On the big video screens flanking the ‘Mane Stage,’ Miranda Lambert turned around to face her rockin’ band and wiggled her butt to kick off a raucous version of the Faces’ ‘Stay With Me.’ A few tunes later, she got the whole crowd singing along to Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock and Roll.’ In the 1960s or 70s, Lambert would’ve been an across-the-board rock star, on the cover of Rolling Stone, touring with the Allmans or Skynyrd. In 2009, she is only played on country stations, and opens for Kenny Chesney. I’m not sure this is progress. I am on record as thinking ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ and ‘Gunpowder and Lead’ are great songs, and she killed them.
Little Big Town, the Fleetwood Mac of Country Music, did an actual FM song in their set, ‘The Chain.’ Again, the audience was loud and appreciative. This crowd kind of rocks, actually, but with a twang element. The women wear bikini tops and short-shorts, with cowboy hats and cowboy boots. You wouldn’t think this’d be a sexy look, but it is. And when they dance to, say, an Earl Scruggs bluegrass rave-up, it’s pretty cute. Maybe half the men are shirtless, also with the cowboy hats, but not as many boots. So equal opportunity for girl-and-guy watching.
Speaking of Scruggs: seeing him at Stagecoach is like seeing Louis Armstrong at a Jazz Festival. I mean, think about it: he was playing banjo in Bill Monroe’s band in the late 1940s. Which is amazing. A lot of the people watching him recognized the theme from ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ and ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ from ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’ Scruggs played sitting down, like the old jazz guys at Preservation Hall, but he could have played in a hammock for all I care. He’s great.
We also got to see Lynn Anderson sing Joe South’s “I Never Promised You A Rose Garden.”
In one of the tents, there was a Poco show. When Buffalo Springfield broke up, Richie Furay, one of the lead singers (the one who wasn’t Stills or Young) formed this country-rock band, and for the Stagecoach set, Furay rejoined his old band, along with original steel-guitar player Rusty Young, and Timothy Schmidt and Jim Messina. So this was an Event. And I got to see Furay, Messina and Young do “A Child’s Claim To Fame” and “Kind Woman” from the final Buffalo Springfield album, and that made me really happy. They also did some Loggins & Messina and Eagles stuff, I think, but I’d already cut across the field to see Miranda at that point.
Another highlight: the swinging Hot Club of Cowtown. 95% of the other people at Stagecoach (including my date) were seeing Kid Rock in that timeslot, so the HCoC played to maybe 45 people, but they were tres cool. Many more people went to see Kevin Costner and his band, which just goes to show you.
We got there too late on Sunday for the BBQ competition. Nevertheless, some of the vendors were nice enough to give me free samples of pulled pork. No complaints
