Hayes Carll will be hosting the first Stingaree Music Festival April 13-15 in Crystal Beach:

You can expect Hayes and a number of his friends performing in a variety of different venues throughout the weekend. There will be beach performances, impromptu beach house concerts and evening shows under the big top (tent). This initial event will be pretty low key with a goal of keeping it smaller rather than bigger. Our goal is to have about 300 - 400 people. …more

So far the lineup includes Adam Carroll, Ray Wylie Hubbard, the John Evans Band, Todd Snider, The Dedringers, and Graham Wilkinson, with more to be added soon.

Weekend passes are available now for $65 from Front Gate Tickets.

I wrote last week about finding Dry Land Fish thanks to XM Radio. Now the band has added its latest release, Dry Land Fish: The Album to CD Baby, complete with 2-minute samples of all 10 songs.

Check it out. Especially "Cornbread and Guitar Strings," "Carla," "Long Walk," and "Moonlight."

These guys are good.

The Texas Music Museum is celebrating the holidays with a Christmas party 1:30-4:30 this Sunday, Dec. 10.

Enjoy free admission and refreshments, plus live holiday music with blues pianists James Polk, Ernie Mae Miller, Dr. Beulah Agnes Jones, and Jimmie Jones. And Santa himself will make a special visit at 3:30.

After 30-plus years in its UT studio, the Austin City Limits team will move into a swanky new downtown theater in 2010.

Part of the long-discussed Block 21 development, the new ACL studio will be part of a mixed-use development slated to include the city's first W Hotel, more luxury condominiums, a new home for the cramped Austin Children's Museum, and the usual restaurant/retail mix.

While the move is upscale, it remains to be seen if the new ACL studios are an upgrade. Sure, the facilities and production equipment will be vastly superior to Studio 6A. But with the move downtown, ACL risks losing the coziness and ambience that helped make the tapings and TV shows such an Austin institution.

From today's Austin American-Statesman:

Unofficially dubbed Austin City Limits Studio Theater, the $15 million, 2,000-capacity venue will serve as a soundstage approximately 40 nights a year when "ACL" tapes and transform into a musically diverse House of Blues-style club the rest of the time. The capacity doubled from earlier plans when a balcony was added and the space was reconfigured.
 
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I don't mean to come off as one of those people always spouting "Austin was better when…", but 2,000 seats (roughly 7x current capacity)? VIP suites? And this none-too-promising hedge from two months ago: "Admission and beer will be free, at least for now"?

No doubt about it, ACL is going corporate. I wanna go home with the armadillo....