BUT, can I whine for a sec? Well, yes, I can, because this is my blog dammit. When the tickets went on sale for this music festival, here is what the poster looked like:
Which is, holy hell! Willie, Stapleton, Sturgill, Avetts, Lucinda, Margo, Yola - I'd pay to go see any of those folks just about any day of the week! And so I did! I can't recall what I paid for the tickets, but I think it was a lot. But in my mind, this was like buying ACL tickets where I was about to get to see a full day of outrageously great shows! Sweet! Any reasonable person looking at that poster would expect that the Festival involved all of those artists, right?
But then I start hearing radio ads where they are pimping tickets to go see Willie and Family, Chris Stapleton, Ryan Bingham, and Yola. And I thought to myself, pretty nice of them to be saying Yola instead of some of those bigger bands on the lineup. Didn't think that meant that the whole poster was a LIE! Until like two days before when they released the set times, and only then did I realize that the poster was a damn dirty trick! Nothing on there says that only some of these bands will be there. It 100% made me believe that I was buying a ticket for those artists. Wish I knew a lawyer.
Anyway, here are my thoughts about the actual music. Yola was good, but I felt terrible for her. The sun was directly on the stage, and being that this was late August, it was a billion degrees in there. She carried on, and her voice is so damn lovely, but her show at the Scoot Inn a few years back was much more enjoyable. The Ryan Bingham show was honestly just boring. I know he's a great songwriter and all, but it was literally just him and his guitar on stage in the blaring heat. After the fun energy of Yola, he was just flat. We wandered off to find a drink.
Stapleton freaking crushed it. If you haven't seen him before, then you are doing yourself a disfavor. Dude can belt it, he writes killer songs, and his skill on the guitar is full-on rockstar worthy. He jammed out. And while it doesn't really change anything musically, it makes me happy that his wife is on stage with him and singing harmonies. Dig that. Then Willie bopped out with son Lukas in tow, and they played a solid set. I didn't especially want to hear Lukas play his originals (although I really like his new album and would dig a full set from him now) but that was just because I really wanted to see Willie doing his thing. Willie looks ancient, and performed sitting down, but he still sounds pretty solid. I hope that won't be the last time I get to see him, but if is was, I'm glad he did a good show with a bunch of the classics. We didn't stay to the bitter end to see everyone else take the stage and do a big singalong, but it was a fun day anyway.
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