by Julian Spivey
The third and final day of the annual Stagecoach Festival, dedicated to country music (and also Smokey Robinson apparently), in Indio, Calif. took place on Sunday, May 1 and I made sure to catch a few of the sets from the afternoon and evening that were streaming on YouTube.
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Hailey Whitters is one of the most anticipated up-and-coming singer-songwriters in country music and has that feeling of someone who might be on the verge of breaking into the mainstream if the country music mainstream will allow another female to do so – years after Tomatogate the genre still feels like it has a quota on women in the mainstream.

Whitters took the SiriusXM Spotlight stage Sunday afternoon for a roughly 30-40 minute set that included almost exclusively tracks off her sophomore album Raised, which was released on March 18. Among the highlights from Raised were “Everything She Ain’t” and “The Neon,” which have been spinning frequently on a list of new country and Americana songs I have on repeat.

Among the other tracks Whitters performed off the new album were: “Plain Jane” and “Boys Back Home.” She also brought out some tracks from last year’s deluxe edition of her debut The Dream in “Fillin’ My Cup” (which she does on the album with Little Big Town) and “How Far Can It Go?” (which she does on the album with Trisha Yearwood). She performed a nice snippet of Yearwood’s classic “She’s In Love with the Boy” in the middle of “How Far Can It Go?”

Whitters, who seemed to be having the time of her life at Stagecoach, finished off her set with “Heartland,” off The Dream. The crowd at the SiriusXM Spotlight stage, which was possibly on the outskirts of the venue based on the stream (I could be wrong, the view wasn’t great), was small, but they knew many of the words to Whitters song, which is terrific for her future. 

Later in the afternoon the incredible Latin-infused country group The Mavericks took the Palomino Stage (where honestly much of the best music from this festival seemed to be coming from this weekend) and performed around a 30-minute set of some of their biggest tracks and newer stuff.
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The Mavericks, featuring the extremely talented Raul Malo on vocals, opened their set with “All Night Long” from the band’s 2015 critically-acclaimed Mono. The group continued on with “Back In Your Arms Again,” the opening track off of my favorite Mavericks album In Time from 2013.

One of the things I love the most about The Mavericks is the large band of musicians that travel with them, including a multiple-piece horn section and an amazing accordionist in Percy Cardone. Cardone particularly put on a show during the group’s set.

The Mavericks would perform two more tracks from In Time during their set: “As Long As There’s Loving Tonight” and my personal favorite “Come Unto Me,” which I’ve mentioned before really revs me up and makes me want to almost fight a bull! The song is that awesome.

The band’s most recent album was the aptly titled completely Spanish-language release En Espanol from which the band played a track that they didn’t announce and since my Spanish is incredibly limited I couldn’t pick up, but it sounded great.

The Mavericks’ biggest country charter, which country radio was actually cool enough to play something unique in the mid- ‘90s, was “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down,” which the band absolutely brought the house down at the Palomino Stage with early Sunday evening as their set ender.

This is one of the few country/Americana acts I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing live (in person) yet that I’d love to see with the incredibly talented musicianship and Malo’s soothing and sultry vocals. 

The final set I caught of the final day of Stagecoach was Cody Johnson’s early in the evening from the “Mane” Stage.
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Johnson has become probably the most popular Texas Country Music performer and has been one of the few to break through into the mainstream with a charting hit – with his recent single “’Til You Can’t,” one of my favorite country releases of 2021, recently making it to the top of the Billboard Country Airplay chart.

Johnson played numerous fan-favorites during his hour-long set opening with “Honky Tonk Hardwood Floors” from his 2021 album Human: The Double Album (hint to country artists you don’t actually have to include ‘The Double Album’ in the title of your double albums, we get it!).

Johnson would also play “Let’s Build a Fire” and “Human” from his newest release but did a good job of spreading the tracks from multiple albums on his set.

My particular favorite performances from his set including “Me & My Kind,” off his 2014 Cowboy Like Me album, “With You I Am,” off 2016’s Gotta Be Me, and “On My Way to You,” from 2019’s Ain’t Nothin’ to It.

One of Johnson and his Rockin’ CJBs hardest rocking performance was his cover of the Charlie Daniels Band classic “Long Haired Country Boy,” which Johnson led into with a Charlie Daniels like talk about patriotism and as good as the cover is I don’t mean that as a compliment.

I damn sure don’t mind musicians talking about politics and important stuff, but I do find I appreciate it a whole lot more when it’s actually put into song and not screamed as a segue into them. Either way it’s Johnson’s right to do what he wants with his stage time. I like his music; probably wouldn’t want to have a conversation about important topics with him.

Johnson finished his Stagecoach set with the aforementioned No. 1 hit “’Til You Can’t,” which I’m legit shocked made it to the top of the country airplay chart. The song absolutely should be a No. 1 hit, that’s not the shocking part. The shocking part is that an actual by-God damn good country music song was able to top the charts via airplay on mainstream country radio.

by Julian Spivey
While headliner Carrie Underwood likely got most of the headlines (honestly no pun intended) on the second night of the Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif. on Saturday, April 30 it was the sets of Brothers Osborne, Zach Bryan and Orville Peck that drew me in via the live stream on YouTube.
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Zach Bryan, one of the most popular singer-songwriters to come up over the last few years, played a set early on Saturday at the Palomino Stage in what appeared to be sweltering California weather underneath the big tent. Bryan opened his set with “God Speed,” from his 2019 debut album DeAnn, which made for a good way to get things going on day two.

