Mud, Music, and Memories: A Meandering Look Back at 25 Years of ACL Fest

Nick Allison

I spent a very muddy Sunday at this year’s Austin City Limits Music Festival and came home thinking about a Neil Young and Crazy Horse reunion in 2012, Willie Nelson in New York at ninety-two, a few more Wilco shows than I should probably admit to, how much my kids’ music has influenced mine, and the dawning realization that some things just aren’t made for my demographic… and that I’m okay with it.

When I was in the Army, I was stationed in Hawaii for a few years. Oahu offers some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, from tropical rainforests to sweeping white beaches. When it comes to infantry training, though, you quickly realize the jungles are filled with steep gulches, tangled undergrowth, and giant centipedes that fall out of the trees at night. And mud. During the rainy season it rains most days, and if you happen to be out in the field for a couple of weeks, as a rule, it rains every day, often all day. You march in the mud, you eat in the mud, you work in the mud, you sleep in the mud. You become one with the mud. I can’t say that training did much to prepare me for the arid climate of northern Iraq, where we would deploy in 2004. But one could make the argument that it prepared me for weekend one of the 2026 ACL Fest.

It’s not like you can just up and move a major music festival. The stages are built, the artists are booked, the tour schedules are set, the tickets are sold, and people are flying in from all over the world with hotels already reserved. So when the forecast takes a turn for the wet and the organizers are staring down the barrel of a historic rainstorm, well, the show must go on.

And so, on Sunday, day three of what was quickly being dubbed MudFest, I found myself standing in ankle-deep mud with a faint smell that made me not want to ask too many questions, looking at a lineup that made me feel every one of my forty-six years. I vaguely recognized about ten artists scheduled for that day, could name songs by maybe four or five, and was an actual fan of two. And I only knew one of those because my thirteen-year-old daughter introduced me.

There comes a time in every adult’s life when you realize you’re just not that cool anymore. Luckily for me, I was never really that cool, but I’ve always had a pretty good handle on music. I’ve come to a conclusion, though, that’s probably been obvious to everyone else my age for a long time: music festivals aren’t made for my demographic. And that’s fine, not that you asked.

I’ve lived in the Austin area for most of my life, having moved here with my parents from Houston when I was in elementary school, and in those forty or so years I’ve gotten to see hundreds of live shows. I’ve seen Bob Schneider and the Scabs, James McMurtry, Pinetop Perkins when he was in his nineties, and Gary Clark Jr. when he was still in his teens, at local places like Antone’s and Threadgill’s. I’ve seen bigger touring acts like the Black Keys, the Doobie Brothers, Bright Eyes, Hall and Oates, Jack Johnson, and Joan Jett at larger venues like COTA, the Moody Theater, the Moody Amphitheater, and the Moody Center. (Pretty much every venue in Austin is now named Moody something.) And I’ve been lucky enough to see Willie Nelson at more places than I can count, though “lucky” probably isn’t the right word. As a Texan, it’s actually against the law to miss a Willie concert.

I’ve also been to every ACL Fest since it started except four. I missed the first three, 2002 through 2004, because I was in the Army and either in Hawaii, Thailand, or the Middle East. The logistics didn’t exactly line up. But my parents and sister went to those, and my wife, Tracy, went to the 2004 festival with my family while I was in Iraq. We’d gotten married just before I deployed to Kirkuk, and my family, being the awesome people they are, had Tracy come stay with them for a few months of the fourteen-month deployment and took her to ACL that year. I also missed 2007, because we were in the hospital while Tracy gave birth to our son. Tracy told me I should go anyway, because Bob Dylan was playing, and she knows what kind of pedestal I keep the greatest songwriter of all time on. But that didn’t seem right. I’ve seen Dylan many times over the years. We’ve only had a child twice.

My favorite festival year was probably 2012. For one, it was just an amazing lineup. For another, it was one of the last years my parents went to ACL, maybe the last, as they must have come to the same conclusion I’m coming to now: they only recognized half the bands, liked a handful, and were pretty much over standing in a hot field for three days with seventy thousand people and everything that goes along with it. The parking, the long walk down Barton Springs dodging aggressive vendors and scalpers, the lines and bag searches, the ever-changing rules about what you could bring in, the overpriced beer and water and food, and the long walk back at the end of the night past a street preacher with a bullhorn screaming about eternal damnation, only to sit in your car for an hour trying to get out of a parking garage with everyone else. At some point that was fun, or at least just part of the experience. Now it mostly gives me anxiety.

