Willie Nelson & Family, Asleep at the Wheel to play free concert for ACL TV's 50th birthday
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Willie Nelson was the first person to ever perform on Austin City Limits, laying the ground for the show that would become the longest-running music program in television history. That inaugural performance was taped on Oct. 17, 1974.
Next month, exactly 50 years later, Nelson will return to help Austin City Limits TV celebrate its 50th birthday.
Willie Nelson & Family, along with Austin's own Asleep at the Wheel, will perform at the Austin City Limits 50th Birthday Bash at the Long Center on Oct. 17 to commemorate the anniversary of the taping of the show's pilot episode.
The concert will be free, but those interested in going need to register for a chance to win tickets. Registration opened Friday morning and will close on Monday, Sept. 23 at 10 p.m. Those selected to attend will be notified between Sept. 26 and Sept. 27 and will be required to opt in.
The performance will be taped, and musical highlights will air as a special hour-long broadcast of Austin City Limits, which will air on PBS early next year as a season highlight of the program’s anniversary Season 50, according to a release from the TV show.
Austin City Limits, which calls itself "the house that Willie built," hails Nelson as pivotal for the television program.
"There’s a good reason why a bronze statue of Willie Nelson stands at the entrance to ACL’s studio home on the Austin street that bears his name," the release said.
Nelson has appeared on the series 18 times -- more than any other performer, according to the Austin City Limits website. Along with claiming the performance in the show's inaugural taping, he was also the inaugural inductee into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, and a bronze statue of him graces the entrance to ACL Live at the Moody Theater.
"In the 50-year history of Austin City Limits, no artist has personified the music series’ eclectic, freewheeling spirit more fully than the man with the braids, the beard and the guitar named Trigger," the release read. "His pivotal 1974 full-set performance served as a dispatch to the world declaring Austin’s place as a pioneering music city; the trailblazing live music program was then given the green light, premiering on PBS in 1975."
Nelson last appeared on Austin City Limits in 2018 for its 44th season.
"There would be no Austin City Limits without Willie Nelson - simple as that," said longtime ACL executive producer Terry Lickona. "He launched ACL into the television universe in 1974, and has helped keep us going for 50 years.”
Asleep at the Wheel also has longstanding ties to the show, having appeared 11 times over the program's five-decade history, with a couple of those appearances alongside Nelson. The band was also inducted into the ACL Hall of Fame in 2015, and honored in a 50-year career retrospective broadcast in 2020 as a special episode of Austin City Limits.
The concert will also "celebrate the city and community that plays a starring role in the series," the release said, noting that the backdrop of the downtown skyline visible from the Long Center is the famous backdrop of the show's stage, and that Austin music fans are featured in every episode in crowd shots.
Austin City Limits will air the first episode of its landmark Season 50 on Sept. 28 on PBS, featuring an hour with Kacey Musgraves. The upcoming season features a slate of returning favorites and debuts.