Oh, sure, you can go check out Molly Ledford: Songs, the new song blog from Lunch Money songwriter extraordinaire Molly Ledford. 'Cuz, yeah, there are lots of cool songs there. But my favorite unreleased track from Molly thus far isn't even on the blog. It's called "Tap Dancer" -- you can watch and listen to it below. Molly notes that it won't be on the upcoming Lunch Money disk Original Friend but that "it will be on something eventually."
I really dig the bluesy turn the bridge takes. And I think more kids songs should use the word "Arabesque." I should use the word "Arabesque."
Molly Ledford (Lunch Money) - "Tap Dancer"
So I've talked a lot about Austin Kiddie Limits and the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival generally. (Need proof? Here's Day 1, part 1, Day 1, part 2, Day 2, and Day 3.)
I thought I'd wrap up my coverage with a few final thoughts and suggestions for improvement about the AKL stage, plus add a few pictures.
1. The revised stage configuration of this year's AKL stage was an improvement. Less sound bleeding from the Xbox 360 stage next door meant that the AKL artists were never drowned out. Yay! And maybe it was just my imagination (or possibly the cooler weather), but the new layout seemed blessed with more shade.
2. It's still too loud between sets. Lord knows we're big fans of Romeo and his BBoy City crew (quite possibly Miss Mary Mack's favorite part of the festival this year), but they're forced to crank the volume to a point that it drives all the families away from the stage. Perhaps next year they can swap the dance stage and the pottery/kefia tents so that it's pretty close to the stage and the volume can be reduced.
3. There are probably points where the sound on the AKL stage during sets can be reduced -- I could hear 23 Skidoo's set close to half a mile away as we were crossing Lady Bird Lake.
4. Moving on to the weather -- I will gladly take a chance of (or actual) rain in return for cooler weather. I'm so glad that the festival's been gradually pushed back into October and am happy to see it further pushed back to the second week of October (Oct. 8-10, 2010) next year.
5. The guest sets have been really cool, and I'd love to see them used even more to drive families to see bands they wouldn't have seen otherwise. That was the case for me with K'Naan on Friday. I also got a chance to meet Ben Sollee backstage briefly on Sunday before heading back to Arizona, and based on this clip of Sollee covering "Wild World" later that day, I have a feeling that if I'd seen him at the AKL stage playing his cello, I'd have been sure to see him later that day on a bigger stage. (Though it should be noted, I did see him playing with Abigail Washburn the year before.)
6. The fact that the AKL stage hosted both K'Naan and Ben Sollee, both Mr. Leebot and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, speaks to the fact that the stage can handle a fair amount of diversity, which is somewhat reflective of the ACL Festival as a whole. There's obviously only so much diversity you can have when you've got just 8-10 acts playing a set or two, but I encourage Tor to continue mixing it up as much as possible.
7. Can these festivals really be done with families? Well, it's definitely hard work, but if you're willing to sacrifice some of your own needs (sorry, Karen O, maybe next time), you can definitely see a lot. I'm conflicted because I have to balance my own musical tastes with that of my kids with my need to cover the festival (and the AKL stage in particular) on the press pass with the fact that my family lives in Austin and I want to see them, too. Sometimes I felt like I did none of those things well. But the AKL stage is situated about as well as it can be to serve as a base station for families exploring the festival. (And, hey, there's always babysitters.)
8. Finally, thanks to everyone at C3, particularly Tor, for making the AKL stage (and the press area) run so smoothly. Hope everyone reading got a good sense of the weekend of fun... Pictures after the jump...
I know, I know -- I was so diligent about posting my thoughts about Day 1 of the Austin City Limits Festival 2009 (or at least the Austin Kiddie Limits portion thereof).
And now it's a full 48 hours later after Saturday's Day 2 mudfest, and I still haven't posted my thoughts. So let's get moving, eh?
We did get an earlier start on Saturday morning, and found a parking spot fairly quickly, but even so, we pretty much only caught the last 2 songs of Mr. Leebot's AKL debut. Lee was energetic, trying to get the rained-upon crowd moving.