But in 2012 I was thirty-two and still young enough for the fun to outweigh the anxiety, and it was a great lineup. Not only was it my favorite ACL, it was probably my favorite concert of all time. Neil Young and Crazy Horse co-headlined Saturday night opposite Jack White. Even though I was a huge White Stripes fan and they were “my generation,” we opted for Neil Young, and I’m glad we did.

Like a lot of young people, or at least young people with cool parents, I was heavily influenced by my parents’ generation of music. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I shunned my own. Nirvana, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, Alice in Chains, Oasis, Pavement, and plenty more all remain solidly in the rotation. But I’m just as likely to be listening to the Animals, CCR, Otis Redding, the Beatles, the Stones, Humble Pie, Zeppelin—I should stop. Nobody wants to read me listing off band names for the next hour. But you get the idea. Neil Young, though, always held a special place for me. My parents, especially my dad, who, come to think of it, actually looks a bit like Neil Young, are huge fans, and so am I, and the chance for us to see him together, reunited with Crazy Horse no less, was too good to pass up. No offense, Mr. White. I love you too.

I’ve wondered over the years if the set they played that night was as epically good as I remember it being, or if my lofty opinion of the performance was perhaps helped along by some timely combination of good company, nice weather, alcohol, THC, nostalgia, and expectation. Thanks to the magic of the internet, I can confirm that it was indeed epic. YouTube clips and written reviews exist in abundance to back it up. It was that good, at least for people who are into that kind of thing.

For nearly two hours, Neil Young, Frank “Poncho” Sampedro, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina shared a stage again, and it was grungy, distorted, guitar-driven wizardry. It was perfect. The set opened with no fanfare, the band launching into “Love and Only Love,” and if memory serves, which it does less and less reliably these days, Neil didn’t say or sing a word for six or seven minutes. Just four old friends, most of them pushing seventy, jamming together, getting on the same page. That’s what I remember most from the whole set: the long instrumental stretches where Neil, Poncho, and Billy would form a little triangle facing each other and just play, Ralph blasting out the beat behind them. It was like watching a band that hadn’t toured together in years work out where everybody was in real time, and then, once they’d found it, turn everything up.

The set leaned heavily on songs from Psychedelic Pill, an album that hadn’t even been released yet, and I didn’t mind at all. I know it’s a bit of a trope, and there’s some truth to it, that when a band says, “We’re gonna play some stuff off our new album now,” that’s when everyone takes a bathroom or beer break. I didn’t see anyone doing that, which is saying something, since the new record wouldn’t come out for another couple of weeks. But the songs did their job, apparently, because I ran out and bought it at Waterloo Records on release day, and it’s been in my rotation ever since. It’s definitely a jam record, and unmistakably a Crazy Horse record, with enough distortion to drown a boy band, and, like everything Young does, completely unapologetic. Two songs, “Ramada Inn” and “Walk Like a Giant,” clock in at over sixteen minutes each, and the first track on side one, “Driftin’ Back,” is longer than some entire albums at twenty-seven minutes and thirty-six seconds.

Not that Neil wasn’t going to hit a few classics that night too. “Powderfinger” and “Down by the River” both made the set. One of my favorite moments of the night happened off to stage right, where we were standing. Young drifted to the edge of the stage and noticed an ASL interpreter in the pit, signing “Cinnamon Girl” for deaf and hard-of-hearing fans and visibly feeling it. He played along with her, mirroring her energy, the two of them briefly in their own conversation in front of thousands of people. There was also a short acoustic break, just Neil and a guitar, including “The Needle and the Damage Done,” his song about heroin’s toll on people he knew, among them his friend and former Crazy Horse bandmate Danny Whitten, who died of an overdose the year the song came out. “Needle” is off Harvest, a solo record, so at a Crazy Horse show, I guess technically it was a cover? Can Neil Young cover himself? I’d say yes. Neil can do whatever he wants.

And after all that, there were only a few songs that could close out a Neil Young and Crazy Horse set, and they went with a scorching “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black).” When it ended, all four of them gathered at the front of the stage with their arms around each other’s shoulders, waved to a crowd that cheered for several minutes, and then bowed together. And that was that. Like I said, probably the best live show I’ve ever seen, for a lot of different reasons, some of them maybe unique to me, but plenty universal enough that you’d have a hard time arguing the point if you were there, whoever you are.

