I just logged another great week of music, as we get ready here in town for Austin City Limits Music Festival. I am happy that this year the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco was the weekend before, as business put the Music Fog crew in the bay area, for another project, so I decided to stay behind a few extra days. There are industry folks that I see from city to city, like Al Moss, Rob Bleetstein, Felton Pruitt, Bill Bowker; and then some of the artists that I ran into, Fats Kaplin, Kristi Rose, Jim Lauderdale, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock - fellow travelers all. The vibe was splendid, I hung mostly at the Banjo Stage, due to blistering my foot up on the Golden Gate Bridge trek from Saturday. That should be the worst thing that ever happens! There was the timeless music of Doc Watson, the animation and artistry of Del McCoury, and Emmylou Harris to wrap things up with perfect harmonics wafting through the mist. If you have never attended Hardly Strictly, you owe it to yourself to drink in this festival, for its aggregation of talent and its ever interesting audience. Seeing a show in San Francisco makes you remember all the great music that this city has spawned. Shall we say they bought the T-Shirt? Sweatshirt in this case!

But on to the next one! ACL is a coming! There are some of the same artists playing it, with lots of other crowd pleasers as well. Every day is sold out, so I guess I am just going to have to report back, huh! Only problem is you can't be everywhere, and truth be told, not everyone can be on the lineup, either. Raul Malo ain't making this scene this year, but if you are in the Midwest that just might be good news for you, as he's on tour there then headed up the East Coast! In fact, we were told that to celebrate the release of his new album today, Sinners & Saints, Raul is playing a special concert streamed live from Knuckleheads in Kansas City, MO. Catch the feed here at 9pm CT tonight, October 5th.

We figured that we'd also salute the day with the title track from the album. Look for cameos in the video from the Trishas, Ray Benson, Shawn Sahm and Augie Meyers. Raul is adept at mixing Latin music with country, blues, jazz and vintage rock ’n’ roll...anytime, anywhere, anyway! Here's "Sinners & Saints," a cross between Flamenco melodicism and retro surf-twang. Yeah!

- Jessie Scott