Summer may be the season of festivals, but this fall weekend has two standouts: Austin City Limits and San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a free outdoor event that has three Nonesuch artists—Emmylou Harris, Allen Toussaint, and Amadou & Mariam—set to perform in Golden Gate Park. Both Harris and Amadou & Mariam have concerts in LA earlier in the week; the latter plays live on KCRW this morning.

Thousands of music fans converge on Austin this weekend for the eighth Austin City Limits Music Festival. Three Nonesuch artists—The Low Anthem, Sara Watkins, and Dan Auerbach—will be among the more than 130 artists, spanning pop, country, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, indie rock, hip-hop, and gospel, to take the stage in Austin's Zilker Park over the coming three days.

Christina Courtin is set to hit the road again this weekend with shows in Boston and Brooklyn before heading off on a three-week tour with Elizabeth & the Catapult next week. Just in time comes a music video for "Bundah," a song the Knoxville News-Sentinel notes for "Courtin's dulcet voice" and the "florid acoustic guitar swaying through" the track.

Chris Thile brings his Mandolin Concerto to the third city in as many weeks in a performance with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra in Birmingham tonight. Thile joined the Oregon Symphony this past weekend for the West Coast premiere of the piece. The Oregonian called it "nothing less than a reinvention of the possibilities of his instrument" from the "mandolin wizard."

Wilco's 1995 debut, A.M., is now out again on vinyl. The band is set to begin a three-week tour this Thursday in the Main Lounge of the University of Iowa's Memorial Union. This afternoon at 3 PM CT, the band stops by the studios of radio station WXRT in their hometown of Chicago to talk about the tour and play guest DJ. The North American tour culminates with two shows in Chicago on October 18 and 19; Wilco heads to Europe in early November.

Shawn Colvin gave a trio of performances on the East Coast late last week, beginning with a set at Infinity Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut, that showed off her "quirky, thoughtful charm," says the Hartford Courant. Colvin "forged riveting moments" and "eased through a selection of tunes that brought out the luster in her singing."

Joshua Redman and his trio gave an Opening Night performance at the Indianapolis Jazz Festival earlier this month that All About Jazz calls "a brilliant start" to the festival, which ended yesterday. The set featured songs from Redman's latest Nonesuch release, Compass, review calls "another exquisite journey" from Redman.

David Byrne, long a bike enthusiast and proponent of this auto alternative, releases Bicycle Diaries, a new book described by the Los Angeles Times as "a two-wheeled travelogue from a keen cultural observer." He also begins an eight-city panel tour—Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around—to discuss these issues. As New York magazine explains, "If the conventional idea of the artist is as a kind of highly specialized genius, Byrne prefers to be an omnivore."

Chris Thile recently premiered his Mandolin Concerto with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and performs it again this weekend with the Oregon Symphony, after which, Thile joins his fellow Punch Brothers for a three-week US tour, including Carnegie Hall. The group’s next record is scheduled for 2010. "The new album is the next step in the natural progression of Punch Brothers," says band member Gabe Witcher, "from a group first assembled to render Thile’s composition, The Blind Leaving the Blind, to a collective compositional entity in its own right."

The Low Anthem closes out its European tour this week with stops in Hamburg, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Paris, before heading home to the States for Austin City Limits and an extensive US tour with Blind Pilot. And with a performance in Amsterdam this week, it's fitting that The Low Anthem is offering a free copy of its performance of Bob Dylan's "Dignity" recorded in that city when you sign up for the group's mailing list.