FOOS, RACONTEURS, ROBERT PLANT HELP AUSTIN CITY LIMITS ACHIEVE RECORD ATTENDANCE

The Foo Fighters, Beck, The Raconteurs, Robert Plant, Fogerty and Gnarls Barkley help Austin City Limits to record attendance.

With a lineup that featured The Foo Fighters, Beck, Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, Gnarls Barkley, David Byrne, John Fogerty and a wealth of other amazing musicians, it’s no wonder 2008’s version of the Austin City Limits Music Festival enjoyed record attendance. Held over 3 days from September 26th-28th in Zilker Park in the heart of Austin, Texas, Austin City Limits can easily stand with Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Coachella as one of the best music festivals America has to offer. With rabid music fans filling the park over the weekend music enthusiasts were treated to a diverse range in music from up and coming bands like MGMT, Vampire Weekend, Silversun Pickups and Band of Horses to legends like Robert Plant, David Byrne and John Fogerty to rock bands like The Foo Fighters, The Mars Volta and Flyleaf to crowd favorites Erykah Badu, N.E.R.D., Robert Earl Keen and The Swell Season, to name just a few of the over 130 bands who graced the stages.

We caught up with Brendan Benson of The Raconteurs to get his thoughts on performing at The Legendary Austin City Limits Music Festival.

“I love it. I’m not sure… I mean it’s just one of those festivals. It’s kind of legendary. It’s kind of historical in a way. The people down here seem to really, really dig music a whole lot, which is very cool and almost kind of rare. Austin is just a blast. I think it’s up there for sure.”

We also talked with Chan Kinchla and Ben Wilson of Blues Traveler, who have recorded a few albums in Austin, Texas to get their thoughts on Austin being a second home for the band and why it’s so special for musicians to perform there.

[Kinchla] “Austin’s actually become the second home for Blues Traveler.” [Wilson] “Well the first home for me (laughs)” [Kinchla] “About ten years ago we started coming down here to work on rehearsals, and we’ve done an album down here and come down here for about four or five different sojourns, two albums, So we’ve actually got to be – second sons of Austin. Ben is the first son – So, Austin, the reason why we come down is the environment for music and the way they treat musicians, and just the great music all around. It’s a very inspiring place, so to have a festival like this right in the middle of Austin pushes it over the top.”

We also talked with Sameer Bhattacharya of Flyleaf to get his thoughts on being excited to perform at Austin City Limits.

“When we were approached to be a part of Austin City Limits, I was very excited. It’s a very historic thing here. It’s a part of Austin. When you are playing you can get the feel of what the crowd is feeling. They’ll let you know if they like it or not, you know?”

Just a few other bands to perform at ACL in 2008 were Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band , Manu Chao, G Love, Galactic, Hot Chip, Slightly Stoopid, Against Me, Tegan and Sara, Gillian Welch, Alejandro Escovedo and Jakob Dylan and the Gold Mountain Rebels.