BY JOEY BERLIN

“Dust. Only dust.”

That’s a line from the final scene of a classic “Twilight Zone” episode, which I won’t waste time explaining the plot of here or the reason for that line. But as a Zonehead, it was on my mind repeatedly during Weekend 2 of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which I walked into following a Weekend 1 that – judging from assessments by journalists and others who were there – seemed to produce two overarching storylines: Chappell Roan, and dust.

During ACL’s encore weekend, the first of those lived up to the hype. The second one … well, I came away from the final day of Weekend 2 certain that I had escaped the dreaded “ACL flu.”

Amathophobia is what the fear of dust is called – because every single fear has to have a name, you know – and it was everywhere all weekend at Zilker Park. Surrounded all three days by untold numbers of concert goers looking like silent-film bank robbers because of the protective bandanas on their faces, I kept my own face exposed to the threat and felt essentially zero particulate intrusion. Was my immune system just made of remarkably strong stuff?

The basic ingredients of every ACL never disappoint. The music is different every year, of course, but the constants are persistent enough to have that old-shoe familiarity.

Well, I’ll come back to that later. But absent a dust disease that would have set Weekend 2 apart from any of the other six ACLs I’ve attended in full, this turned out to be a pretty run-of-the-mill installment, save for one distinguishing feature: More than ever, LGBTQ+ artists dominated the stages. This was a development that delivered some fine music and great moments.

The basic ingredients of every ACL never disappoint. The music is different every year, of course, but the constants are persistent enough to have that old-shoe familiarity. First and perhaps foremost, people wear crazy shit (some choose to rock outfits that are abundant in material; many others wear as little as possible without risking arrest). The totems – those flags or other fabrications placed atop a high pole so concert goers can find members of their group in a wide-open space and a big crowd – are amusing, thematically diverse and off the wall enough that one of them will get a smile or chuckle out of anyone. And of course, more often than not – no matter which weekend you attend – it’s very, very hot.

All those givens were in place for Weekend 2, and queer artists took that baseline and made this festival theirs. Which might as well bring us first to Chappell Roan – the self-proclaimed Midwest Princess and rapidly cresting icon of queer culture – who packed in another massive and adoring crowd for her evening set on Sunday. It was reminiscent of the frenzy that Lizzo created around the height of her ascension at ACL 2019, when she also had a headliner’s drawing power without the headlining time slot. Back then, my unwillingness to squat at a spot near the stage approximately four hours in advance of Lizzo’s set relegated me to a spot way off to the side, inside the ACL beer hall and sports-watching shelter now known as the Big Tent, where I could barely see or hear the source of the spectacle.

This time around, about an hour ahead of time, I maneuvered and squished myself within a couple hundred feet of the ringmaster – Roan herself, the small-town Missouri native in her trademark drag-inspired makeup. Close to my vantage point was an LGBTQ+ Texas flag; a little more into the teeth of the crowd, a small cardboard totem reading “gayCL.” 

The remarkability of witnessing artists like Roan who blow up as fast as they do – in this case, with a single, year-old studio album to their name – lies in being enveloped in the sheer singalong factor. Every soul in the place seemed to know every damn song, whether it be album cuts like “Naked in Manhattan” or megahits like “Good Luck Babe!”, the massive single from this year that typifies the thematic thrust of her music: Roan sings to a romantic fling who’s trying her best to ignore her true sexuality and be straight, because that’s what society accepts. The spell-along of “Hot To Go!” took on an amusing quality, given the environment; Roan led her crowd in a “YMCA”-style hand-spelling of the title, but putting your arms out to your sides to spell the “T’s” is more than a little difficult when everyone’s packed together. (Shirts reading “Call me hot not pretty,” a signature lyric from “Hot to Go!”, weren’t an uncommon sight during the weekend.) Chappell, playing her final show of 2024, was nothing more or less than I expected. Exploding with visuals offering plenty of pink, yellow and white, and snippets of key lyrics, her set was a memorable event that left everyone content, and probably made quite a few much more than that.

While the entire Chappell showcase reigned as the can’t-miss set of the weekend, another triumph of onstage demonstration of queer identity belonged to Orville Peck earlier that day. The alt-country Canadian cowboy, whose sexuality was publicly known long before his real name became public, brought Willie Nelson onstage to perform their duet of the gay-cowboy classic “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other,” which appeared on Peck’s newest album, Stampede. Elsewhere, other non-straight personalities made the most of their showcases; the all-female Canadian rock band Beaches, which has multiple members with queer identities, rocked viciously through their entire Saturday set and praised the heightened representation at the 2024 festival. Bisexual alt-funk-pop singer Remi Wolf bounced, sung and rap-sung her bright and peppy music in front of a large and adoring crowd.

All of those moments and others – like veteran alt-rocker Santigold’s insane invitation for dozens of randos from the crowd to jump onstage and join her for closing song “Creator” – made for an ACL that will stick out fondly in my mind. 

Maybe I should have had a little more amathophobia, though – late in the week that followed, I got sick with the kind of symptoms the “ACL flu” experts were warning about, eventually making me couch-ridden and virtually useless that Saturday. Can ACL flu hit that late? I don’t know what the science says on that. But I do know I won’t be quite so dismissive of “only dust” next time.