My son, who was five years old, was at the Neil Young show too. Technically so was my daughter, I guess, since my wife (and designated driver) was pregnant with her at the time. Either way, my kids have been to pretty much every ACL since they were born, including 2013, when my daughter wasn’t even a year old. Some people might say a music festival is no place for a baby, but we didn’t hang out with those people, so we never heard them say it. They’ve been raised around live music and have the eclectic taste, well beyond their years, to prove it.

While my parents’ music obviously influenced my own taste, and my generation’s music has influenced my kids, one thing they don’t tell you when you have children is how much they’ll influence you, too. I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to be one of those old men who plants his music flag the year he graduates high school and proclaims that everything after it is hot garbage. Jeff Tweedy makes the same case in his book World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music, only blunter: “It’s not that there’s no good music being made. It’s you. You might be getting old.”

I’ve always made a genuine effort to ask my kids about music, what they like, what’s new, what they’re into now, and more often than not, I find it’s actually pretty good, even if it’s different from what I usually seek out. My son, who’s nineteen now, has been a walking encyclopedia of music knowledge and trivia since he was a little guy. Every time I try to play him something I suspect he hasn’t heard, he can usually already tell me the year the album came out. He’s also introduced me to more music I love than most people in my life (MJ Lenderman comes to mind), and other than his mom, I’ve been to more live shows with him than with anyone else. I may not like everything new my kids do, but I’m not supposed to, so that’s okay. Often, though, I’m surprised. Billie Eilish is a talented musician, even if I’m not the target audience, which I’m most definitely not. Tweedy devotes a chapter of that book to her song “I Love You,” which is probably why she came to mind first. But my daughter played her album for me a few years ago, and I liked it even though I was sure I wouldn’t. She keeps her on her favorites playlist right alongside Social Distortion, the Modern Lovers, and Jeff Tweedy himself, so I’d say I must be doing an okay job as a parent so far, not that I should or could take all the credit.

Sunday at MudFest was the first time I can remember that we didn’t do three-day passes, just single Sunday tickets. I don’t remember the reason. Maybe money was tight when they went on sale, which, in this economy, was likely a factor. But for whatever reason, we didn’t buy three-day passes months in advance, before the lineup was even out, like we used to. We waited, and we settled on Sunday largely because my daughter’s current favorite musician was playing that day.

Solya is a young singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Abilene, Texas, who I likely never would have heard of if not for my daughter. She’s taking drum lessons (my daughter, not Solya, as far as I know) and on the way to lessons each Wednesday we play music in the car. Sometimes I’ll play some of my favorites, usually stuff I suspect she isn’t familiar with beyond hearing it in the background around the house, like Silver Jews, Clay Nightingale, or the Modern Lovers, and sometimes she’ll take over DJ duties. A lot of times it’s stuff from my era, Mazzy Star or Weezer, which I’m of course happy about, but I like it even more when she plays something I haven’t heard. One of those times, back in February, it was Solya, and I was like, whoa, she’s good. Genuinely good, not just I-like-this-because-you-like-this good.

My daughter asked if we could go see her live, and I said sure, if she ever comes to Austin, let’s do it. Of course she already had an answer, and informed me that Solya would be here at the end of the month at the 29th Street Ballroom. That room used to be part of Spider House, an eclectic coffee shop slash bar slash art gallery slash poetry slam slash live music venue just north of campus, in a part of town where I spent plenty of nights back in the late nineties and 2000s. I wasn’t sure how I felt about taking a twelve-year-old girl to a bar show, but I’d already said yes. Besides, Solya was only nineteen herself, and her crowd skewed young and female, so I figured it would be okay. Turns out it was more than okay. It was a great all-ages show, and yes, it was packed with mostly teenage and college-age girls, and a much tamer scene overall than some of the bar shows I went to twenty years ago. And it was cool because it was just her and me, something we don’t get to do all that often. We had a blast. I remember telling her she was lucky to see her favorite artist in a 350-seat venue (okay, standing room only, but you get the idea) for like twenty-five bucks, because she’s going to be huge someday, and I suspect it won’t take long. You can just tell.

Fast-forward to whenever it was we bought our ACL tickets this year, and sure enough, Solya was on the lineup for Sunday of weekend one, having apparently graduated from midsize bar venues to one of the biggest music festivals in the world. It just so happened that one of my favorite bands, the War on Drugs, was also playing Sunday, so picking that day out of the three was a no-brainer.

