Stagecoach 2024: Post Malone, Willie Nelson plus best, worst of Day 2

INDIO —  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 2.

A new face with old songs

Post Malone took a swig from a red plastic cup and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his plaid-print Western shirt. After signaling for months that he was pivoting to country music, the former (and no doubt future) hip-hop star had come to Stagecoach to make it official, and now here he was standing on the Mane Stage between the band of Nashville pros behind him and an audience of many thousands of country fans in front of him.

“My name is Austin Richard Post,” he said, dropping his government appellation. “Cheers, motherf—!”

Because he collaborates so widely — this year he’s already appeared on Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” — it can be tempting to think of this scraggly charmer with the face tattoos and yearning voice as a dilettante. Yet what struck you about Malone’s Stagecoach set was his commitment to the bit as he covered 11 smartly chosen country tunes with just the right balance of ease and determination: not a dude trying to impress anybody with his rarefied taste but a fan eager to join a community with a rich cultural history. (Has Malone’s warm reception been aided by his identity as a white guy? Uh, you could say that.)

His repertoire was appealingly down the middle: hits by George Strait, Tim McGraw, Toby Keith and Alan Jackson sure to be known by anyone who grew up around a radio over the last couple of decades. His guests were crowd-pleasers too: Brad Paisley, who joined him for “I’m Gonna Miss Her” and Vince Gill’s “One More Last Chance”; Sara Evans, who did “Suds in the Bucket”; and Dwight Yoakam, who came out for “Little Ways.”

Malone’s singing wasn’t showy but it had the right feel, nowhere more so than in a lovely rendition of Randy Travis’ “Three Wooden Crosses.” After that one, he brought Paisley back out to close with Jackson’s deathless “Chattahoochee” — another sign that he understood the assignment. — Mikael Wood

Stagecoach’s strangest bedfellows

There’s always a wild card or two on the Stagecoach schedule, but the one that seemed most like a fever dream was the teaming of Clint Black, Diplo and Guy Fieri for a cooking demonstration late Saturday afternoon at Guy’s Stagecoach Smokehouse.

Would you believe me if I tell you it got weirder? T-shirt cannons were fired into the crowd; Stephanie Izard, of acclaimed L.A. restaurant Girl & the Goat, appeared during the demo; M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” which was co-written by Diplo, played over the P.A. until someone realized that we were at Stagecoach and asked for it to be turned off — the replacement was Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town.” Oh, and Black, who performs at Stagecoach on Sunday, busted out a harmonica for some cooking music. (I promise you that this was not a hallucination brought on by too much sun exposure.)

During all of this, there was actually a cooking demo. As Diplo went to work on some mac and cheese, Black and Fieri worked on stuffing a turkey.

We learned that Diplo told Fieri he’s a “mac and cheese and ramen king.” And Black loads his own trailer with his own food when he’s on the road, but when he was young and didn’t have money, he would mix mac and cheese with chili. When it would start to run out he would add ketchup.

“That’s your stretch ingredient, ketchup? People use Autotune and you use ketchup,” Fieri joked.

These days, Black said his specialty is a Sicilian pasta sauce.

“I use a variety of meats with it — something mild, something a little stronger and then something really hot,” Black told the crowd. “The secret to making a great Sicilian pasta sauce is the green bell pepper. And then the cherry on top of that is cooking it for a hell of a long time. I’ll cook a sauce for two days before I’ll indulge.”

“I told you this guy was a chef,” Fieri told the crowd. — Vanessa Franko

A blown opportunity

Lambert’s headlining set ended strong with a surprise appearance by Reba McEntire, who joined the singer for a rowdy “Mama’s Broken Heart” — “I was thinking it would be pretty badass if I had a feisty redhead come out and sing this song with me tonight,” Lambert said — then stuck around to sing her own “Fancy” before helping Lambert close the show with “Gunpowder & Lead.”

