Brothers Osborne, Zach Bryan, Orville Peck Highlight Day 2 at Stagecoach

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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