Trisha Yearwood
Russ Harrington
Trisha Yearwood and the late John Prine are this year’s inductees into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame Induction & Celebration, set for Oct. 26 at The Moody Theater in Austin, Texas.
Actor/filmmaker Ethan Hawke will induct Prine, while Don Henley will induct Yearwood. Henley is also set to perform in tribute to Yearwood, with whom he paired on the 1992 country smash “Walkaway Joe” and a 2001 reunion hit, “Inside Out.” Yearwood will also perform.
Other music guests include Tyler Childers, Allison Russell, Tommy Prine and Kurt Vile, honoring Prine, and Jo Dee Messina and Ronnie Dunn, saluting Yearwood.
Yearwood debuted on Austin City Limits in 1992 and went on to make two additional headlining appearances in 1996 and 2000. She returned in 2015 as a guest of Henley’s. The Austin City Limits website amusingly (and no doubt affectionately) describes Yearwood as a “country music star and a culinary mastermind.” While giving her TV side-gig equal weight to her recording career is a bit jarring, she has been awarded for both. She won a Daytime Emmy in 2013 as the host of Trisha’s Southern Kitchen. She has also won three Grammys, three CMA Awards and three ACM Awards for her non-culinary efforts.
One woman has been inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame every year since 2015, the Hall’s second year. Yearwood follows Loretta Lynn (2015), Bonnie Raitt (2016), Rosanne Cash (2017), Marcia Ball (2018), Shawn Colvin (2019), Lucinda Williams (2021) and Sheryl Crow (2022). (There was no ceremony in 2020 because of the pandemic.)
Prine appeared regularly on Austin City Limits throughout his celebrated five-decade career. He made his first appearance in 1978 and returned for his eighth and final appearance in 2018. Prine, a four-time Grammy winner, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019. He died in 2020. Prine is the fifth musician to be inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame posthumously, following Stevie Ray Vaughan (2014), B.B. King (2016), Roy Orbison (2017) and Ray Charles (2018).
The annual Austin City Limits Hall of Fame Induction & Celebration is Austin PBS’ largest fundraising event. The live production will be recorded and broadcast across PBS stations nationwide in 2024. Tickets for the 2023 edition can be purchased online.
Established in 2014, the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame recognizes musicians and other individuals who have been instrumental in making television’s longest-running popular music show an institution.
Austin City Limits and the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame are produced by Austin PBS, KLRU-TV. Proceeds from the event benefit Austin PBS, a community-supported, non-profit organization providing public television and educational resources to Central Texas as well as producing quality national programming.
The Moody Theater is, appropriately, located on W. Willie Nelson Blvd in Austin. A VIP party begins at 6 p.m. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Attire is “Austin fun.”