Kick Up Your Boot Heels in Austin, TX

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Photo by Ranimiro Lotufo Neto - Getty Images

SXSW 2024 in Austin

SXSW 2024 - South by Southwest Conferences and Festivals.

It’s a city known to have a vibe quite different from that of any other city in Texas. It’s the liberal capital of the largely conservative Lone Star State and is home to nearly 1 million people. It’s also home to the University of Texas, one of the country’s largest schools. But an increasing number of visitors have come to know it by its self-applied sobriquet, “The Live Music Capital of the World.” Welcome to Austin. 

Named for Stephen F. Austin, known as the Father of Texas who helped settle the land recently seized from Mexico in the early 19th century, Austin is a city rooted in Texas history, but with an unerring eye for the future and a heartbeat that thumps to country, blues, classical, roots and rock and roll music. The city boasts more than 250 active music venues providing rhythms seven night per week and, in extreme cases, 24 hours per day. 

Austin’s biggest draw each spring is the South by Southwest Conference and Festivals, which this year runs from March 7-14. SXSW is a blend of music, film, technology, education and art that attracts roughly a quarter-million revelers to its citywide combination of events. Music is the largest draw, and SXSW offers as many as 2,000 different acts in venues throughout the city. Artists like singer-songwriter John Mayer and The Flaming Lips have credited appearances at SXSW as helping launch their careers.  

Musical Success Stories 

But the Austin’s musical success stories reach beyond SXSW to include several ex-Badgers. Madison musical couple Pat McDonald and Barbara Kooyman relaunched their career after moving to Austin in the 1990s as Timbuk 3. Waukesha native Kurt Neumann, who cofounded the BoDeans, owns a home studio in the city. And the list goes on. 

SXSW is Austin in the extreme. Even after the last concertgoers head home, the city is just starting its spring and summer season. Any time a good time to visit Austin and take in the sites an activities that the city offers, from rodeos to carnivals and neighborhood festas, to art shows to the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum. Austin has it all. 

Visiting Austin for the first time? Here are a few things you may want to try: 

• From world cuisine to Tex-Mex favorites to top-notch barbecue, Austin is a culinary delight with options for every taste and palate. One of the best ways to sample such a bountiful bevy is to stop at several of the many food trucks and trailers that can be found throughout the city. Less expensive and less time-consuming than sit-down restaurants, it’s a good way to learn the city, meet the locals, and eat you fill all at the same time. 
• Keep you whistle wet by visiting the wide array of craft breweries, wineries and distilleries that dot the landscape. It’s a natural complement to local food truck fare and showcases the talents and creativity of local producers. You might even want to visit the Texas Sake Company, where the east truly does meet the southwest. 
• Find adventure in Austin’s urban oasis, with biking and hiking trails, rowing on Ladybird Lake, and a dip in the Barton Springs Pool, a 1,000-foot-long natural limestone pond flanked by tree-shaded hills along the shoreline.  And at dusk there is no more interesting place to be than the Congress Avenue Bridge. Under the bridge lives a colony of roughly 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats, emerging nightly when the sun goes down to feed and help keep the city’s insect population under control. 

All that and more music than you can shake a drumstick at. What better places to plan your next urban adventure? 

Fly directly from Mitchell International Airport to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Southwest Airlines five days a week with convenient parking options available at MKE.