Stagecoach 2017: Day 3 wraps with varied sets by Kenny Chesney, Thomas Rhett, Los Lobos
Three of the final performances at this year’s Stagecoach Country Music Festival encapsulated what can make a festival in general and Stagecoach in particular so rewarding.
Those were the late afternoon sets by veteran country headliner Kenny Chesney, bro-country heartthrob Thomas Rhett and East L.A. Americana rock heroes Los Lobos.
Chesney brought to the mix the star power of a musician who’s been churning out hits for nearly a quarter century now, and who, year in and year out, ranks among the most popular country acts on the road, often finishing as the top ticket seller among all touring performers.
Thus he brought with him a boatload of singalong songs that let festival goers cap their three-day weekend with a bevy of hits they know inside out including “Beer in Mexico,” “Anything But Mine,” “I Go Back” and “Somewhere With You.”
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Chesney played to the most common motivation music lovers take into festivals: the desire to celebrate with others. Red plastic cups were hoisted in the air through the set as a sea of fans rocked and swayed to songs filled with a classic rock-influenced mixture of catchy choruses, crunching electric guitar riffs, driving bass lines and chest-thumping drums.
Immediately preceding Chesney, rising country-pop star Rhett brought things sonically fast forward with an au courant sound that bleeds across country lines and heavily into the same elements you’ll hear in the music of pop stars such as Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber.
Rhett’s songs are largely inconsequential, crafted to put feet and booties on dance floors and keep them moving with often awkward lyrical references to “hashtags” and “Instagram” in an effort to sound hip. Some are downright embarrassing, such as his 2012 hit fantasizing about what it would be like to have a “Beer With Jesus.”
But he provided eye candy and BPM-appropriate tunes for the under 40, predominantly female crowd to fuel the grand-scale party mood.
Then there was Los Lobos, the long-running band that brought heart and soul to deepen the festival experience for anyone looking beyond hedonistic pleasure. And there appeared to be plenty, judging by a couple thousand listeners spilling out of the Palomino Stage’s tent during their set.
Not that the veteran group suffered any shortage of energy or good feeling on Sunday with a set that included numerous Los Lobos staples as well as a wide-ranging batch of cherry-picked classics including the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” the Young Rascals’ “Good Lovin’” and the Allman Brothers Band’s “One Way Out.”
But the priceless 1-2 punch the band delivered came with two of its own songs, “One Time One Night” and “Will the Wolf Survive,” songs that explore the hopes, dreams and shortcomings of the American dream.
The juxtaposition of the fantasy associated with that dream and the many stark realities that undercut it are at the heart of “One Time One Night.” Lyricist Louie Perez eloquently set up several vignettes of hopes that have been dashed, his words sung with ineffable poignancy by co-lead singer David Hidalgo, who also composed that song’s music.
It’s the one song played at Stagecoach over the weekend that referenced a pickup truck in anything other than the bro-country connotation of the ubiquitous tailgate party.
A lady dressed in white with the man she loved
Standing along the side of their pickup truck
A shot rang out in the night
Just when everything seemed right
Another headline written down in America
Los Lobos followed that with “Will the Wolf Survive,” a multi-layered ode to endangered species of various kinds: wilderness animals, hopeful immigrants and musicians with more on their minds than commercial radio hits:
Sounds across the nation
Coming from young hearts and minds
Battered drums and old guitars
Singing songs of passion
It’s the truth that they all look for
The one thing they must keep alive
Will the wolf survive?
By folding Los Lobos into this year’s lineup, Stagecoach organizers did their bit to keep that particular truth alive for at least one more day.
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