Lineup includes some unconventional choices
At first glance, it looks like any other Stagecoach Country Music Festival lineup, topped by previous fest headliners and genre staples Eric Church and Miranda Lambert, with the addition of first-time Stagecoach headliner and current top-selling country superstar Morgan Wallen.
But upon closer inspection, the official poster for the 16th annual event, which takes over the Empire Polo Club in Indio on April 26-28 following two weekends of its sister Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, there are some larger-print names that aren’t traditionally as- sociated with country music.
Rapper and singer Post Malone is sandwiched in between Lambert and 90-yearold country legend Willie Nelson on the poster for Saturday. Canadian rock band Nickelback is headlining the Late Night in Palomino after-party on Friday and rapper Wiz Khalifa will close out the entire event on the Palomino Stage with a Sunday after-party.
While those are the names that immediately stand out and had some country traditionalists scratching their heads on social media or flat out declaring “not my country music!” when the lineup was announced earlier this week, they actually do make sense.
Before diving into that, there are several others that may seem like wild cards including, Hawthorne’s own surf-pop group The Beach Boys, regional Mexican music star Carín León, soul singer Leon Bridges, rapper turned country music phenomenon Jelly Roll and EDM artist and producer Diplo.
Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley, has released a pair of country albums and has collaborated with acts like Elle King, who returns to Stagecoach on Friday, Thomas Rhett, Cam, Orville Peck and Zac Brown Band. He’s been a part of Stagecoach for sev
eral years now and works directly with festival talent buyer Stacy Vee at Goldenvoice to curate and perform during the popular Late Night in Palomino after-party concerts.
He’s now in charge of the lineup over in the Honky Tonk, too, which earlier this year brought big-name EDM acts like Girl Talk and Dillon Francis. As odd as those seemed at the time, it worked. The Honky Tonk was absolutely packed and at times overflowing with fans throughout the threeday event.
While there are some gathering their pitchforks because Nelson isn’t a headliner in 2024, he’s 90 and might not want to headline. And there are still a lot of true country legends to be enjoyed here.
Dwight Yoakam, who has carried on the Bakersfield sound a la Merle Haggard and Buck Owens with a twangy rock ‘n’ roll twist, is on deck to play Friday. Clint Black, who rose up in the late ’80s and early ’90s alongside acts like Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks and Travis Tritt, will undoubtedly be playing his hits like “Killin’ Time” and “Like the Rain” on Saturday. Pam Tillis, known for the ’90s smash hits “Maybe It Was Memphis” and “Shake the Sugar Tree,” is playing on Sunday.
Post Malone, who is billed as doing a “special set of country covers,” totally belongs at Stagecoach. Did we forget the viral video of him unapologetically bootscootin’ and singing along to Shania Twain’s performance of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” at the American Music Awards? Malone is a lover of all genres. He’s performed with a variety of artists including Ozzy Osbourne, he showed up during Bad Bunny’s headlining set during weekend one of Coachella earlier this year, and he randomly popped into a Billy Strings show at the Observatory in Santa Ana last year to play with the noted bluegrass guitarist.
Wiz Khalifa is a bit of an off-the-wall choice to perform at the festival since he really doesn’t have ties to country music other than talk of a collaboration with now defunct Florida Georgia Line. But he is friends with Diplo who has previously mixed Khalifa’s music with artists like Wallen.
If you think hip-hop doesn’t belong at a Southern California country festival, you’re just wrong.
Duck into any of our local line dancing clubs and you’ll see folks two-stepping to myriad tunes including pop, electronic and hip-hop songs and samples. As Stagecoach has evolved, it has kept up with the very realistic playlists of its audience while introducing a few new flavors along the way.
Plus, Nelly took over the after-party in the Palomino earlier this year and his set was so popular he drew fans away early from Mane Stage headliner Kane
Brown. They joined Nelly’s swell of followers that expanded well beyond the covered stage area to sing along to “Country Grammar,” “E.I.” and his 2006 crossover hit with Tim Mcgraw, “Over and Over.” Even Long Beach rapper Snoop Dogg made an appearance at the fest in 2016.
Nickelback isn’t the first rock act to play at Stagecoach. Through the years artists like Eagles, ZZ Top, The Black Crowes, Bryan Adams, Bret Michaels, The Doobie Brothers, Lynyrd
Skynyrd and more have all graced the stages in the desert. While Nickelback is the butt of a lot of jokes, the band is laughing all the way to the bank as it just sold out arenas across North America while playing “Rockstar” and “How You Remind Me.” The Stagecoach crowd will get down with that as hard and heavy as they do acts like Sam Hunt, Kid Rock or even Hardy, who is set to take the Mane Stage just before Wallen on Sunday next year.