Austin City Limits is bringing Brandi Carlile and Bonnie Raitt together on one stage for a duet on Bonnie’s own “Love Me Like a Man,” with a web-only bonus performance of “Angel From Montgomery” for fans who stay past the credits. It’s a season premiere built like a love letter passed between two generations of American songwriting.
Key Takeaways
- Austin City Limits opens its new season with Brandi Carlile and Bonnie Raitt sharing a single microphone on “Love Me Like a Man.”
- A web-only bonus track, John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” extends the moment beyond the broadcast cut.
- The pairing frames two distinct eras of roots music — Raitt’s blues-soaked 1970s grit and Carlile’s Americana confessionalism — as one continuous conversation.
- The episode airs on PBS stations nationally, with the digital extra available through the show’s official platforms.
What Actually Happens on This Austin City Limits Episode?
Picture the low light of the Moody Theater stage, two guitars angled toward each other like they’re mid-sentence. That’s the image Austin City Limits is selling with this premiere — not a guest slot, but a genuine duet, two women who’ve spent decades writing about heartbreak finally trading verses in the same room.
The broadcast centerpiece is “Love Me Like a Man,” a song that has lived in Bonnie Raitt’s catalogue since the early 1970s, delivered here as a call-and-response between a woman who wrote the blues into rock radio and one who grew up idolizing her for it. Then, tucked away as a web-only extra, comes “Angel From Montgomery” — the John Prine ballad Raitt made famous on record — a quieter, sadder cousin to the main event.
Who Are Brandi Carlile and Bonnie Raitt, and Why Pair Them?
Bonnie Raitt needs almost no introduction to anyone who’s spent time near a classic rock station or a folk festival lineup. Her slide guitar and gravel-edged voice have been a fixture since the ’70s, and her Grammy sweep for “Just Like That” a few years back reminded everyone she was never a nostalgia act. Brandi Carlile, meanwhile, has spent the last decade becoming the genre’s connective tissue — collaborating with Joni Mitchell, co-founding the Highwomen, writing songs that sound like diary entries set to a hook.
Put them together and you get something Austin City Limits has quietly specialized in for over fifty years: using the stage as a bridge between eras. The show, taped in Austin and broadcast on PBS stations across the country, has hosted everyone from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Adele, and its habit of pairing mentor and disciple is basically the format’s love language. If you want to read more about the show’s own history, Austin City Limits’ full broadcast archive traces just how far back that tradition runs.
Why “Love Me Like a Man” Is the Right Opening Track
Every mixtape needs a song that announces its intentions, and “Love Me Like a Man” does exactly that. It’s blunt, funny, a little furious — a woman telling a man exactly what she isn’t going to settle for. When Raitt first cut it, that kind of directness from a female artist was still rare on mainstream radio. Having Carlile stand beside her and sing it back, harmony threading under the lead line, turns a demand into a duet — the difference between a woman saying something alone in a room and a woman saying it with someone backing her up.
That’s the whole trick of a good musical pairing. The song doesn’t change lyrically, but the meaning shifts the second a second voice joins in. Suddenly it isn’t one artist’s complaint — it’s a shared understanding passed hand to hand.
What’s the Story Behind the Bonus Track, “Angel From Montgomery”?
If “Love Me Like a Man” is the opening statement, “Angel From Montgomery” is the song you play once everyone’s gone quiet. John Prine wrote it, but Bonnie Raitt’s version — slow, aching, sung from the perspective of a woman decades into a marriage that stopped feeling like anything — is the one most people actually know. Lines like “how the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening, and have nothing to say” have outlived every era they were written for.
Releasing this one as a web-only extra rather than part of the main broadcast feels deliberate. It’s the kind of song that doesn’t need a big stage moment — it needs someone to lean in close and listen, which is exactly what a bonus clip online invites you to do, headphones on, nobody else in the room.
How the Two Songs Sit Side by Side
| Track | Original Era | Mood | Where to Watch |
| Love Me Like a Man | Bonnie Raitt, early 1970s | Defiant, bluesy, upbeat | Main Austin City Limits broadcast on PBS |
| Angel From Montgomery | John Prine (written), Bonnie Raitt (popularized) | Wistful, weary, tender | Web-only bonus clip |
Seen together, the two tracks work like a short film in two scenes — one where a woman sets a boundary, one where she wonders what happens decades after nobody respected it.
An India Angle: Two Voices, One Mic, and the Guru-Shishya Echo
There’s something in this pairing that will feel familiar to anyone who’s grown up around Indian classical or film music traditions, where a senior artist sharing a raag or a stage with a younger one isn’t just performance — it’s a kind of blessing passed forward. Think of how a Lata Mangeshkar duet with a younger playback singer, or a jugalbandi between an ustad and their most promising student, becomes less about the song and more about lineage. Carlile and Raitt singing together reads the same way: not a collaboration for its own sake, but one generation formally handing something to the next, in full view of an audience.
FAQ
When does the Austin City Limits episode with Brandi Carlile and Bonnie Raitt air?
It’s part of the show’s new season premiere lineup on PBS; check local listings or the Austin City Limits website for the exact air date and time in your region.
Where can I watch the “Angel From Montgomery” bonus performance?
It’s a web-only extra, meaning it isn’t part of the television broadcast — it’s released separately through the show’s official digital platforms.
Who originally wrote “Love Me Like a Man”?
The song has been part of Bonnie Raitt’s catalogue since the early 1970s and is closely associated with her raw, blues-driven early sound.
Is “Angel From Montgomery” a Bonnie Raitt original?
No — it was written by John Prine. Raitt’s cover became so widely loved that many listeners associate the song primarily with her voice.
Has Brandi Carlile appeared on Austin City Limits before?
Yes, Carlile has a history with the show, having performed on the program in past seasons as both a headliner and a guest artist.
Conclusion
Some duets are just two names on a poster. This one plays more like a mixtape passed between friends — one loud, one quiet, both true. Austin City Limits didn’t just book two legends; it gave them room to actually talk to each other, and the songs did the rest.