Austin, Texas is renowned as the live music capital of the world touted as having the most musicians per capita of any city in the nation. With over one hundred live performance places there are always dozens of Austin, Texas bands to see any time you want of all various styles from country to rock, to a variety of eclectic styles that can be heard no where else.
Austin, TX is also the host of the South By Southwest music conference which is a nationally known music festival showcasing 1,800 bands of all styles booked from across the whole world in over 80 clubs in Austin over a 5 day period. South By Southwest was originally just a small music festival that grew into an event with the most live bands in one festival in the state and continues to grow as the years roll by. There are other world renowned emerging music festivals in Austin as well, such as the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Urban Music Festival, and the Fun Fun Fun Fest. The Austin City Limits Music Festival occurs annually in the fall and is a three day music festival with over 130 bands of all genres on eight stages. This concert has been known to attract over 65,000 visitors and bands from all over the world. The Urban Music Festival started in 2006 and drew a crowd in excess of 10,000 to listen to some of the top Urban Music bands. Some of the performers of the Urban Music Fest have been Cameo, Boyz to Men, and the Sugar Hill Gang. The Fun Fun Fun Fest Is another yearly music festival that started in 2005 and has had a wide range of artists over two days on four stages. A few celebrated artists of the Fun Fun Fun Fest have been the Bad Brains, All and The Dead Milkmen.
How this Texas city came to be the home base for so many Austin bands is still a mystery but as the live band scene grew over time in Austin, the stigma that it was the place to get found and make it to stardom started to attract a large base of gifted musicians from across the nation. The bands and musicians that came to Austin looking for superstardom soon found that there wasn’t any industry to sign them there aside from the brief visit of industry professionals during South By Southwest music conference and the ample supply of musicians and Austin cover bands only made acquiring gigs even harder because of all of the stiff competition. The number of Austin, TX bands far outweighs the number of rooms offering gigs so only the most talented bands end up getting the jobs thereby furthering the popular perception that Austin bands tend to be the greatest in the state. Many musicians that had come to Austin hoping to make it in the local scene headed back 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 slugging it out with hundreds of bands in one city for the few jobs there were in such a competitive music market.
There are many musicians that come from Austin, Texas including Robert Earl Keen, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Pat Green and Los Lonely Boys to name a few. All these things add up to make Austin, Texas a town that has been renowned as the “Live Music Capital of the World”.