Bryan would keep his mostly upbeat set going with “Highway Boys,” which was just released last week but already a track many in the crowd knew by heart. Look for the track on his upcoming American Heartbreak album, which will be released on May 20 and will be his first full-length studio album after his first two releases DeAnn and Elisabeth (2020) were essentially DIY albums made by Bryan while serving as a Petty Officer Second Class in the United States Navy.

Other highlights of Bryan’s 45-minute set included the love song “Snow” and “Condemned,” from DeAnn, and “Let You Down” and “Traveling Man” from his 2020 EP Quiet, Heavy Dreams.  

The one downer of a song he allowed himself to slip into his set was the new “Something in the Orange,” which is one of the better songs I’ve heard from any artist thus far in 2022.

My favorite performances of Bryan’s set were the two songs he saved for last, and the ones the crowd seemed to most enjoy: “Heading South” and his finisher “Revival,” both off Elisabeth. 

Once the sun went down the “Mane” Stage was electrified by the hard-charging country-rock of Brothers Osborne, the four-time Country Music Association Vocal Duo of the Year winners who are fresh off winning a Grammy for their track “Younger Me.”
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The band opened their set with an amazing threesome of rocking hits like “All Night,” "Headstone” and “Shoot Me Straight,” which truly energized the crowd that didn’t seem to need much energizing from the git go.

The band would pretty much be in their pocket during their hour-long set with these country-rockers featuring incredibly guitar solos from John Osborne, while brother T.J. Osborne thrilled the crowd with his bass vocals.

I probably could’ve done without “Burning Man,” the song they did with Dierks Bentley in 2019 that went to No. 1 on the country chart, but the Stagecoach audience definitely enjoyed it.

The mid-section of the Brothers Osborne set featured some of the duo’s earliest hits like “Stay a Little Longer,” their first top-five hit from 2015,” and “Rum,” the group’s first charting single from 2014 that essentially got the ball rolling on their career.

After “Rum,” came a beautiful tribute to Naomi Judd of the recently elected Country Music Hall of Fame duo The Judds, who died on Saturday at the age of 76 when the boys performed the first verse of “Why Not Me,” my personal favorite Judds track, before breaking into the terrific “I’m Not For Everyone,” off their most recent album Skeletons.

Brothers Osborne finished off their set with an amazing performance of “It Ain’t My Fault,” from their debut album Pawn Shop in 2016, which is the song that truly got me into the duo’s music after having not really cared for “Rum” and “Stay a Little Longer” beforehand. This performance included a fun musical duel between John on guitar and the group’s keyboardist, who’s name I unfortunately could not find, which really summarizes the musicianship of the group and how fun they are to see perform live. 

You would think the headliner of the night would be the final act at the Stagecoach Festival, but the festival has had a short late night performance at the Palomino Stage every night following the headlining show over at the “Mane” Stage and on Saturday night that performance was Orville Peck, who’s spent the last three weekends in the desert now having played both weekends of Coachella in the previous weekends.
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Peck annoyed me a bit when he first came out with the getup of hiding his face from the world with the frilly mask he wears a few years ago, as I’m not much for gimmicks when it comes to musicians, but he won me over, especially with gender-bending covers of Bobbie Gentry/Reba McEntire’s “Fancy” and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and his latest album Bronco is just kick-ass and one of the best country albums of 2022 thus far. Also, I just think it’s fun that Peck is queering up country music a bit. Saturday night was a great night for inclusion in country music all around at Stagecoach with T.J. Osborne of Brothers Osborne earlier in the night being the first mainstream gay country male performer in the genre’s history.

The album has a throwback sound that fits Peck’s baritone very well. Some of the tracks give me the vibe of what if Roy Orbison wore a frilly mask and sang country music.

Peck kicked off his late night set with “Daytona Sand,” one of the many standouts off Bronco. He followed this with one of his fan-favorites “Turn to Hate” from his 2019 debut Pony.

More standouts from Bronco followed with “The Curse of the Blackened Eye,” “Lafayette” and “Don’t Cry,” which is potentially my favorite off the album.

Following this trio of songs from the new record Peck put down his guitar for the piano for a ballad of truckers in love in “Drive Me, Crazy” from his 2020 EP Show Pony, before being joined by bandmate Bria Salmena for a duet of “Legends Never Die,” which Peck originally dueted with fellow Canadian Shania Twain on.

Peck finished his set with a rip-roaring performance of the title track from Bronco before wrapping up his show with the utterly-fantastic “Take You Back (The Iron Hoof Cattle Call)” from Pony.

Stagecoach Festival commences with its third day on Sunday, May 1 with performances from Lainey Wilson (3:35 p.m. PST), Hailey Whitters (4:05 p.m. PST), Yola (5:25 p.m. PST), The Mavericks (6:10 p.m. PST), Cody Johnson (6:55 p.m. PST), the oddly scheduled (for a country festival) Smokey Robinson (7:45 p.m. PST), The Black Crowes (8:45 p.m. PST) and the headliner Luke Combs (9:45 p.m.). I know I’ll be hoping to check out the sets by Whitters, Yola, The Mavericks and Johnson before things wrap up from California.