Bound by a Wild Desire, I Breathed In a Cloud of Dust

By David Pyndus

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Couldn’t Stand the Weather” blared on the radio hours before the Austin City Limits Music Festival was due to start, accompanying the fear of rain, flash floods and potential tornados, as a wide and mean Hurricane Rita ravaged Texas. Rita’s shifting eye tilted eastward to hug the Louisiana border, and Beaumont, TX and Lake Charles, LA were struck, while Austin was (woefully) spared a single drop of moisture. Instead, 65,000-plus attendees were greeted by record-breaking highs (108 degrees on the final afternoon) on three cloudless days. Blue skies produced occasional cooling breezes that served to whip up throat-clogging, eye-drying dust.

High temps seemed to have little effect on the contingent of bands from the United Kingdom. Coldplay was the Big Deal headliner, and besides playing velvety ballads like “Speed Of Sound,” “Yellow” and “Clocks,” they felt compelled to cover Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire” -- perhaps as an homage to the blistering days.

Twenty hours earlier, during the Frames' feisty set in the midday sun, singer/guitarist Glen Hansard also led the crowd through an acapella “Ring Of Fire,” at least for a couple verses, before the listless crowd’s croak failed to inspire a full sing-along. The #2 pride of Dublin, the Frames are redeemed by the band’s all-but-the-kitchen-sink attitude and violinist Colm MacConlomaire, whose hollow body fiddle elevates Hansard’s songs above standard bar band epics. Unable to get a flight connection due to Hurricane Rita, Hansard announced that the band drove down from Dallas, a two-hundred-mile trip, in a record-breaking two hours. “I feel like I’m still in the car,” said a buzzing Hansard, who halted the group’s second song, after realizing he was rushing the melody on his guitar. He composed himself, took a breath, and the band played on, slightly calmer for the moment.

Far better than the buzz acts was Manchester’s Doves, a powerful fest closer if there ever was one, though like the Frames, they played midday. While it was difficult to appreciate the Doves light show during the 2:30 p.m. glare, its hard edged Motown sound came through with slightly looser textures.

Likewise the Arcade Fire, this year’s darlings, came outta nowhere (well, Canada) to command thousands in the heat when less than a year ago they played a downtown punk club. The motley Montreal group, somewhat noble sounding with violins and a French horn, switched instruments occasionally, and Régine Chassagne took over lead vocals from husband Win Butler on “Haiti” (the country Chassagne’s family fled in the 60s). One week earlier, while playing in New York, David Bowie joined them onstage during their encores, and they returned the favor in Austin by closing their set with Bowie’s “Five Years.” It probably wasn’t on Butler’s mind, but next year the ACL fest turns five Years old (if only the fest could be shifted down on the calendar five weeks).

Other musical highs and meteorological notes, alphabetically:

- Asleep at the Wheel’s impassioned rendition of Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927,” presented by Ray Benson as a plain spoken recounting of Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans (which sent 4,000 evacuees to Austin, a few of whom attended the fest). Benson did not sound resigned like Newman, instead offering the lines, “Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline / Louisiana, Louisiana / They’re tryin’ to wash us away” as more a statement of fact, with mournfulness provided by his guitar and the band’s fiddle.

- Roky Erickson, psychedelic pioneer of 13th Floor Elevators fame, returned to the stage after a generation away from performing a full set and showed that he can perform not only competently but also movingly. Accompanied by the Explosives, Erickson’s standards were there, from scary numbers like “Creature With the Atom Brain” and the perfect opener “Cold Night For Alligators” to “You’re Gonna Miss Me” and his opus “Starry Eyes” after which Erickson asked the crowd: “What do y’all think of this weather tonight? It’s baffling.”

- Franz Ferdinand, last year’s darlings who returned from Glasgow to attract one of the bigger crowds of the fest. The band’s sound, musically equivalent to The Cars new wave synths, will implode after the next album or two, but until that time, Take…Me… Out. And again. A vapid, fun crowd pleaser for parents and their kids.

- Buddy Guy, fresh from jamming with the Rolling Stones in Chicago, walked on stage like a field marshal surveying both his band and the crowd with a judicious eye, and promptly wowed with songs from his new album. This included a stirring 20-minute blues to open and a cover of Otis Reddings’ “I’ve Got Dreams To Remember” (suggested, he said, by John Mayer). The blues never sounds better coming from a man who plays a polka dotted Strat. As Guy typically puts it: “C’mon Austin… shit!”

- Kaiser Chiefs were truly melodic with big propulsive drums and hummable melodies. No wonder “I Predict A Riot” is a UK hit. When singer Ricky Wilson asked the crowd to raise their hands in the air, everyone did in perfect choreography like a scene from Woodstock. But they did not smell each other’s arm pits.

- Bob Mould’s rock return, opening with the first three songs from his indie rock masterpiece “Copper Blue." Stage left, a grey-haired man in a straw hat danced with his teen daughter to the Husker Du classic, “Hardly Getting Over It,” while Mould played some of the thickest chords heard in the park. New songs “Paralyzed” and “I Am Vision, I Am Sound” were great too. Drummer Brendan Canty sweat so much that he leaned against a wooden fence after leaving the stage as if he needed an infusion.

- Spoon’s triumphant hometown return after months on the road supporting Gimme Fiction, playing to those who could not get into their last sold out club show. Naturally, the band opened with a two-fer from the past, a scorching “Small Stakes” that segued into “Fitted Shirt” without missing a beat. Strange weather comment made by singer/guitarist Britt Daniel: “It’s windier than I remember.”

- Lucinda Williams, who veered from a standard fest set to perform three powerful new songs, from what promises to be a bold new album that encompasses country and rock. She dedicated “Crescent City” to troubled Louisiana residents/evacuees. Wearing a tee shirt with a peace sign, she yelled “Fuck politics!” before her last song.

Other than swirling rings of dust, minor disappointment came from the understandable no-shows, forced by flight cancellations throughout the region (a list that included Kathleen Edwards, Nine Black Alps, Tegan and Sara, and several others). Twisted troubadour Bobby Bare, Jr., pulled a double shift over two days to help fill the gaps, and other surprise bands (let’s hear it for Deadboy and the Elephantmen!) filled in commendably. The biggest loss was former Detroit R&B singer Bettye LaVette, who at age 59 has released one heck of an album called I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise with gritty covers of Sinead O’Connor, Dolly Parton and Lucinda Williams.

Mould put in all in perspective on his Web site, as he described driving to Austin: “We traveled through hours of rain, and had to pull off the highway at times… Very little civilian traffic. Convoys of all types were heading into the storm: military personnel, Budget box trucks with Red Cross signage attached, electrical repair trucks... A surreal day. We arrived in Dallas late in the evening - to a hotel filled with evacuees and a Trekkie convention! What a combination. This was one of those days that can only happen on a rock tour.”

Or in Austin, where no rain and scorching heat sometimes made for more of an endurance test than a music fest. As a KGSR-FM deejay said on the air when it was over: “When I talk, does dust come out of my mouth?”