Bourbon & Beyond 2026 - Line 2 (Queens of the Stone Age, Kacey Musgraves, The Red Clay Strays, Hootie & the Blowfish)

They have yet to release the actual schedule for this festival, so I am curious about how it will all work.  At ACL, you have to pick the main headliners - you wouldn't get to see both the Foos and the Queens.  But maybe this one will be different and better so that I can see everything all at once.  Anyway, here are the sub-headliners.

Queens of the Stone Age

One Liner: One of my favorite heavy bands of all time
Wikipedia Genre: Alternative rock, stoner rock, desert rock, hard rock, alternative metal
Home: Seattle
Day: Thursday

Thoughts:  Not sure that I really have much to say about one of my favorite bands.  Here are a mess of links of the other times I have already written about them.

• ACL Taping: 11/18/2025
  
• Review of In Times New Roman...
  
• 360 Amphitheater: 4/24/2018
• Review of Villains
• ACL Taping: October 2013 (which was in between their ACL sets that year)

I only started doing to exhaustive review thing for the 2014 ACL, so I don't have a massive preview for them from that last time they came to the Festival, but know that if I did, it would talk at great length about how Songs for the Deaf is an almost perfect album that I love unequivocally.  it is not perfect, because "Six Shooter" is too much, but otherwise it nails exactly what I want to hear.  Rated R is great, Lullabies to Paralyze is fine, Era Vulgaris is very good, and Like Clockwork is awesome.  But SFTD is the one.  So, despite it being my sixth time to see them (if my math is right), I may even choose them over the Foos.  That is the strength of my love for Homme and the boys.  If they came to ACL this year I would be very happy.

Kacey Musgraves

One Liner: Texas-born country star who can write a damn song
Wikipedia Genre: Country, pop, folk
Home: Golden, Texas
Day: Friday

Thoughts:  Another where I can pretty much just show you my work and let you run through one of my favorites.

• Review of Deeper Well.
• Preview for 2022 ACL
• Review of star-crossed
• In which I named her Golden Hour as my second favorite album of the 2010's
• Preview for 2019 ACL (which is mostly the same as the 2022 one)
• Review of Golden Hour
• Preview of 2016 ACL
• Review of Pageant Material

Deeper Well has come around for me, but star-crossed is still a miss.  And her first two albums are all-timers for me.  Love 'em.  I just think she writes an excellent song, and then sounds really good performing it.  She released a few songs in 2025/2026 - "Dry Spell" is funny, the "Lost Highway" cover is classic, and "Sounds from the Heart of the Woods" is a sort of insane, but also extremely relaxing, twenty-minute track of bird noises and trippy guitar/banjo.  I need a massage to it right now.  There is also a live version of her joining Zach Bryan on stage in Chicago for "I Remember Everything" and the crowd goes fucking apeshit for her.  Wild.  Anyway, even though this would be my fifth or sixth time to see her, I'd love to.

The Red Clay Strays

One Liner: Up and coming Americana and country rock from Alabama
Wikipedia Genre: Country rock
Home: Mobile, AL
Day: Saturday

Thoughts:  These guys have been getting more and more popular recently - as is evidenced by them being on the same line of this poster as QOTSA or Kacey.  They came through ACL in 2024, but they were weekend two only, so I missed it.

Their name is so good.  I thoroughly expected that they would be from north Texas or south Oklahoma (which definitely reveals my bias), but instead they are a bluesy Americana, southern rock band from Mobile, Alabama.  

Have you ever driven through Mobile, Alabama?  If you are coming through town on I-10, maybe driving from Texas to Gulf Shores, AL, you go through a freaking massive tunnel called the George Wallace Tunnel.  And the thing that makes it so cool in my mind is that it takes your ass entirely under the Mobile River.  Which is so wild to me.  Like, a billion tons of heavy water just weighing down on those tunnels as you scoot along under there like a little ant.  Makes me think of those scary ass sections of The Stand where people have to hike through the Colorado mountain tunnels and avoid scary things, but I still get a charge out of it each time as though I am a kid.  Love it.

