Austin Live Music Venues, Austin Music Events And Austin Concerts

The Austin City Limits studio moved from it's long time home at Studio 6A (which held less than 400 fans) on The University of Texas campus to a new facility at the W Hotel called the Moody Theater in 2010. The longest-running music program in television history and recognized by Time magazine as one of the 10 most influential music programs of all time, the original pilot for Austin City Limits was taped in October of 1974 with Willie Nelson. ACL had its final taping in Studio 6A with Lyle Lovett on November 8, 2010. The Moody Theater is a three-story venue that contains 85,000 square feet of studio space with a capacity of 2,700 people located at the corner of Lavaca and Second streets adjacent to the W Hotel. The stairs leading up to the venue are located on 2nd Street and Lavaca. Besides Austin City Limits television show tapings, the Moody Theater hosts 60 to 100 ticketed shows per year. The free Austin City Limits Tours on Friday mornings have been discontinued and replaced with tours on Monday through Fridays from 11 AM to noon. Tickets for the Austin City Limits tours can be purchased in person at the ACL Live Venue Box Office (open 10AM to 3 PM) or at the Austin Visitors Center located on 209 E. 6th Street. Tours will begin from the ACL Live Venue Box Office located on Willie Nelson Boulevard (West 2nd Street). Tickets are $10 per person or $8 per person for groups of 10 or more. The free Austin City Limits admission for television show tapings will be limited to about 800 fans to keep the more intimate atmosphere of the old studio. Tickets for tapings are free, but getting on the guest list requires connections to sponsors, staff or acts, or winning drawings posted on the Austin City Limits Upcoming Tapings page. Any announcements regarding ticket availability and giveaways for the public will be posted approximately a week before a taping. Free beer is no longer be handed out during tapings of Austin City Limits, one of the famous perks for the old TV audiences. State liquor laws covering the new commercial facility will no longer allow free beer, however bars selling alcoholic beverages will be open during ACL tapings. The garage under the building is for W Hotel guests and condo residents only. Concert-goers must use streetside spaces and parking garages. The City Hall garage and a state garage are all within easy walking distance.

The Austin Jazz Alliance is an umbrella organization connecting jazz musicians, jazz fans and jazz related businesses in Austin and Central Texas. Besides an online pop up radio player playing all local jazz from Austin, Texas, the Austin Jazz Alliance website maintains a very comprehensive list of all jazz events and venues in Austin, a database of jazz musicians and a classified ads section for musicians to buy and sell their equipment and services.

Thought to be the first location in Travis County to sell liquor by the drink, the Continental Club opened on South Congress Avenue in 1957 as a private supper club hosting touring bands like Tommy Dorsey and Glen Miller. During the 1960's, the Continental Club became the first burlesque strip club in Austin featuring performers like Candy Barr and Bubbles Cash. It was during the 1970's that the current reputation of the Continental Club began to be established as performers with guitar driven blues and rock bands such as Joe Ely, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Cobras, Jimmie Vaughan and WC Clark began to appear on a regular basis, as well as punk and New Wave Bands like D-Day, The Skunks, The Butthole Surfers and The Explosives. The current owner, Steve Wertheimer, took over the club in 1987 and remodeled it to resemble the original Continental Club as in appeared in the fifties. The Continental still hosts touring bands like Igor and the Red Elvises, Southern Culture On The Skids, Hank Williams III, Bill Kirchen and Jonathan Richman and some of the most popular Austin home town performers with a variety of music including rock, rockabilly, blues, singer-songwriters and swing. Regular performers on the calendar include Junior Brown, Jon Dee Graham, Toni Price, Alejandro Escovedo, James McMurtry, Dale Watson and the LeRoi Brothers. The Continental is often a great location to spot celebrities both visiting and resident to Austin like Johnny Depp, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Matthew McConaughey and Dennis Quaid. The Continental Club is also home base for a custom car and hot rod shows like the Lonestar Rod and Kustom Roundup in April.

The dates for the 2012 Fun Fun Fun Fest are Friday November 2, Saturday November 3 and Sunday November 4, 2012. Presented by Transmission Entertainment, Fun Fun Fun Fest is an independent genre based annual three day music festival in early November featuring many progressive and underground musicians with a focus on indie rock, punk rock, hardcore and hip hop and DJ music. The first Fun Fun Fun Fest was in 2006 at Waterloo Park in downtown Austin. Fun Fun Fun Fest is now taking place at Auditorium Shores on Lady Bird Lake adjacent to the Palmer Events Center. The 2012 Fun Fun Fun Fest lineup includes Run DMC; A$AP Rocky; Girl Talk; De La Soul; Etienne De Crecy; Bun B; STRFKR; AraabMuzik; Dillon Francis; Rakim; Danny Brown; The Octopus Project; Trust; Tanlines; Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros; Public Image Ltd.; Explosions In The Sky; Santigold; The Head And The Heart; Superchunk; Real Estate; The Black Angels; Bob Mould (Performing Copper Blue); Refused; Turbonegro; X (Performing Los Angeles); Tomahawk; Against Me!; Fucked Up; Wavves; Seaweed; The Sword; Converge; Youth Of Today; Lagwagon; Between The Buried And Me; Napalm Death; David Cross; Hannibal Buress; Wyatt Cenac; Doug Benson; Eugene Mirman; Saul Williams; Jon Benjamin; Tig Notaro; W. Kamau Bell; and Duncan Carson with a wide mix of old and new acts presented on four stages

Jovita's on South First serves up Mexican food and live music six nights a week. A large tree covered patio with an outdoor stage overlooks Bouldin Creek in the back and indoors there is another stage where often you can find some of the mainstays of Austin's music scene like the Cornell Hurd Band, Tex Thomas and the Danglin Wranglers, The Gourds, Flounders Without Eyes as well as up and coming musicians and touring acts like the Red Elvises.

The Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Center for the Performing Arts (The Long Center)is a sustainably built performing arts venue located located along Lady Bird Lake and is a remodel of the Lester E. Palmer Auditorium that hosts local, regional, national and international artists and performances. The City of Austin leased the Lester E. Palmer Auditorium to the nonprofit group  Arts Center Stage and after ten years of construction, the grand opening of the Long Center took place on March 28, 2008. The funding for this first phase of renovation was exclusively provided through private donations from more than 4,600 supporters and 95% of material from the deconstructed Palmer Auditorium were recycled in the new construction. The circular “ring-beam” around City Terrace and Hartman Concert Park located just outside the Dell Hall overlooking Lady Bird Lake and Auditorium Shores was originally an anchoring structure for the Palmer Auditorium and the colored aluminum panels that were once the distinctive Palmer Auditorium roof were reused for the exterior finish and wall decorations of the Dell Hall. In all five tons of steel from the Palmer Auditorium were melted and reused in the construction of the new Long Center. The Long Center today encompasses multiple technologically advanced performance and event spaces, including the 2,400-seat Michael and Susan Dell Hall and the multi-functional Debra and Kevin Rollins Studio Theatre. The Dell Hall is home to the The Long Center’s Founding Resident Companies, the Austin Symphony Orchestra, Austin Lyric Opera and Ballet Austin.