City Limits’
decides to woo
rock ’n’ roll fans
By Thor Christensen THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
On its 30 th birthday, Austin City Limits is getting a new personality.
Gone, for the most part, will be the country acts that have been a staple of the PBS show since the 1970s.
This year’s lineup — to debut next Saturday — reads more like Spin’s table of contents: the Flaming Lips, the Pixies, Wilco, Elvis Costello, the Polyphonic Spree.
The driving force behind the change is the growing popularity of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which in three years has grown substantially. This year’s event — held last weekend — drew an estimated 200,000 people.
That’s a far cry from the TV show, a lowkey concert program taped in a 450-seat TV studio at the University of Texas.
By booking many of the same rock acts that play the festival, though, the TV show is courting a new crowd, said Terry Lickona, the program’s longtime producer.
‘‘We’re exposing the TV show — the brand, whatever you want to call it — to a much younger audience,’’ he said. ‘‘Until recently, they might have thought, Austin City Limits is that show my parents watch.’’’
Lickona has booked acts for the show 27 of its 30 years. At 56, he has more in common with older, Waylon Jennings-loving viewers than with the teens who attended the festival to see Dashboard Confessional and Franz Ferdinand.
But he’s adamant that the show, to survive, must attract younger viewers.
In a recent interview, Lickona talked about Austin City Limits:
• On musical changes at the show:
"The easiest way for me to answer the questions about ‘Why?’ is one word: evolution. I’ve always tried to push the show further than what people would let me. I think that’s necessary to survive. Branching out musically has given the show a cool, hip edge — even though I felt it had a cool, hip edge in the first place. . . . I’m pretty much open to booking anything these days, including urban music.’’
• On the shrinking role of country music:
"This will be the first year in the history of the show that we have not had a ‘country’ act. . . . I’m not going to book country music just for the sake of booking it, and, frankly, I feel the state of country music today is pretty pathetic.’’
• On the relationship between the TV show and the festival:
"Not that we’re obsessed with going after the younger demo, but we know there are younger fans out there that appreciate our show, and part of it is tied into the success of the ACL festival. . . . And I think the festival has managed to capture and maintain the vibe of the show, even though it has the trappings of a big rock festival.’’
• On some of the late legends who’ve played the TV show:
"Ray Charles did our show in season five, my second year as producer — and, to me, that validated that Austin City Limits had arrived. . . . Johnny Cash (1988) came up to me and said he thought it was the best television performance he’d ever done, which is the highest compliment because he’d done a lot of television over the years. . . . Roy Orbison in ’82 was one of those spine-tingling shows — the audience was practically levitating when he opened his mouth and that angelic voice come out of such an unlikely body.’’
• On Stevie Ray Vaughan:
"Stevie Ray died six months after he taped his second of two performances on the show, and he was so much at the peak of his powers during that last show it made it that much more tragic. As Eric Clapton put it later: His body was a channel for something that was coming from somewhere else. The first Stevie Ray show seemed like it would never end. He was pretty high that night, and he was so paranoid he felt like everything he was doing was bad. He kept wanting to go back on and do everything over again. We let him up to a point: After about two or 2½ hours, either we convinced him everything was fine, or we told him we ran out of tape. I can’t remember which line we used.’’
• On Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan:
"They’re on the top of the list of people who’ve still never done the show. I’ve talked to everybody but Bob Dylan — his manager, his publisher, people at his label, people in his band — and they’re all very supportive. Everybody says, ‘Look, Bob is just weird.’ . . . With Bruce Springsteen, I really don’t understand. I’ve got to believe he’s hip to our show, but to this day, I’ve never been able to get his manager to return a phone call.’’
Austin City Limits
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Interesting changes. But not so huge as they may seem. Austin City Limits has always had an eclectic group of performers. One reason I like the show is you never know who, or what kind of act, will be performing. Elvis Costello is hardly "rock and roll" much anymore. They've always had plenty of non-country acts. It's still going to be plenty good. I wouldn't be surprised to see some traditional country artists sneaking in there anyway, since it seems it's the "contemporary" country that the producer doesn't care for. Vive la change! (OK, my French stinks... 
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