to no avail. We headed to the merch store, I bought two Flaming Lips CDs to gear up for Sunday’s show, and we headed home.

Fortunately, this time, we found a place to park for free, although it involved about a two mile hike, which is always fun after standing on your feet for hours. But it is better than paying $34 for parking, which we had done the night before in an effort to save time and not mess with the hassle of parking downtown. And, for anyone that might come across this site for future ACL Festivals, we parked at One Texas Plaza. I had a tough time finding that information on the net myself.

Nickel Creek. Amazing musicians. We got there right as they were starting to play, after a somewhat arduous trek to even get there. We wound up paying $30 or so to park both of our cars. The poor wife had to drive down all the way from DFW! She didn’t arrive until Los Lonely Boys, who also put on an impressive show. That was followed by an overpriced, albeit good, dinner. Then we watched John Mayer for a couple of songs, then trekked across Zilker Park to see Van Morrison. Both of them put on a good show. It was a very good start to the weekend. And the weather was near perfect.

The funniest moment of the night was the fairly well drunk guy standing directly behind me right before Los Lonely Boys that kept shouting back to them when they talked to the crowd, and slurring everything. One lady was so upset she told him “One quick punch and I could flatten you,” to which he said “WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO LOS LONELY BOYS I’M NOT LONELY LOS LONLEY BOYS I’M FROM AUSHTIN! (Aushtin because he was slurring everything). It was annoying at first, and it became really funny, really quickly. I wish I would have videotaped it.

One more thing, which I did film. Nickel Creek did a cover or Britney Spears’ Toxic. It was awesome.

My author friend Mr. Whittington pointed me to this web gem. Videosift sifts videos from Google, Youtube, Yahoo, and lots of other places, allowing you the viewer to vote on what gets promoted. It’s a nice way to see what’s popular without having to sift through all the crap yourself. Not that nine-tenths of the stuff out there isn’t crap already, but it’s still fun to watch, right?