Did I forget to mention it was raining? That it rained for, oh, most of Saturday? That I would still prefer my music festivals rainy and cool than hot and dry? Well, I would.
Mr. Leebot - "Robot Dance"
As I noted to Lee later that weekend, although it was raining for his set, nobody was flinging mud at him a la Green Day circa Woodstock '94.
Then it was time to get lunch, so we moved out to the Food Court (mmmm... cones from Hudson's on the Bend) and, desirous to get out of the rain, after we ate we went to the Wildflower Center stage, which besides having a really good set of artists has a solid roof. We enjoyed 30 minutes of a (not literally) roof-raising set from the Gospel group the Soul Stirrers (Sam Cooke's old band), then made our way back to the AKL stage.
Walking back to the AKL stage from behind the stage, you would have been forgiven if you thought that it was a guest artist set. The music from Quinn Sullivan did not sound like it should be coming from someone who could have gotten in free with a paying adult. Not kids music, but pretty amazing. Packed crowd, and when Sullivan said, "This was cool -- I hope I get to do this next year," I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought, "Yeah, on one of the other, bigger stages."
Then we stuck around for Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, who I was eager to see. Skidoo brought a full compliment for the show including his daughter Saki, performing on stage and not fazed in the least by the crowd out there. Good set, though I'm wondering if maybe the bass was a bit loud -- as we left after the set early so that my wife and the kids could go home early with the Official Brother of Zooglobble, we could hear "Gotta Be Me"... from about a third of a mile away.
Secret Agent 23 Skidoo - "I Like Fruit"
Secret Agent 23 Skidoo - "Sleepover"
After I came back across the bridge after dropping off my family with my brother, I was hoping to see more, but Lunch Money's set had started late, and between that and the rain, traipsing off throughout the rest of the festival seemed more of a pain than was worthwhile considering I had to leave shortly for another engagement.
Lunch Money worked harder than probably any other band at working through the "this is what you do in this song to be interactive" motions. Here they solicited foods that did the kids wrong, right, and had never been tried. You sort of take for granted that people know how to act at concerts, but those are learned traits, and it's just as important to learn the rock show rules of the road than the children's theatre rules of the road.
Lunch Money - "Ate Too Much of My Favorite Food"
If I have one regret from the Lunch Money sets it's that I didn't hear them play many of their quieter songs. Having said that, live, the band rocks harder than on record. Watch out Rush, the band's looking to claim your power trio crown.
Sad to have missed Milkshake's second set (though I did hear a song as I dashed back at one point to collect our stuff) and Ralph's World first set. Not to worry, though, Ralph was playing Sunday....
Day 1 of the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival is in the books, and what did we learn? Apparently leaving a little later, great weather, and threats of rain for the rest of the weekend makes parking in downtown Austin a lot harder to find. As opposed to getting downtown around 11 AM, we got there around 12:30 PM, and it took us a good 20 minutes to find parking. By the time we actually found a spot, walked to Republic Park, took the shuttle, got our wristbands, and found our bearings in the media tent, it was 2:00 PM. So, sorry, Stoosh! Our bad, Paul Green School of Rock All Stars (I've seen you plenty, though)! And really sorry to have missed The Telephone Company. Maybe Sunday, guys!
But even with missing half of Friday's Austin Kiddie Limits stage, we still had a good time. They've changed the layout this year, so that the stage is on the east end of the area, facing (north)west, and the whole layout seems shadier. Or maybe it was just the 74-degree weather. Anyway, we got there in plenty of time to see Milkshake take the stage. They put on a good 25-minute-or-so set, mostly stuff from their new album Great Day, along with some older material.
One of the things I like about AKL (and ACL in general) is that artists do feel the need to step up their game a bit. So I don't know if Milkshake normally brings a couple dozen inflatable baseball beach balls for "Baseball" (they probably do), or if the band brings graying wigs for "When I'm Old," but it just shows the band's trying. Also, Milkshake in particular, with six folks in the band, sounds good live on stage. Kids on the ground seemed to enjoy it.
Milkshake - "When I'm Old" (Live)
Milkshake - "Enemies" (Live)
After Milkshake was a brief set from K'naan, which I couldn't pay full attention to because I was shuttling Little Boy Blue from activity to activity (including green punk hairdo), but I really liked.
