Austin City Limits

pictured above [L-R]: Norah Jones, Ray Charles, Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello bringing the audience onstage for a “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” /“Pump it Up” finale. Stevie Ray Vaughan in his final television performance. Ozomatli inexplicably breaking out the “Hokey Pokey.” Or Merle Haggard. Or Emmylou. It’s all vintage Austin City Limits. The little PBS show created to share its love for Texas music is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

“No person living or dead ever thought the show would be around this long,” says producer Terry Lickona. Starting with the then-little-known Willie Nelson in the 1975 pilot, ACL grew fast on a simple premise: no huge productions, no “Donny and Marie” lip-sync fadeouts—just a good look at an original artist people might not hear any other way. “When we made it to our fifth season we thought that was a big deal,” Lickona says.

And if 10 or 20 years were enough to spark celebrations, 30 brings the retrospective: a full-scale, multimedia exhibition unveiled in May at the New Braunfels Museum of Art & Music near Austin, documenting all three decades of shows. The exhibit—complete with mock stage and studio, interactive kiosks and plenty of music samples—begins with a wall-size aerial shot of last year’s 75,000-strong crowd at the third-annual ACL festival, and then takes visitors on a trip into the past—from Wilco and Norah Jones back to Carl Perkins and Townes Van Zandt.

“If you love music, it’s hard to resist,” says curator Charlie Gallagher, a hard-core ACL fan himself. “The beauty of the show is the production staff are so good at what they do—you end up with a great documentation of that artist. So with 30 years of shows, it’s one of the greatest music archives in America today.”

Treating music with respect

Musicians go on ACL because of this history—Lickona says the Pixies’ Frank Black has been hooked since his mother made him watch a Leonard Cohen episode in the ‘80s—but they’re also there for the way the music is treated, with loving shots of guitar solos and no commercial interruptions. “It tends to bring out the best in everybody,” Lickona says. “We’ve worked with artists who have the reputation of being difficult, but there’s something about the magic that happens in that room on that stage.”

So much “magic” made a daunting task for curators, eventually totaling 100 gigabytes of digitized media representing every artist who’s performed. But this material—along with a new line of show DVDs including classic Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams—is a treasure for ACL fans who find it impossible to choose a few favorite performances. “It might be fair to pick a hundred great shows,” Gallagher says. “I could never pick ten.”

The exhibit moves to the River Music Experience in Davenport, Iowa, Aug. 19, with more stops expected. Between it and the growing ACL festival, it’s clear the still-underwriter-funded show is on its way to bigger anniversaries. “We know it’s become much more than just a television show,” Lickona says. “It’s become almost an institution—a chronicle of American music.”