FINALLY!

After many months of trying, Bill and I won tickets to a taping for the Austin City Limits TV show. Both of us have been submitting requests to snag two free tickets since January 2011, when tapings started in downtown Austin’s ACL Live at the Moody Theater. We have patiently–but jealously–watched from our apartment as lucky audience members entered the theater for each taping. But our turn finally came last week.

Bill and I got in line to pick up our tickets about 90 minutes before the taping began. We had been warned not to arrive too late or the tickets might be given away. A small crowd was allowed to stand in front of the stage but most of the audience was seated. Our assigned seats were up in the balcony.

This was Tim McGraw’s debut show for ACL. Not being country music fans, neither of us knew much about him. Tim sang, but did not play any instruments. Not that he needed to: five guitarists, a violinist, a keyboard player, and a drummer provided plenty of accompaniment. The set lasted about 45 minutes. Then Tim came back onstage and told the audience that he had made mistakes, so he was going to redo three songs again, but he ended up doing his final song “Truck Yeah” again as well. We weren’t familiar with his music but we certainly didn’t notice any mistakes the first time around.

There was no sign of his wife, Faith Hill, at the taping. But the next day, I read that Tim and Faith were in Las Vegas to announce a limited run at the Venetian starting in November.