Archive - Sep 9, 2008

Bookended by two city festivals (Bumbershoot and Austin City Limits) September's musical options always tend to be a little better than most other months. While ACL is an easy event for us to attend due to proximity, Seattle's Bumbershoot is just a bit out of driving distance, which explains why we've never been. This year's line-up was almost enough to get us there, though. If ACL didn't feature many of the similar artists (and we weren't broke) we would've added it to this year's list of BOT-attended festivals. Between Beck, !!!, Death Cab For Cutie, The Black Keys, Xavier Rudd, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, Man Man, The Whigs, Dan Deacon, and a host of others, a trip to the coffee capital for a weekend of amazing music seemed right up our alley.

Band of Horses have been on top of my must-see list for quite some time now. We were supposed to catch them in Austin awhile back, but ended up sleeping on purchasing tickets, and the show sold out. When the ACL line-up came out, we were thrilled to see them just a few names away from the headliners. Their albums, Everything All The Time and Cease To Begin, have been in heavy rotation at BOT HQ for the past couple months, getting me ready for their live performance. Since they're a young band, though, their catalog is limited to just those two albums, so any appearance of new material is a welcome treat. Last weekend at Bumbershoot, Band Of Horses took the opportunity to run through one of their new works, the tentatively titled "Trudy." A nice slower tune that shows off the vocal work of frontman Ben Bridwell, as well as his skill on harmonica, the new song continues with the same feel of 2007's Cease To Begin. With Band Of Horses playing through some of their new material, we've got our fingers crossed for the speedy delivery of a third album.

While the Foo Fighters have top billing on Sunday night of Austin City Limits, to me they are more of an after-show to the true headliner, Band Of Horses. Only a few more weeks!