It was in the mid-seventies and sunny in New York City today. Spring is officially back and the music world is on the cusp of festival season. With only a month to go until Governor’s Ball and Bonnaroo following the week after, live music and festival fans across the country have their outfits picked planned out, carpool buddies aligned, and playlists prepared for the epic festival season about to commence.
With all the summertime festivals announced and ready to go, Austin City Limits has been gearing up for their lineup announcement in the recent weeks, building anticipation for the early fall event taking place back-to-back weekends down in Austin. Christmas came early for some however, as the ACL lineup was posted on the festival website briefly before being taken down. Looks like some intern got a little too excited, I remember my first time too.
I’ll start out by saying it’s a great ‘supposed’ lineup. With week one featuring the Foo Fighters, The Strokes, Disclosure, Alabama Shakes, Of Monsters & Men, Sturgill Simpson, Gary Clark Jr., TV On The Radio, Walk The Moon, Father John Misty, Kurt Vile, Lord Huron, Shakey Graves, Leon Bridges, Jose Gonzales, Børns, Ryn Weaver, Halsey, Milo Greene, and Ume.
Weekend two is essentially the same lineup except Florence + The Machine will replace The Strokes.
This is a fantastically strong lineup and will definitely be worth the pilgrimage down to Austin come end of summer. It’s also incredibly male-dominated lineup- seriously, was every female artist busy that weekend or something? It’s an interesting situation, considering that the few female presence that will be playing – Florence, Ryn Weaver, Ume, Alabama Shakes, and The Suffers are all amazing, so why is there such a small presence of female talent over the two weekends, seriously?
I know Texas is pretty old fashioned in the way they do things on the political and social scale, but come on, with the Sharon Van Ettens, Clean Bandits, ASTRs, St. Vincents, Courtney Barnetts, Julia Stones, Alison Wonderlands, Charli XCSs, Angel Olsens of the music world that are dominating the festival lineups this year, you’d there would at least be a bit more diversity when it came to booking. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to start a political movement here via P&W, this years ACL lineup is really solid, but one can’t help but notice, that in this case it’s not about who’s in the lineup, but rather, who is missing.
Article: Tommy Shackleford
