Stagecoach Day 3

By Jake Tully

Stagecoach Day 3: The third day of any music festival weekend marks an intrepid conclusion of debauchery or tom-foolery. In the case of Stagecoach, this was personified by way of cougars on the prowl after a few Lime-A-Ritas or fraternity brothers who beat their way into the crowds because they couldn’t cope with all they hay being kicked around.

Stagecoach’s main stage ends up being quite the sprawling disarray of bodies in anticipation for Blake Shelton, folks camping out as soon as the front gates open to catch The Voice coach. The main stage has an interesting configuration, sectioned off with barriers that force concertgoers to pick a quadrant within to put themselves. Unlike Coachella or Outside Lands where one has the opportunity to position themselves nearly anywhere, Stagecoach – for unapparent reasons – has tried to minimize the clutter so to speak, perhaps making the main stage experience slighter easier on the older crowd attending. This doesn’t speak much to the festival experience wherein you expect to be packed like sardines; rather, one is literally an arm’s distance from someone at another point in the crowd.

Maddie and Tae were the first to inhabit the primo main slot, bringing their brand of pro-feminist country songs to the table (Or stable, as it were).  The duo’s “Girl In A Country Song” garnered a huge amount of buzz for dispelling the notoriously bro-heavy lyricism of contemporary country, and the live performance of their treatise was just as wild. The ladies in the crowd went crazy over the duo’s performance of “Landslide,” begging the question – why hasn’t Steve Nicks been tapped to play the festival?

Meanwhile, Logan Brill’s set on The Palomino Stage was equally as entertaining, continuously kicking out the jams for nearly an hour. Brill proved one of the most enigmatic frontpeople of Sunday, Vamping on “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and absolutely killing it. People seemed more engaged will Brill than many of the other acts that weekend, seemingly losing their minds for every number she finished.

If there’s one entirely commendable aspect of Stagecoach it’s that 2015 proved to be a year of genuine endorsement of female artists, with an incredibly balanced ratio of male to females on the bill. Furthermore, the hype around female artists was just as great as that surrounding the males – one didn’t get the feeling that any promotion was unbalanced, it in fact it seemed entirely equal.

Luke Amelang’s Django Reinhardt-inspired technique was a welcomed approach to the festival, verging on the nonsensical with canine wrought “LeRoy” and “The Sasquatch Song,” an ode to fictional creatures and the absurd habits they exhibit. Fun, yet not flighty, Amelang’s played his debut The Farm in almost its entirety.

Sunday proved to be the day of legacy artist wish-fulfillment, a bill on The Palomino Stage ranging from British Invasion to classic rock to Country Music Hall of Fame. Strangely analogous to one another, the crowd went just as wild for “Spill The Wine” as they did for “Elvira.”

Southern rock titans Outlaws dispensed with any and all chitchat to maximize their set time, immediately delving in to 8-minute jams and confronting the crowds with mind-numbing solos synonymous with late 70’s era southern rock. While Outlaws more or less played extended versions of the hits, the band seemed sloppy and separated from playing what was, after all, a 50-minute set. What could’ve been engaging came off as rushed and thoughtless. The mandatory nature of guitar solos aside, there was little room to breathe. This made for one half-hearted extended jam, yet there is only one band that can pull such a thing off. Perhaps Weir and Lesh should’ve dropped in and taught the Florida boys a thing or two about ambitious performances as such.

Up next was Eric Burdon and the so-called “Animals.” Some sources indicated that original drummer John Steel was joining Burdon on his current tour; Steel’s absence gave absolutely no credibility to the moniker of Burdon’s backing band. Despite the misinformation, Burdon is still lively as ever, his diminutive frame jumping and wailing around stage to “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” and “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”

Burdon mostly stuck to the classics, though his penultimate song “No More War,” garnered a mixed reaction from the crowd. It seems that some foresight may have steered the band away from such a politically charged song, especially when prefacing “House of The Rising Sun.” Nevertheless, the original Animals material was wildly entertaining, Burdon still contorting himself to the lyrics as best he can at nearly 75 years of age.

It was at this point that the older ladies with a little too much sugar in their gas tanks began to ease their way up to the front hay bales to secure their spot for The Oak Ridge Boys. Deceptive, coy, and never without a husband in extremely close proximity, these cougars find themselves targeting young men in the crowd to talk to incessantly and remark how said young men are too young to enjoy whatever artist is about to take the stage.

The Oak Ridge Boys were no exception (who would’ve thought?) for promoting such behavior on the end of older women. This reporter had the pleasure of meeting Wendy, who asked every few seconds, “What’s your age?” and “Do you even know who these guys are?” The answers, of course, were “14” and “no.”

The Tennessee quartet performed the most nostalgic set of the weekend, nailing the four-part harmonies on “Come on In” and “American Made,” inspiriting cougars and youngins alike. There’s quite a legacy behind the newly inducted Country Music Hall of Famers, though in 2015 The Oak Ridge Boys still stand strong.

George Thorogood & The Destroyers pulled out all the stops for one of the final shows of the festival, employing some of the finest boogie-rock out there. Initially a skeptic about the depth and cogency of an entire Thorogood show, the Palomino tent was floored by the unyielding zeal of George and his Destroyers. Thorogood did Bo Diddley and Hank Williams proud once again, ripping through “Who Do You Love” and “Move It On Over.” The Delaware rocker doesn’t receive nearly enough credit for his contributions to contemporaries such as The Black Keys, Band of Skulls and any other Dan Auerbach knock offs.

The end of Thorogood’s set led all festivalgoers to the main stage, trampling over one another and inciting Coors-inspired fights to secure a spot for The Band Perry. The multiple-Grammy nominated group has seen a great deal of metamorphosis since their humble roots in the late ‘00s, an ambivalent battle between the styles of “sticking to your guns country” and “a little pop never hurt anyone, right?” Still, there was little to complain about The Band Perry’s stadium-oriented set, with bombastically layered covers of nearly every song.

Of the festival’s three headliners Blake Shelton gives the air of the least amount of hubris for an international star. For someone whose popularity has only increased tenfold since his tenure on The Voice, Shelton’s humbled and bare-bones approach to closing out the festival spoke for itself. Playing newer songs such as “Boys Round Here” and classics such as “Old Red,” Shelton also indulged the audience with a rousing go-around of “Footloose.” For the sake of mega-starpower, Shelton was the highly appropriate choice for Sunday night’s festivities.

Stagecoach 2015 proved what the festival truly stands for – a sampling of everything that encroaches upon the country palette. The eclecticism was a welcomed surprise, as was the reaction of those who only seemed that they were in it for the McGraw. Though country is indeed one of the omnipotent genres in the United States, perhaps it needn’t be written off as insipid as it gets credit for. There’s a trove of cross-pollination and genre-melding that is taking off at a wild rate. Country, as it were, is something worth watching closely in the coming years.

Preview  |  Day 1  |  Day 2  |  stagecoachfestival.com