Two Step Inn 2023: Post-Mortem Thoughts

Yeeeeehaw!  Had some good times in the Georgetown dust bowl this last weekend!  I wasn't able to go see nearly as much as I had wanted to, but we still had some good fun and laughs at the old school country action on display.

• I would definitely go back to this Festival again.  Overall, a blast.
• Zach Bryan was absolutely amazing.  Like, I get the hype on the kid now.  He pumped up the crowd and seemed genuinely in to the party that was happening.  The crowd was PSYCHED to see him, and yelled along with every word.  I loved it, especially the encore version of "Revival" that took like 20 minutes and seemed like an old time hootenanny jam session (even including dumb ass Joe Rogan wandering on stage).
• Other highlights for me were Pam Tillis, Clay Walker, and Tracy Byrd.  Byrd has a ton of good songs!  I had forgotten him.  I teared up during Clay Walker while thinking about good old Tate.
• Lowlights for me were Lonestar, Wynonna Judd, and Tyler Childers.  Lonestar were just lame - they must have kept all the hits for the end of the show because the first half hour was boring.  Judd was entertaining, and her voice is great, but I realized that I literally do not know her music at all, and no one around me seemed to know it either, which just made for a mediocre show.  Childers was very good, I would have enjoyed that show at 2 in the afternoon while lying on a blanket and chatting with friends.  But after seeing Bryan crush it the night before, the stark difference in their styles made it seem really boring for Childers to just walk out and start playing music.  No fanfare, no chatter (he did announce his band, but it had no fire), he just got after it, glaring at the crowd while wearing Satan's jacket.
• The lineup was dope.  Well, at least for me, it was amazing.  
• But I'll tell you that from chatting with other folks around me, I think the lineup crossed a pretty large line that normal people do not straddle.  The old school, classic-country folks who were here to see Lonestar and John Michael Montgomery were not on board with the headliners, who are more new-school guys who don't do the cheesy classic stuff.  One guy next to me was trying to figure out if Zach Bryan was Luke Bryan or Zac Brown, and was confused when people kept saying a third, unknown guy.  Meanwhile, the folks who were there to see Childers and Bryan were rabidly in support of those guys and gave zero shits about the old school guys.  We stood with some 20-somethings in the crowd for Wynonna, as the massed jammed in there for Childers, and one of them literally was like "who the fuck are all of these other things?"  I asked him if he liked Clay Walker, and he was like, "I don't know what that means."  I said the guy right before Judd, and he was like, "oh yeah, that sucked."
• Entry to the Fest was stupid easy (although, more on that later).
• Food options were great!
• Drink options were even better - they actually served cocktails along with the beer and wine.  Way better than the ACL Bar tents that only serve beer and wine.
• The park itself was really neat - lots of big rocks you could sit on, picnic tables with umbrellas here and there, and they even put out some little dance floors in the way back of at least one of the stages.  I thought that was a cool add-on.
• The weather.  Holy crap, the weather was amazing on Sunday.  Just the absolute best Festival weather ever with pure sunshine and temps that were cool enough to be conformable all day long.  I expect that ACL avoids April because of the possibility for rain around now, but damn that was sweet!

Thoughts about the next time:

• Parking/logistics.  I'm spoiled by how easy ACL and Zilker is - just feels like that area is ready made to handle the crowds in a way that Georgetown is not.
• The first day, I had the amazing benefit of a kid who was willing to drop me off at the show, so that half was super easy.  But then leaving on Saturday night felt like some Mad Max shit.  Cell service was spotty, so they had some signs up advertising Wifi for people to use.  Hopefully that helped folks, but the crowd there was madness.  My ride had parked a few miles away at a hotel, which meant we ended up walking on sketchy highway overpasses with no sidewalks and stumbling through construction zones with piles of other people to get over to where the car was parked.  It was definitely a mess.  As we finally pulled out, the local businesses like Whataburger and McDonalds were totally overrun.  Anecdotally, I heard of folks not getting back to Austin until 1am.
• The second day was slightly better, but the parking vendors need to do better with signage.  I saw a sign at Georgetown High School advertising "Festival Parking," and followed the long line of cars to the gate.  At the gate, the worker told me that this was only for people who had pre-paid for Festival Parking.  So, like many others before, and after, me that I could see, we all wasted time waiting in line to get that information and then do a fifteen point turn to exit that queue.  Some signs at the front end, saying that this was only pre-paid parking, would have saved a lot of people time and annoyance.  But later we found a side street with parking and only had to walk about a mile and a half down a nice walking path.  No biggie.
• I'm sure C3 did everything they could plan for, but maybe additional shuttles or agreed parking lot usage could be added for next year.  I was fascinated that some businesses just had their lots roped off, when they could have been charging money to use their lots.  But for sure, I would not recommend parking on the other side of I-35 - Saturday night was scary enough that I won't do that again.
• Security.  Minimal from what I could see. On the front end, that was awesome, because I didn't have to empty my pockets to go through the metal detector or get a pat-down, and no one looked inside of the wife's fanny pack, so the entry was quick and easy.  Should have brought my carbon fiber knife and bottle of bourbon!  No guarantee it will be lax next year though!
• Selfishly though, the lack of strong security presence was annoying because it meant that people set up chairs EVERYWHERE.  Despite all of the signage that said to keep chairs behind a certain area, folks just did whatever and it made it really hard to navigate the crowds.  Likely also a fire hazard.  That part made me uncomfortable.
• The crowd. Surprisingly dickish as a whole.  I don't know if country fans just never go to Festivals or what, but the usual manners of a festival crowd were absent and you had a lot of people being really rude.  Now, we had several great interactions with folks standing around us in the crowd (folks had come in from Florida, Mississippi, also met a guy who apparently had sex in my current house when he was in high school!), but what I repeatedly saw around me (and heard a few times during verbal altercations) were people who just refused to let other folks get by and got mad about it.  And not just someone trying to get to the front!  As we tried to leave a crowd, two ladies crossed their arms and stood in our way and as we squeezed by them one of them yelled "fuck you!" at my wife.  Folks in front of us at Tyler Childers made a literal wall with their chairs, linked together, so that others couldn't get through, and about 30 minutes later a big dude just kicked them to hell to get him and his lady friend through.  Again, felt a little scary and like security wasn't on the ball.
• The tilt of the ground.  I'm sure consideration was given to the design of the stage layout, by people who know about such things (which I do not!).  But the main stage was set up facing that river, which means that the slope of the audience went downward.  I'm pretty tall, but I couldn't really see either of the headliners without looking at the screen.

I sort of worry that they could even do the festival again.  It feels like they nailed the lineup so well, with a perfect mix of new and old, but that they also used up all of the old school stuff that is: (1) not too huge; (2) still worth a damn; (3) still alive and well; and (4) not racist shitbags.  Like, it feels like some 90's folks are too big for that fest - George, Garth, Shania, Reba, Alan, Brooks & Dunn, Clint Black.  Maybe they can get Leann Rimes and Billy Ray Cyrus?  Tim McGraw and Faith Hill?  Alabama and Dwight Yoakum?  Oak Ridge Boys!  I bet there are enough out there they could build a lineup around.

I also wonder if they would just move it to Austin and Zilker Park.  The Zilker experience is just so nice!  But overall, great stuff!  We had a blast.  Hope they do it again!