K'naan - "Take a Minute" (Live) (for what it's worth, there were a fair number of kids, despite what the uploader says)
Then Lunch Money. It's OK, guys, you do indeed rock. Lots of dancing and a good-sized crowd (for AKL, anyway). They're also getting really good at incorporating crowd participation into their songs. Here's a new(-ish) song, with a couple more familiar ones to follow:
Lunch Money - "Spicy Kids" (Live)
Lunch Money - "Are You a Rabbit?" (Live)
Lunch Money - "Roller Coaster" (Live)
OK, there's more to talk about, but it's time to head back to Zilker Park before the skies open up.
It has been a long, at times frustrating, day. New music from Lunch Money, a song that features the phrase "fortress of solitude," makes it ever so slightly less long and frustrating. (And I - duh! - forgot to mention that the video is Gwyneth's.)
Lunch Money - "Come Over To My Dollhouse" (Live at Sirius-XM)
Everything I like about Molly Ledford and the awesome band she leads, Lunch Money, can be summed up, I think, in that photo to the left, which Molly titled "cookie eclipse of the head." The self-effacing nature, the humor, the goofiness, the well-thought out design -- all of which Lunch Money and that picture have in spades.
So without any further ado, here's Molly on the first time she was banned from singing something, her peppy song about a horror movie from the '70s, and why having fun (and looking like it) is an important part of being in Lunch Money. There is also some gauntlet-throwing, so please watch your heads.
Zooglobble: What music did you listen to growing up?
My parents always had records playing - Paul Simon, Roberta Flack, Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Ray Charles, Kingston Trio, The Spinners, Vince Guaraldi. Most of it I enjoyed, except that I think I got subjected to Barbra Streisand's Guilty (the Barry Gibb collaboration) a few too many times on long trips to Pennsylvania. In the car, my brother and I would perk up when Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" would come on the radio. Or the chorus of British children singing in Pink Floyd's "The Wall." Or I even remember being delighted by Monty Python's "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song on the Radio" with all its funny sound effects. I think kids have always listened to their parents' music and panned for something they could relate to.
But one moment that truly rocked me was the night my dad blasted Meet the Beatles shortly after I had gone to bed (maybe he thought he had headphones plugged in? It was unusually loud....). I think I was about seven at the time. I came running out, enthralled. My parents would not let me play their copy on my own relatively crummy record player, but I luckily found one at my neighbor's garage sale for a quarter. It was totally scratched, and I listened to it over and over. So really I became way more familiar with my personal scratched copy. I could sing along to every skip. I also listened to Casey Kasem's Top 40 every weekend in my room on an old clock radio, and I remember falling into a happy trance when Olivia Newton-John's "Magic" came on the first time.
When did you first start getting interested in writing music (generally, not for kids)?
My mom got me a guitar when I was nine and I took some lessons, but I have to credit my ever-scheming friend around the corner with getting me started on songwriting. One day she said she was writing a song (she was always up to something), so I tried my hand at it too. I came up with something especially for us to perform at the school talent show (we were in 6th grade). For some reason my chorus contained the lines, "I run away and throw away these chains. It doesn't solve my problems, but it helps to ease the pain." But to my surprise, when I gave my mom a sneak peek at my talent show song, she forbade me to play it. So we ended up covering "Take It to the Limit" instead. In high school I really started writing songs (still with angst, this time only semi-imaginary) and have been in bands ever since.
Oh, sure, you can go check out Molly Ledford: Songs, the new song blog from Lunch Money songwriter extraordinaire Molly Ledford. 'Cuz, yeah, there are lots of cool songs there. But my favorite unreleased track from Molly thus far isn't even on the blog. It's called "Tap Dancer" -- you can watch and listen to it below. Molly notes that it won't be on the upcoming Lunch Money disk Original Friend but that "it will be on something eventually."
I really dig the bluesy turn the bridge takes. And I think more kids songs should use the word "Arabesque." I should use the word "Arabesque."
Molly Ledford (Lunch Money) - "Tap Dancer"
So I've talked a lot about 
