With the strong wind and cloudy clumps of brown dust, the first day of Stagecoach in Indio, CA was almost unbearable. Getting off of the shuttle bus around 4:30pm and walking towards the line to get in had all of us holding on to our hats in hopes they would not fly away.
We headed to the Monster Energy Drink tent and danced for a little while, then as it got darker went to the Mane stage and waited for the Country Singer Jellyroll to come out and perform. After a few lyrically pleasant songs he brought out a special guest, T-Pain. With the audience pumping with enthusiasm and excitement, T-Pain was easily the best guest star of the weekend.
They performed some rap songs, including “All I do is Win” By DJ Khaled, “Lose Yourself” By Eminem, and T-Pain’s hit song “Buy you a Drank.” They closed out their performance with a duet cover of the song “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” by Toby Keith who had just passed away in February of this year.
The headliner for Friday night, Eric Church, came out at about 9:30 and opened with the song “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. With a dragged on opening song, he sang some other gospel music but eventually sang some of his own songs, although his show all in all was quite anticlimactic which caused us to leave 25 minutes into his hour long set.
Day two on Saturday April 27th was filled with relaxing in the sun and eventually heading to the festival again at 5:00pm. With the sun shining and the dust at a low, we were able to enjoy time outside.
Post Malone is a rap artist who recently has been proving his vocal skills in other areas. He performed a set of country music songs. His lineup of songs really wowed the crowd and proved that his forte goes beyond rap. He opened with “Whitehouse Road” by Tyler Childers this song is on his Purgatory album which was released in 2017.
His show was closed with a magnificent display of fireworks. A brief intermission before Miranda Lambert gave us time to grab some water and make a bathroom stop before heading back into the crowd.
Miranda Lambert was a little late to start, but she did not disappoint and opened with “Heart Like Mine” which was her final single released on her revolution album from 2009. This song is a fan favorite and got the crowd very excited. Lambert’s performance featured many beautiful guitar solos and lots of stunning bright lights. Overall, her performance was extraordinary and left a lasting impression.
More songs followed, such as “Vice” from her revolution album and also “Bluebird” and “Tequila Does” features from her album Wildcard.
The next day and final day of stagecoach we saw Bailey Zimmerman, The Beach Boys, and The headliner Morgan Wallen. We only watched a little bit of Zimmerman’s show but he did play a great line up of his most popular songs including, “Rock and a Hard Place,” “Fall In Love,” “Religiously,” and “Holy Smokes.”
Many others were played that we unfortunately had to miss in order to see the beach boys perform. The beach boys had special guest John Stamos who performed with them through their show. They opened with their song “Surfin Safari” and continued to play other great songs like, “Good Vibrations,” Surfin USA,” “God Only Knows,” and “Kokomo.” The beach boys had a very long performance so many of the songs feel like a blur. However our group’s favorite song performed was “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” After the show we had some time before Morgan Wallen performed.
Wallen got the crowd pumped with his walkout song “Middle Child” by J. Cole. His opening song was “Everything I Love” followed by other songs including, “Sand In My boots,” “I Wrote The Book,” ” ‘98 Braves,” “Somebody’s Problem,” “Cover Me Up,” “This Bar,” and dedicated the performance of his song “Thought You Should Know” to his Mother. Morgan put on a great performance and closed this great festival; with a set of beautiful fireworks.
The wristband check in line went by quickly, for most people had been at the festival hours prior. Security was easy and with a few more steps, we were all in the dirt and hay covered ground walking to our first destination, the lemonade stand.
The $17 lemonade was outrageous and not only had a whole lemon in it, but a bunch of ice. This way we barely got any actual lemonade in our cups. Other than the expensive spending and lack of product, the lemonade was quite tasty and very refreshing. Especially because of the hot sun shining through the dust.
Day 2 we were back in the festival, this time we tried brisket mac and cheese. Besides the $25 charge on my card, this was easily the best thing we ate from Stagecoach all weekend. The marinated and non dry brisket, placed on top of a creamy and cheesy corkscrew pasta, had our taste buds doing back flips in utter awe.
After sitting down and enjoying our food with another deliciously expensive lemonade, we headed to the main stage yet again in order to get settled and watch Post Malone and then the headliner of the night, Miranda Lambert.
Day 3, and our last festival day was hot and had us basically running to the fresh lemonade tent. This time we ordered a strawberry lemonade, this cup was super tall and was limited with ice, so it was not super cold. But we did get more product this way. They were out of the Brisket Mac and Cheese, so instead we decided to get two $23 pulled pork sandwiches to share among the four of us.
The environment at the concert was great. We were surrounded by great views and kind people. We have collectively been to our fair share of concerts, and music festivals and at each one there is always a fight or people getting heated in the crowd from pushing and shoving.
Although, we didn’t experience this at all throughout the festival. All three days were great and we met some great people and had great conversations. People talked to us while we were in line for food, the restroom and security. We met girls on the bus rides that were super nice and talked to us about their outfits. Everyone was kind and happy to be there.
