Jakob Dylan on the ATT&T Stage at ACL - more photos photo by Jaime Butler - Staff Photographer

It was hot. It was dusty. It was ACL Fest.

Austin's long, dry summer came home to roost during ACL Fest, manifesting itself as an ever-present haze of dust that steadily grew in presence driven by millions of footfalls as concert goers tramped from stage to stage in Austin's Zilker Park all weekend.

Though the dust was a problem, over 80,000 people ignored its chalky properties choosing to overcome and adapt to see headlining artists like Manu Chao, John Fogerty, David Byrne, Beck, Robert Plant & Allison Krause, The Mars Volta, and culminating with the Foo Fighters on Sunday night. Plenty of people turned out early as well to check out lots of other eclectic artists representing a huge variety of genres, from the harder edge of bands like Flyleaf, to the beach vibes of Slightly Stoopid, and the country twang of Paula Nelson or Rodney Crowell.

Rivaling SXSW as the "other" Austin music event, the Austin City Limits Music Festival downtown in Zilker Park drew thousands of people to town to hear a smörgåsbord of bands representing a variety of musical genres playing on 8 different stages. With multiple bands playing at once it was tough to know which stage you were at and which band was playing without a schedule, a map, a watch, and a little luck. Even then with all the outside ACL aftershows and parties it is impossible to see every performance. Heck there are performances associated with ACL that the general public never even hears about. I didn't know about the "warm up" show played by Blues Traveler on the ACL fest stages on Thursday until my sister told me about attending it the next day(thanks for the heads up sis!).

Bavu Blakes and The Extra Plair on the Austin Ventures Stage at ACL- more photos photo by Jaime Butler - Staff Photographer

I really didn't expect to get invited to cover ACL fest this year so I was a bit shocked to find that we had been approved for 2 media passes for the weekend. I had applied early on in the year and hadn't heard back until a week beforehand so it kind of came like a bolt from the blue. Luckily I re-arranged my schedule and was able to find time to take in some of the bands and cover a few of the outside activities.

I spent a good part of Friday roaming the festival grounds, as did Jaime Butler one of our staff photographers, and though we didn't have photo passes, our media passes allowed us to wander about and shoot pics of a few bands before the crowds made it impossible to get close to the stage. I ended up Friday over at the Blender house, sipping Sweet Leaf Ice Tea and playing Bocce ball with Ben Cyllus and his band. Ben and his crew had driven all the way down from Nashville to be the very first band of the festival to perform, and with their set done they were looking forward to checking out the rest of the festival as well as sampling Austin's world famous nightlife.

Paula Nelson on the BMI Stage at ACL- more photos photo by Jeff Barringer - Staff Photographer

Jaime returned to the main festival on Saturday and wandered about taking pictures. My 14 year old nephew Blake was in the thick of things and thought crowd surfing was pretty cool until he got dropped. His mother blames me. I got invited to cover the ACL aftershow Saturday at Stubb's headlined by the legendary Gibby Haynes and the Butthole Surfers and spent my evening there dodging my own crowd surfers(check back later for a review).

Neither Jaimie nor I were brave enough to face the crowds on Sunday, though somehow nephew Blake ended up on the front page of the local paper in a crowd shot of Sunday. My sister also somehow managed to wrangle an all access pass and was hanging out backstage with the famous and near famous Sunday night, though even she didn't have the stones to get backstage for the Foo Fighters.

While I missed most of the festival's headline sets, including the Foo Fighters on Sunday, I made up for it Monday night by getting invited to the Foo Fighters Austin City Limits taping down at the KLRU studio on the UT campus. That in itself made the whole ACL experience for me. This show was the hottest ticket of all ACL fest, how I lucked out and got a ticket only the gods know, but that is another story.