Stacoach Rides Into Town
by Sandra Schulman
April 22, 2010

It’s big and it’s country, whatever that means anymore.

Is it the classic croon of Ray Price? The still powerful outlaw stance of ex-con hit maker Merle Haggard? Or is it now the pop duo stylings of Sugarland? We get to see Brooks & Dunn – again- for what they say is the last time. Promise or threat? And Toby Keith has still kept his legion of ass-kicking fans, even after picking on a bunch of (Dixie) Chicks.

We really do love Aussie Keith Urban, from his hardscrabble days in The Ranch to the A-list of marrying movie stars and winning Grammys, Urban has kept it gritty and pretty at the same time. Local connection alert: Urban’s first magazine cover was for Playgirl Magazine, where a shirtless Keith posed in jeans wearing 29 Palms artist Mikal Winn’s jewel studded belt buckle. Hello.

Never thought BJ Thomas was country but sure do love his music. Thomas achieved mainstream success in 1968, with the single “Hooked on a Feeling,” which featured the sound of an electric sitar, first released on the album On My Way. “Hooked on a Feeling” became Thomas’s second million selling record.

The 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, featured Thomas performing the Burt Bacharach - Hal David penned song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which became the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1970. BJ Thomas is now in his fifth decade of performing.ghter, who after years of running amuck, has been playing her mother in a stage version of Wildwood Flower: The June Carter Cash Story.

From the honky-tonks of Nashville’s Lower Broadway to NYC’s Great White Way, one act on the bill has what no one else has. Chuck Mead, formally of Grammy-nominated hell raisers BR-549, now has a hit show on Broadway with the Million Dollar Quartet which tells the story – in real time and using only music from that period – of the one magical night that Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis all jammed at Sun Studio in Memphis before their lives took major star turns. Chuck is the musical director for the show, which played a year in Chicago before heading east.

“I think this show has succeeded because it’s got a real story about real characters,” Chuck says on a break from the road from his home in Nashville. “I feel like I’m the caretaker of this music, so I took real good care of it. The show is basically a history lesson in 90 minutes. It flies by with all these great classic songs, then the last 10 minutes is a Vegas style blowout. We had Cash’s drummer W. S. Holland there on opening night last week and he said the only problem he could find was that we “were too damn good.” Stan Perkins, Carl’s son, loved it also, so I think we did right by all of them.”

Mead will be playing with a 4-piece band, playing some covers, new originals from his album Journeyman’s Wager, and maybe a few BR-549 songs. Can we request Little Ramona Gone Hillbilly Nuts?

SATURDAY
Keith Urban, Sugarland, Billy Currington, Phil Vassar, Joey + Rory, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Nick 13, BJ Thomas, Bobby Bare, Baxter Black, Waddie Mitchell, Trampled by Turtles

SUNDAY
Toby Keith, Brooks & Dunn, Jason Aldean, Heidi Newfield, Williams Riley, The Oak Ridge Boys, Bill Anderson, Little Jimmy Dickens, The Avett Brothers, Firefall, Chuck Mead, Mary Gauthier, Carlene Carter, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Truth & Salvage Co.
www.stagecoachfestival.com