Anyhoo, these dudes are not that tunnel.  Several of the guys in the band were in a cover band in Mobile, who started to write and play a little more original material over time.  They added some more members and started playing increasingly larger venues and more places, and got signed by a management company.  Their first single was featured in the unfortunately terrible Doctor Sleep movie (speaking of Stephen King), but that got them moving until the pandemic shut it all down.  But, they used some crowdfunding action to raise up the funds to create and then self-release their debut in 2022, after it didn't get much traction, they signed with a label and got on the Lollapalooza stage.

Two albums - 2022's Moment of Truth and 2024's Made By These Moments.  Well, and then a live disc from 2025 recorded at the Ryman in Nashville.  At times, it is Chris Stapleton-esque belting over country rock.  At times, it is Jason Isbell-esque and more tender.  At times, it is Turnpike Troubadours and a little more bluesy and raucous.  Some Ray LaMontagne here and there too.  Seriously, I want you to listen to their first three most popular songs right now and follow along.  "Wondering Why" with 482.5 million streams and some LaMontagne vibes.

Bluesy and warm and luscious.  Super good stuff.  Apparently was a big hit on the TikTok, which is an odd thing to me, but I also don't pay attention to that stuff.  That is from their 2022 debut, which as I mentioned before didn't do much upon release.  Well, they did a version of it on a YouTube platform called Western AF, and that is the thing that initially blew up and led to the TikTok virality too.  I'd love to see what Willie or Waylon would think about that path to country stardom.

The second most streamed and currently #2 in Popular list on Spotify is "Wanna Be Loved," with 168.9 million streams, and in my mind serious Turnpike vibes.

Feels like those guitars are raring to break out and soar - near the end they try to get out of their cages, but then they just rein in and pull back for a soft coda.  And finally, you get the Stapleton belting maneuver in another track from the new album, their currently fifth most popular, called "Drowning" with 57.7 million streams.

I think it is just that one song from Stapleton where he keeps yelling the word "crying," but I feel that one for sure.  So, there you go.  Those are my comparisons, and three of their top songs.  They also just got a song on the outrageously long Twisters soundtrack (another Stapleton dupe), along with half of the other up-and-coming country artists in the world, so they are on their way! 

Since we are talking about live music, I tried out the Live at the Ryman disc too.  Damn good.  I can see why there is some excitement building.  The first song feels like I am listening to early Waylon Jennings fronting the Allman Brothers.  Bring it.

Hootie & the Blowfish

One Liner: The least offensive pop rock band ever
Wikipedia Genre: Pop rock, alternative rock, soft rock, roots rock, heartland rock, jangle pop
Home: Columbia SC
Day: Sunday

Thoughts:  Come on.  You already know them.  Maybe of interest is how little output they have had since their heyday.  I guess Darius Rucker went out and did his country thing for a while, but there is a 2005 album and a 2020 album (neither especially great) since their greatest hits comp.  But when you have like eight certified soft rock bangers in your holster, you still deserve to headline things.

I won't waste the time going over all of the mega-hits they had on that first album.  1994's Cracked Rear View went fucking TWENTY TWO TIMES PLATINUM.  That is #10 on the list of the highest certified diamond albums of all time.  Just below Pink Floyd's The Wall and just above Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.  Good gravy.

Well, that was obvious at the time, because the disc was in just about every red-blooded human's CD collection when I started college, and I can clearly remember hearing it in dorm rooms all over campus.  And so, I had a very fun, full-circle kind of moment when my son went off to college for his freshman year in the fall of 2024 and Hootie was the big, cheap entertainment right after they started.  He and I have never really bonded all that much about music, he seems to like it just fine but he doesn't get quite so obsessive about it as I do.  But, his report about the show made me genuinely happy.  Not only were the major hits great, but he also went through a long list of very fun covers that they did really well.  And not the things you would expect from their albums like "Wagon Wheel" or the ones from their 2000 cover album.  But heavier stuff - Led Zeppelin, Stone Temple Pilots, (and less heavy like) R.E.M. or Buffalo Springfield.  The boy was excited about it, which was really fun for me to hear.  Maybe some day he will waste countless hours writing about the bluegrass bands that no one plans to see at a music festival in some random flyover state?  A guy can dream.