Chris Stapleton, Brooks & Dunn, Tyler Childers and Turnpike Troubadours Highlight Stagecoach Festival's Final Day

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by Julian Spivey
The Sunday (April 30) evening lineup of the final day of the 2023 Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif. was absolute fire with Turnpike Troubadours, Tyler Childers, Brooks & Dunn and Chris Stapleton.

The Turnpike Troubadours took the Palomino Stage by storm early in the evening with a 45-minute set featuring many of their fan favorites and the concert debut of one of their new songs.

The Oklahoma red dirt country band began their set with “Before the Devil Knows We’re Dead,” from 2012’s Goodbye Normal Street, a true highlight of their shows that Amazon Music, unfortunately, missed the first half or so on its stream.

The band, which reunited in 2022 after about a half-decade hiatus, performed many of my favorites from their 2010 release Diamonds & Gasoline, like “Every Girl,” “Whole Damn Town,” “Kansas City Southern” and my personal favorite “7 & 7.”

The surprise from Turnpike’s Stagecoach set was the concert debut of a brand new song called “Mean Old Sun,” which hopefully is a sign we’ll be getting a new Turnpike Troubadours album sometime before the end of the year. 

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Tyler Childers followed the Turnpike Troubadours at the Palomino Stage on Sunday night with an electric set that really had the audience eating from the palm of his hand.
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The Kentucky native, who’s in the middle of his Send in the Hounds Tour, certainly brought his A-game to Stagecoach and it was great to see as I haven’t yet had the pleasure of attending one of Childers’ shows in person. You could see he was having a great time on stage.

His gospel triple-album Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? was greatly featured during the set with an amazing performance of the title track, “Old Country Church,” “Way or the Triune God,” “Heart You’ve Been Tendin’” and that album’s version of “Purgatory,” which was done in more of a bluegrass style on the 2017 album that shares its name.

Among my favorite performances of the Childers set were the opening “Whitehouse Road,” which has long been one of my favorites of his, as well as “All Your’n” and “House Fire,” from his 2019 album Country Squire.  

The truly dynamic performance of the set was the final song where he performed “Lady May,” a fan-favorite off Purgatory and you could hear the entire crowd singing it along with him – it wasn’t one of those moments where the artist turns the microphone toward the audience and lets them do it either, they were truly in unison and it made for the most magical moment of any of the Stagecoach performances I caught over the weekend. 

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​Brooks & Dunn took the Mane (spelled that way intentionally as in a horse’s mane) Stage as the second to last performance on Sunday night for what amounted to a greatest hits performance from the most legendary duo in the history of country music.
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The set, at least the early part of it, was plagued by sound issues that at one point completely killed the mic for Kix Brooks as he was performing “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone,” the duo’s No. 1 hit from 1995. Incredibly B&D performed nine No. 1 hits during their hour-long set including: “My Maria” (1996), “Brand New Man” (1991), “Ain’t Nothing ‘bout You” and “Only in America” (both 2001) and “Play Something Country,” (2005). Though, I would’ve preferred a set without “Play Something Country” and “Put a Girl In It” (2008), which came toward the end of the duo’s recording run when it seemed they were interested in chasing trends of the era to keep themselves relevant.

There were some nice surprises during the B&D set, most notable Brooks doing “Lost and Found,” one of my favorites from the duo, and the 2008 No. 2 hit “Cowgirls Don’t Cry,” with Lainey Wilson (who had performed earlier in the day) coming out to fill in for the Reba McEntire verse.

Unfortunately, Brooks sounded off the entire night. I’m hoping it was more sound issues or him not feeling well than just being what he sounds like these days.

My two favorite performances of the night were “Red Dirt Road,” which despite having been a No. 1 in 2003 I still believe to be one of their most underrated singles, and “Neon Moon,” a No. 1 from 1992 that if you had to choose just one B&D song to last all eternity would be the choice.” The band, of course, also performed their line dance hit “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” 

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Chris Stapleton, the headliner for the festival's final night, did his usual thing of blowing everybody’s minds and hearts away with his singing, songwriting and guitar playing, while not saying a whole lot from the stage. He said it was because he wanted to get more songs in, but really that’s just who he is and we don’t need the chit-chat/banter anyway.

The sound was messing up again for Stapleton’s set opener “Nobody to Blame,” from his Traveller album, but thankfully the crew got it fixed before the next performance.  

Stapleton probably played for around 90 minutes and absolutely blew everybody away with amazing performances from his entire discography. My favorite Stapleton album is still his 2015 debut Traveller from which he performed six tracks, including my absolute favorite “Fire Away,” which he killed as usual. Other tracks from the album included “Parachute,” “Outlaw State of Mind” and “The Devil Named Music,” which included a decent portion of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic “Free Bird” ahead of it.
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Stapleton’s From A Room albums had, I believe, six songs performed with high energy performances of “Midnight Train to Memphis,” “Millionaire,” “Second One to Know” and “Broken Halos” among them.

His most recent release, 2020’s Starting Over, featured the amazing title track, the smooth vocals of both “Cold” and “You Should Probably Leave,” as well as an absolutely rocking performance of “Arkansas.”

It was hit after hit from Stapleton late Sunday night and the Stagecoach crowd ate it up and when he ended his set perfectly with “Tennessee Whiskey,” the classic cover that put him on the map as a performer nearly a decade ago it was the best possible way to end a festival dedicated to country music.  

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