Over a weekend in May, we drove out to Indio (about 2 and 1/2 hours from San Diego) to go to a country music festival, Stagecoach . It was the first year for the festival. As you'll soon discover, I'm a HUGE George Strait fan. We usually go see him every year in Las Vegas, but when I heard about Stagecoach and the opportunity to see him and other favorites, we sold our Vegas tickets and bought tickets to Stagecoach. We even splurged for VIP tickets and had access to a VIP section.
We decided to camp out there instead of getting a room, so that we could be right there and not have to worry about traffic everyday. We were able to go in and out, which helped on Saturday, so we could change in the afternoon. The desert is hot during the day, but once the sun goes down, it can get a little cold.
Well, it wasn't really camping; it was just pitching your tent amongst hundreds of other people. You couldn't even have a campfire! I had my fill of porta-potties for a while!!
There were 4 stages at the festival. One of the stages was under a large covered area and had bluegrass bands. We spent a lot of time in that tent hiding from the sun listening to some cool bands. 2 of my favorites were Abigail Washburn and The Grascals. If you like bluegrass, check out their websites for samples.
The Grascals have a more traditional sound. Abigail is very unique, she has an awesome voice. She lived in China for a while, so she has incorporated her knowledge of the language into some bluegrass music (Listen to "Song of the Traveling Daughter") and it sounds really cool!
Bela Fleck (from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) was also with Abigail playing in her quartet. I first heard of Bela Fleck from him traveling with the Dave Matthews Band, who I used to see in concert a lot.
Saturday, we saw Willie Nelson, Alan Jackson, and the one and only George Strait. The were all fabulous! For George's oncore, we moved up front to watch him closer. A lot of people had left for some reason.
We don't know if we'll go back to Stagecoach in the future, it might be back to Vegas, but we had tons of fun.
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