Your typical evening commute may sound different on Thursday. At 5 pm on September 6, KGSR will switch to a new name — and a new sound.
On September 6, Austin City Limits Enterprises announced it is licensing the famous name to the radio station, transforming KGSR into Austin City Limits Radio. Like KGSR, which is still owned by Emmis Communications, the newly minted ACL Radio will air on 93.3 FM and 97.1 FM in the Austin area and worldwide at ACL-Radio.com.
True to its namesake, the radio station's rebrand will include music programming more in line with the Austin City Limits television show and its other co-branded entities: Austin City Limits Music Festival and ACL Live at the Moody Theater. (Think Willie Nelson, Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran, Kacey Musgraves, and Gary Clark Jr. all showing up on the same shuffle.)
"The premise of Austin City Limits Radio is one that reflects how people actually listen to music in the on-demand digital age," said Emily Parker, program director of Austin City Limits Radio 93.3 and 97.1 KGSR, in a release. "There will be no format limits. Just as our audience’s personal playlists may include everything from alternative to pop, country to hip-hop, and everything in between, so will the music mix we craft on ACL Radio."
But a different sound doesn't mean Austin is losing KGSR's classic events like Blues on the Green and Unplugged At The Grove. Instead, said the release, the station will continue producing these signature events while also "honoring the station’s longstanding commitment to raise funds and awareness for a variety of causes."
For Austin City Limits, the foray into radio allows it to further shape, and perhaps somewhat protect, the city's music scene. Calling it a "natural" step, Tom Gimbel, general manager of Austin City Limits added: "To partner with another of Austin’s great music beacons in KGSR, one with a 28-year history in the market, is an incredible opportunity to enrich our local airwaves and serve the Austin community.”
In the spirit of this collaboration, the station is launching the Dell Music Lounge, which airs its inaugural performance on September 8 with Leon Bridges. Bridges, who has previously performed at ACL Music Fest and ACL Live at the Moody Theater, and on Austin City Limits, will be the first artist to appear on all four ACL platforms.
Mayor Steve Adler will ceremoniously "flip the switch" at 5 pm on September 6 during a special party at Arlyn Studios in South Austin. The first song? Willie Nelson's "Whiskey River," which was performed on the pilot episode of Austin City Limits in 1974.
Only in Austin does recording in a tin can create excellent sound. Specifically, this "tin can" is a 1955 Spartan Imperial Mansion trailer, a spacious mobile home converted into a relatively cramped studio. But the unconventional setup is no match for producer and engineer James Westley Essary.
Essary and his videographer brother, Brantley, have been using the space to build up their inner circle of musicians, capturing intimate performances in professional recordings available on YouTube. Live From The Tin Can premiered its second season on April 15, 2024, and is looking forward to a long string of diverse performances to come. Right now listeners can enjoy Ron Gallo, David Ramirez, Vondré, John Calvin Abney, Angel White, and more on the YouTube channel.
First up this season was Worn-Tin (an amazing coincidence of a name), performing "Hard Ease," "Bitter," and "Kid Changed," a pleasantly lackadaisical series of alt-rock romps, somehow squeezing in two drum sets. Worn-Tin, like many other artists this season on the YouTube series, performed live at South by Southwest in March. The festival, along with the concurrent Luck Reunion, brought a wealth of artists to the Live Music Capital, so the Tin Can crew took advantage of the easy scheduling.
"South By's website is actually a great way to find out who was coming into town," says Brantley. "So we started thinking about things like, what is what is their sound like? What is their performance like, and will that translate into our space? ... [We] just started contacting managers: 'Hey, do you have a free morning, free afternoon? Want to come by?' The sessions only take about a couple of hours."
Although the Essarys are hoping to get more national acts into the Tin Can to boost views, their hope is that over time they can narrow their focus back to local artists. (The series premiere featured Austin band Kelly Doyle.) Beyond the view counts, these recordings are mutually beneficial; Artists don't just get exposure, but lasting high-quality recordings for free, and the brothers get to build a portfolio. Westley, who just goes by his second name in conversation, appreciates the stylistic challenge.
Producer and engineer James Westley Essary does the auditory impossible.Photo courtesy of Live From The Tin Can
"I get to create a little calling card, [and] they get a way to push their new record when they're rolling through town and on tour," says Westley. "As you put out records you get pigeonholed ... I want to make a punk record, and I want to make a metal record. I want to make a country record. So it allows me to be able to dabble in whatever I want — whatever we book in the studio."
Making these connections was Westley's main goal in creating the series during the pandemic. It'd been a loose idea at the producer's prior studio, with occasional shoots for social media. As we all remember, 2019 was not famous for its sense of urgency. But when the studio was "sold out from under" Westley in October, he got tired of hopping from one rental to another.
He bought the trailer in December 2019 and spent the following year working on it. The end of his work coincided with Brantley's desire to move back to Austin from Seattle, so the returning brother provided the property to park the trailer on. The rest was good, old-fashioned pandemic restlessness.
The Tin Can in all its metallic glory.Photo courtesy of Live From The Tin Can
"When you're on the road all the time, you're meeting new bands every day, because you have a different opener or something," says Westley. "And I was like, 'How can I bring that to me?' It's a lot of fun when there's not really any money involved. You're not dedicating a ton of time, necessarily, to it. Bands come here, they have a really great time, [and] it's really nice to be able to host them."
Of course, recording in such a small space has its challenges. Most of the solution was in arranging; not the music, but the musicians. Placing everyone just right minimizes the bleed of certain instruments into other microphones, and as long as the singer stays relatively still, the drums — the biggest culprit — mostly keep their sound to themselves.
Some issues are also fixed with slightly quieter playing, unintentionally creating a sort of sonic brand for the series. It's not all bedroom pop, but the combination of a cozy recording environment and slightly restrained volume makes for some homey performances. This also works nicely for Westley — isn't that happening a lot? — who says he usually prefers listening at home to watching in a crowd.
Still, live recordings add a certain spice to the music. Many music fans will attribute it to the organic mystery of musicians clicking together, but Westley thinks there's something else at play. There's no substitute for practice, and by the time musicians are making live recordings, they've probably played the song live dozens or even hundreds of times. That allows for improvements on the original ideas — sometimes ones that originated in the studio at the time of the first recording.
Ron Gallo squeezes into the Tin Can.Still from Live From The Tin Can
It's also an easy way to make additional income without writing more, he says. Brantley points out that live music has always been at the core of the business.
"Live music has been at the top for forever," says Brantley. "Now we've got artists selling out huge arenas. They're competing with the NFL; They're not competing with movies or TV as much anymore. ... So I love the opportunity to not just record live music, but also film it. You're getting a full experience of both the really compelling live recording [and] even more compelling video to watch them in their element — really playing it live rather than just in a box in the studio."
The next frontier for the Tin Can crew will be hosting live shows onsite. Westley will be in the trailer recording while the band plays outside, and eventually Brantley might start capturing video, too. Also down the pipeline are audio-only live recordings, so listeners can enjoy the tunes without relying on YouTube.
One episode featuring NOBRO from Montreal, Quebec, is out now, with more to come. Next up is Evangeline from Los Angeles. Follow along with Live From The Tin Can ("Like and subscribe," says Brantley with a smile) on YouTube.