Solya was playing one of the earliest sets of the day, at 1:15, so we got down there ahead of the crowd. Earlier than I can remember ever getting there, and the place was empty compared to what it would look like a few hours later. And it was raining. It had been for a few days, and since this was day three, the grassy fields of Zilker Park had already been churned into a boot-sucking swamp. On the bright side, I suspect the weather kept a lot of people away until later, and my daughter and wife were able to stand right up against the railing for Solya’s set. I stood back a ways, as a middle-aged man should, not wanting to take a front-row spot that a young fan could otherwise have.

Her set was terrific and the sound was good, which isn’t a given in a wide-open muddy field at one in the afternoon. The skies were gray and the wind kept blowing the rain toward the stage, and it gave the whole thing a dark, moody feel that suited her music better than sunshine would have. The best part, though, was watching my daughter at the railing, singing along to every word and loving every second of it.

After Solya’s set, my family scattered for a bit to see other bands I wasn’t interested in. I wasn’t especially interested in the football games that afternoon either, but I went and hung out at the sports tent for a while anyway, if for no other reason than to get out of the rain. I guess it’s officially called the Big Tent, not the sports tent, though that’s what I’ve always called it. It’s a bar and pizzeria, but it also has two big screens in the corner showing whatever college or NFL games are on that day, or playoff baseball. In years past, that’s usually what I’d be there for. ACL’s move to October lined up, roughly, with the Astros’ nearly decade-long run of playoff appearances, and as a lifelong Houston fan, some of my favorite games I’ve ever watched have been in that tent. Folding chairs and fellow Astros fans jammed in on all sides, something close to watching a game at a home stadium, while live music poured in from the stage next door. One night in particular stands out: Game 1 of the 2017 ALCS against the Yankees. Ryan Adams was playing the Miller Lite stage at the same time, and I didn’t want to miss either one. The fates aligned, and I didn’t have to. I stood in the corner of the tent watching the game while he played on the stage right next to us.

Eventually the family found each other again, and we wandered around some in the mud, not really heading to any particular show, just taking in the live music. Dexter and the Moonrocks put on an electric show in the afternoon, but the band I was actually there to see wouldn’t go on until 7:30. The first time I saw the War on Drugs live was when they played the festival in 2012, the same year as the Neil Young and Crazy Horse reunion. They were back in 2022, and they’re consistently one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen. Sunday night was no exception. It was excellent, it was loud, it was amazing, and I’m not a music critic, despite occasionally playing one on the internet, so I’ll leave the in-depth reviews to the more qualified and confident.

We didn’t stick around for the headliners. We beat the crowd and got out of the parking garage without delay for the thirty-minute drive back to the burbs. I know that Twenty One Pilots is a talented duo, and I even like a couple of their songs, but everyone was tired and wet and muddy and not looking forward to sitting in a parking garage until midnight trying to get out with everyone else. With that garage scene awaiting, not even forty-one pilots could have gotten me to stay. But I totally understand why most fans did. Had Wilco been headlining, though, I would have happily sat in the mud a couple more hours and accepted the garage as the price one pays to see a band I love.

If you asked me to name my favorite band or musician, I could do it, but if you asked the same question a month later, you might get a different answer. I’m pretty comfortable at this point narrowing it down to three, though I’m not really sure what the point is. Why do humans feel the need to elevate one thing we like over other, similar things we also like? Favorite movie, best friend, favorite band, best concert… it all seems a little juvenile and arbitrary if you stop and think about it much, which I’m not going to do right now. Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Jeff Tweedy, with or without Wilco. That’s my top three, set in stone, but depending on mood or circumstance or what I’ve listened to recently, the top spot rotates. See? Pointless.

I’ve seen all of them live, Dylan and Tweedy multiple times, Young just the once. Any time Wilco or Tweedy comes to Austin or San Antonio, I’m there. When Wilco took their Winterlude residency on the road in December 2024, I went to all three nights at the Moody Theater. In my defense, they didn’t repeat a single song, so really it was three different shows. I jokingly said to my friend Cynthia, “I just saw Wilco three nights in a row. Does that make me a groupie?” She laughed and said, “No, not unless you’ve crossed state lines to see them.” And of course, not long after that conversation, I was planning a trip to New York to visit Cynthia and Mike, and we already had some rough dates picked out when I happened to notice that Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival, with Bob Dylan, was playing Jones Beach, a short drive from their house, the same weekend I was already planning to be there. Also on the lineup? Yep. Wilco. Shit.

