Austin, Texas – The Live Music Capital of the World
Austin, Texas is recognized as the live music capital of the world and is touted as having the most musicians per capita of any city in the country. With over a hundred venues for live performance, there are always dozens of Austin, Texas bands to check out anytime you want from every style from country to rock to a variety of eclectic styles that can’t be heard anywhere else. place.
Austin, TX is also the host of the South By Southwest music conference, which is a nationally known music festival featuring 1800 bands of all styles booked from around the world at over 80 clubs in Austin over a period of 5 days. South By Southwest was originally just a small music festival that grew into the largest number of live bands at a festival in the state and continues to grow as the years go by. There are also other world-renowned emerging music festivals in Austin, such as the Austin City Limits Music Festival, the Urban Music Festival, and the Fun Fun Fun Fest. The Austin City Limits Music Festival takes place annually in the fall and is a three-day music festival featuring more than 130 bands of all genres on eight stages. This concert is known to attract more than 65,000 visitors and bands from all over the world. The Urban Music Festival began in 2006 and drew a crowd of over 10,000 people to hear some of the best Urban Music bands. Some of the Urban Music Fest artists have included Cameo, Boyz to Men and the Sugar Hill Gang. The Fun Fun Fun Fest is another annual music festival that started in 2005 and has featured a wide range of performers over two days on four stages. Some famous artists of the Fun Fun Fun Fest have been Bad Brains, All and The Dead Milkmen.
How this Texas town became the home base for so many Austin bands remains a mystery, but as the live band scene grew over time in Austin, the stigma that it was the place to be found and Rising to stardom began to attract a broad base of gifted musicians from across the country. Bands and musicians who came to Austin in search of stardom soon found that there was no industry to sign them there, aside from the brief visit of industry professionals during the South By Southwest music conference and the wide offering of musicians and Austin cover bands that just made it Acquiring gigs is even more difficult because of all the stiff competition. The number of Austin, TX bands far outweighs the number of venues hosting concerts, so only the most talented bands end up getting the jobs, furthering the popular perception that Austin bands tend to be the best. of the state. Many musicians who had come to Austin hoping to find success on the local scene returned to where they came from to face less competition and found that being a big fish in a small pond was easier and more productive than fighting hundreds of bands in one city. because of the few jobs that were available in such a competitive music market.
There are many musicians who come from Austin, Texas, including Robert Earl Keen, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Pat Green, and The Lonely Boys, to name a few. All of these things add up to make Austin, Texas a city recognized as the “Live Music Capital of the World.”