On Friday’s opening day of the 2019 edition of the Stagecoach country music festival in Indio, current and veteran stars unite behind a love for the 1990s.
One key change evident at the 2019 edition of the Stagecoach country music festival in Indio is the disappearance of the Mustang Stage, which since the beginning had been the focal point both for the genre’s esteemed veterans as well as many left-field acts that organizers have always roped in.
Part of that is grim reality: Many of the country forebears who played Stagecoach in years past are no longer with us: Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, Little Jimmy Dickens and Lynn Anderson, to cite a few.
That’s played out as a fast-forwarding of what defines “oldies but goodies” for succeeding generations of both country musicians and fans. That truth was on display multiple times at Friday’s opening of the three-day event, which expects to draw upwards of 80,000 fans each day to the Empire Polo Field in Indio.
Increasingly, the good-old days referenced at Stagecoach are not songs and artists from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, but from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, as Jason Aldean, Sunday’s headliner, once celebrated in his rear-view-mirror-focused hit “1994,” which name checks ’90s country star Joe Diffie in its sing-along chorus.