So I crossed state lines. I’d told my daughter I’d take her on a trip once school let out, and she picked New York. Plane tickets were remarkably cheap, we could stay for free with Cynthia and Mike out in Smithtown on Long Island, and I wanted to see them anyway, so off we went. Before we ever made it into the city, we went to Jones Beach and saw Willie, Dylan, Wilco, and Lucinda Williams on the same bill. When Willie, ninety-two years old, sang “Funny How Time Slips Away,” a song he wrote more than sixty years ago, there may have been tears in my eyes. I can neither confirm nor deny. My daughter was twelve at the time. My mom, her grandmother, was twelve in 1968, and I was twelve in 1992. Willie was out there playing both of those years, so in theory, all three of us could have seen him at the same age, three generations and more than half a century apart.

After that, we spent a night in the city, in Greenwich Village, and I let my daughter pick the itinerary. We did everything on her list: the Statue of Liberty, the Stonewall Inn, the Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and MoMA, because she loves art as much as she loves music, and she’s a pretty talented painter herself. Cynthia is big into art too, especially street art, so she took us down to 57 Great Jones Street, where Basquiat lived and worked in a loft he rented from Andy Warhol, from 1983 until his death in 1988. The building is covered in graffiti and street art now, a lot of it in tribute to him, which seems about right for a guy who started out as half of a graffiti duo.

And that November, Tweedy played the Paramount in Austin, solo, and of course I was there. Five times in less than a year, one of them across state lines… I’m afraid that makes it official.

For a couple of years now, we’ve been talking about escaping Texas for a small mountain town in New Mexico, where my parents and my sister’s family live. I still love Austin, but it’s largely outgrown me. These days I long for mountains and open space and less traffic and fewer people more than fancy restaurants or music festivals. With the unceasing crush of people moving here, it can feel a bit hard to breathe sometimes. Part of it is me, too. I quit drinking a few years ago. We don’t go out to eat that often. It’s a cool town for a younger crowd, or at least a different crowd than the one I’m looking for. We still have a few friends here, though not as many these days, since most of the people who used to make up our community have already left, and the rest are looking to, or have at least considered it. But we always said that if we did move, we’d still come back to visit, and since ACL has been part of our lives for more than two decades, October seemed like the obvious time.

I think about what I said at the start, about festivals not being made for my demographic, about not knowing the bands anymore, about this being near the end of the ACL road for me. Then I think about why I’ve kept coming back the last five years or so, and I think maybe I have a few more in me. These thoughts about being done with the crowds and the chaos aren’t new. The real reason I keep coming back isn’t the music. Most of the bands that play ACL are already on tour, and I could see them at a real venue in Austin or a nearby city. The reason I keep coming back is my family. My wife and especially my kids love the festival, and the enjoyment I get out of watching them enjoy themselves and soak up live music is worth the ticket price and the crowded parking garage. My son is an adult now and is considering the military route like I did, but my daughter is only thirteen, so I imagine there are at least four more ACLs in my future before she leaves for college.

Early in “Ramada Inn,” that sixteen-minute song from Psychedelic Pill, Neil sings about a couple who’ve been together for years, who’ve ridden out the good times and the bad. In the first verse, he sings, “So many joys raising up those kids / They moved on now out of town.” It’s a song about a lot of things, but those lines always stick with me. I think about time, how it moves fast and slow and sideways all at once. A busy week goes by in a flash, a long weekend stretches out forever, and two decades can sneak up and vanish before you see them coming. I try to keep that in mind, that it’s a short, fast ride, and faster still if I’m not paying attention to the people and things that actually matter to me. But no matter how much attention I pay, it doesn’t stop. I have one kid who’s already an adult and one who starts high school next year, and before I know it, she’ll be out navigating the world on her own, too.

So even if we move west next summer, which is looking more and more likely, I suspect we’ll be back in Austin for a few days next October, and if my son can join us, so much the better. Who knows, maybe Wilco or Neil will be on the lineup again. It skews younger every year (from my perspective, anyway), but the organizers do occasionally serve something up for us old folks too. And if not, there’ll be some band I’ve maybe never heard of, but my daughter will love them and know every word to every song. To me, that’s worth the drive.

After I finished this piece, I went looking for video of that 2012 Neil Young and Crazy Horse set. I’d seen clips over the years, but I had no idea the whole thing was out there. It is, and it’s below, if you’re interested. And for the record, Neil doesn’t sing a word until five minutes and forty-five seconds in, so my memory wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t too far off…

Nick Allison is a writer and editor based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in Slate, HuffPost, CounterPunch, The Fulcrum, and elsewhere. He secretly enjoys writing his own bio in the third person, probably because it makes him feel a little smarter and more important than he actually is. You can follow him on Substack, if you’re into that sort of thing.