For most of this disappointing show, though, Lambert — typically one of Nashville’s wiliest and most precise storytellers — struggled to connect emotionally, coasting with little engagement through both uptempo stuff about drinking and revenge and quieter ballads about family and regret. (“Wranglers,” her so-so new single, failed to move the needle.)

Perhaps Lambert was distracted by the high desert winds that kept threatening to blow off her cowboy hat; perhaps she’s spent too much time in Las Vegas, where the undemanding enthusiasm of a residency audience can soften a performer’s game. Either way, this was a reminder — after Church’s polarizing Friday-night gospel experiment — that sticking to the hits isn’t always what you want. — M.W.

Bluegrass throwback

Trampled by Turtles’ afternoon set at the Palomino Stage was a callback to the early years of Stagecoach. When the fest started in 2007, there was another stage called the Mustang that was dedicated to bluegrass and it’s where Trampled by Turtles made their Stagecoach debut in 2010. It was a rollicking party back then like it was on Saturday. With a setlist that leaned heavily on the Minnesota band’s early albums, it was a welcome nostalgia trip. And 14 years after its release, set closer “Wait So Long” still absolutely shreds. — V.F.

Legend status: secure

Consider this: At 90 years old, Willie Nelson is still finding new ways to phrase his singing and guitar playing in “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” Flanked by his sons Lukas and Micah, here he complemented the expected oldies — “Whiskey River,” “You Were Always on My Mind,” “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” — with a cover of Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe” and welcomed Ernest, Jelly Roll and Charley Crockett to the stage for a loosey-goosey take on “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” — M.W.

Boot scootin’ boogie

At Coachella, the space that occupies Diplo’s Honkytonk is the Yuma Tent, a place for pulsing beats presided over by a giant disco ball shaped like a shark. At Stagecoach, Disco Shark is replaced with Disco Horse, and there are still pulsing beats but also some fiddles. (The sparkly equine had some corners of the internet convinced it was a nod to Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album cover and it was further proof that she would show up at the fest.)

Early in the day there are traditional line dancing demonstrations, a hallmark of the Honkytonk since it started at the fest, but since Diplo has taken over the branding of the dance hall, the space is bringing in more big-name EDM acts in the late afternoon and early evening. And if you wanted to see Dillon Francis on Friday or the Chainsmokers on Saturday (both artists who have played Coachella), you needed to be there well in advance to even get into the tent. — V.F.

Best cover of a George Strait classic: Asleep at the Wheel’s “All My Ex’s Live in Texas”

With apologies to Post Malone (who did fine with “Check Yes or No”), this long-running Western swing outfit was the picture of finesse on the Palomino Stage. — M.W.

The surprise guest that wasn’t

Rumors swirled that Beyoncé was going to swing by Stagecoach ever since her big rig and a plane with a “Cowboy Carter” banner flew around Coachella. And Saturday seemed like the most likely day for an appearance since Willie Nelson, Post Malone and Tanner Adell not only performed on her new album, but that plane was spotted flying overhead again.

Plus, there was the whole Backwoods Barbie conspiracy theory that had some members of the Beyhive convinced that the DJs playing Saturday evening in Diplo’s Honkytonk were actually Beyoncé. They were not. — V.F.

Praise for the queen

Hanging out after her sly Mane Stage performance — and after having happily sampled the desserts in Stagecoach’s catering tent — Adell described her admiration for Beyoncé, who tapped her to sing on “Cowboy Carter’s” version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.”

“It’s a level of artistry that is only possible after 30 years of a career,” Adell said. “There’s obviously a God-given beauty and grace and talent. But it’s the fact that she works so extremely hard. She’s someone I look up to a lot, but it’s never anything sonically that I use for inspiration.” Instead, she added, she draws from Beyoncé’s behind-the-scenes documentaries that reveal the process behind productions like the Renaissance tour and the singer’s 2018 Coachella performance. “Those shows don’t just happen,” Adell said. “She’s showing us how hard she works to get it where it needs to be.” — M.W.