From Jelly Roll’s big night and Eric Church’s somber set to Dwight Yoakam’s flying fringe, these are the biggest moments from Day 1 of Stagecoach 2024.
After Coachella’s back-to-back weekends, barely any grass remains on the grounds of the Empire Polo Club. But that hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of country fans from venturing here for Stagecoach, which got underway Friday afternoon and runs though Sunday night with headliners Eric Church, Miranda Lambert and Morgan Wallen. The Times’ Mikael Wood and Vanessa Franko are at the festival, notebooks in hand and bandanas in place. Here’s a rundown of the highlights and lowlights of Day 1.
Eric Church lives up to his name
Church used his fifth headlining appearance at Stagecoach as an opportunity to try something different: Instead of leading his sturdy road band through a set of the hits that have made him a kind of older-brother figure to the likes of Wallen and Luke Combs, Church turned the so-called Mane Stage into an open-air chapel (complete with stained glass) for a stripped-down acoustic performance in which he was backed by a 16-member gospel choir.
The set mixed originals like “Mistress Named Music” and “Like Jesus Does” with far-flung covers: “Amazing Grace,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “Take Me to the River” and “Gin and Juice.” His aim seemed to be to showcase the music that formed him as a kid growing up in small-town North Carolina — and to draw attention, in this year of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter,” to the Black roots of country music. (The performance also shared some DNA with the solo-acoustic residency Church has going at Chief’s, his new bar in Nashville, where Wallen was arrested this month for throwing a chair off the roof.)
Energy-wise, it was a risky choice at the end of a day many spent drinking in the sun: Half an hour or so after Church opened with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” — probably not a song anyone still needs to keep doing, if we’re being honest — one guy near me yelled, “This is Friday night, not Sunday morning!” As they went along, though, Church and his accompanists picked up a righteous steam. — Mikael Wood
Dwight Yoakam and the fabulous flying fringe
If you’re going to wear a Canadian tuxedo, make it memorable.
While top-and-bottom denim is a perennial look for Yoakam, on Friday the troubadour paired it with his standard cowboy hat and boots, but the standout was the jacket covered in white fringe on the front and back.
Yoakam, whose name was misspelled on the official Stagecoach set-times sign outside of the Palomino stage (as was Nickelback’s), started about 10 minutes after his scheduled start of 7:20 p.m.
Back to the fringe, it was almost hypnotic to watch it bounce and sway as Yoakam shimmied and shuffled across the stage while he and his band (also snazzily dressed with sparkles, no fringe) played songs including “Little Sister,” “Streets of Bakersfield” and a cover of Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”
Since Yoakam didn’t allow press to photograph his set, the best you can get from us is a stick-figure drawing I made — unfortunately art is not my strong suit and I really couldn’t do the fringe justice.
