I was lucky enough to score tickets to the taping of the Austin City Limits episode featuring Roky Erickson back in November. The performance airs tonight at 7pm locally on KLRU. Kings of Leon will be featured first, followed by Roky.
Roky’s backing band included Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top and members of Summer Wardrobe. The list of songs that will air are on the ACL show page. If I remember correctly, they played both “Night of the Vampire” and “I Walked With A Zombie”, but it appears that those two were dropped from the broadcast. It was a great performance and I saw several local Austin musicians at the taping, including King Coffey from the Butthole Surfers. Roky’s come a long way in the last 15 years and he never lost that awesome voice.
Here’s the schedule for January:
Jan. 5 – Crowded House
Jan. 12 – Kings of Leon, Roky Erickson
Jan. 19 – Coldplay (encore presentation from last season)
Jan. 26 – Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley
It’s a pretty good representation of the breadth of music that the show is presenting these days. They’ve made attempts to update themselves and having bands like Kings of Leon and Coldplay are an attempt to do just that. Crowded House isn’t really keeping up-to-date, but it’s a little more pop oriented than would have been typical of the show in the past. Kings of Leon fall into the Blues / Rock category and Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley are solidly Country.