During these 27 years, many people have longed to be a part of the experience, sitting in the studio and watching performances that will captured and made timeless by the program. This year, a lot of people got close to that experience as the backers of the show set up for the first Austin City Limits Festival.

Combining local favorites such as Asleep at the Wheel, Jimmie Vaughan and Kelly Willis with out of state acts like Wilco and G. Love and Special Sauce, the festival combined genres, as well as over 75,000 music fans onto the grounds of Zilger Park for a weekend of memories and music.

The only difficult part of the festival was getting in.

The planners of the festival and the City of Austin, really dropped the ball on getting people to, in and from the festival. On the same weekend of the festival, which had free busing to and from the event, the city was providing free buses as a “Polution-Free Weekend” event as well as offering busing to and from the city’s Pecan Festival. With all the overextending of the cities limited public transit, some fans were left to wait up to an hour to catch a bus to the grounds, since there was no parking available on-site.

Once patrons got to the festival, those who needed to purchase tickets, or pick up will call, were treated to another hour-plus wait. This left many fans unhappy and wondering about the uncertainty of attending day two of the event.

Once inside, the frustration quickly lifted as fans were treated to numerous memorable performances.

Local musician Patrice Pike put on one of the more memorable sets with her combination of folk and rock. With all of the national acts that were drawing attention, locals act at the event seemed to be trying their best to represent their hometown as a place for quality music.

The most anticipated set of the first day was that of Wilco. Jeff Tweedy and company are just coming off the release of their latest album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which saw the band take another step away from the roots rock sound of their debut A.M. and moving closer to the experimental-poppy-rock sound they have grasped as of late.

Unfortunately for the band, as well as the fans who had travelled to see the band, Wilco’s newest songs did not translate well to this environment and they felt sterile and detached.

Day one wound down with a feel-good performance by young bluegrass band, Nickelcreek, as well as a closing performance by folky jam band The String Cheese Incident.

As day two arrived, some were weary of waiting in lines for another day and decided to call it a trip and stay in town, but 35,000 tied their shoes and headed off for another day of music and fun.

Those who made the trip on day two were greeted with better organization and waits that were easily a tenth of what they were subjected to on the previous day, which had many already talking about returning for the next year to experience this all over again.

Day two could have easily been called “Ladies Day” as performances by Emmylou Harris, Kelly Willis, Allison Moorer, Shawn Colvin and others flooded the stages and gave the female concert-goers something to shine about.

The Austin City Limits Festival will surely take it’s place as a premiere annual event in Austin, much like SXSW has. Only the Austin City Limits festival will be more for the fan, that the music executives looking for the next big thing. It’s this purity and accessability that will make the Austin City Limits Festival a more memorable event for those who attended it than SXSW will ever be.