Full Recap and Photos of Willie Nelson’s 2026 4th of July Picnic
(This page intentionally left blank due to the media not being allowed to cover Willie Nelson’s 2026 4th of July Picnic)
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Saving Country Music
(This page intentionally left blank due to the media not being allowed to cover Willie Nelson’s 2026 4th of July Picnic)
July 6, 2026 @ 7:30 am
Hahaha! This is SAVAGE.
This was a rough weekend for 4th of July celebrations. I hope it was a great success but I can’t imagine the sweltering heat they had to endure.
July 6, 2026 @ 2:48 pm
: D Ok, So here you go, Fisher …
Been trying to put you on the map for a few years now.
Thinking this song will help propel you a little more.
Made me smile
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1038811161845008/
July 6, 2026 @ 7:42 pm
Just another average Texas Summer day.
July 6, 2026 @ 7:42 am
Nice Trig!!! Nice……LOL I actually refreshed the page once… 🤣
July 6, 2026 @ 7:50 am
That review is awesome 👌 .that’s what they deserve though. Man,trigger batting .1000 here lately.
July 6, 2026 @ 8:03 am
Wow this thing is locked up even tighter than that little wedding at MSG over the weekend.
July 6, 2026 @ 8:05 am
True music journalism barely exists anymore. SCM is arguably the best one out there to provide detailed coverage both photographic and editorial. Many festivals welcome the coverage. What is the rationale on this one? I honestly dont get it. Willie Nelson is an SCM favorite. What gives?
July 6, 2026 @ 8:24 am
For the record, on this particular year, Saving Country Music was not selected out and denied a press pass. They didn’t allow ANY press into the event. There are no reviews/recaps, no professional photos from any outlet. And though I’m not above paying to get into an event to cover it and do that all the time, I’m not going to do that for an amphitheater show where I can’t get my cameras in. I’m not going to pay $80 to sit out in the GA and take iPhone photos from 300 yards away, or $280 for a lower bowl seat to shoot them 150 feet away.
This event was dramatically undersold, and has been restricting the press for many years now. It should have been sold out.
July 6, 2026 @ 7:40 pm
Awful venue. You couldn’t pay me to go out there no matter who was playing and I don’t mind the heat at all. I thought that Q2 was great the 2 picnics I saw there. Not into the lineup this year either. I love Willie but the last couple of times I saw him it was very low energy and strange hearing no piano.
July 10, 2026 @ 9:48 am
Why do you think it was under sold? I saw the show the night before in Irving and there was plenty of people there.
July 10, 2026 @ 9:53 am
The venue is a terrible place for a concert that starts at 4 pm when there’s no shade, the tickets were way overpriced, and though it probably only played a minor role, the promoters didn’t leverage local media to promote the event like others did for other 4th of July events in town.
Also, from what I understand, the crowd was decent. There were empty seats, but they were giving away tickets to help fill the place out.
July 6, 2026 @ 2:32 pm
Willie’s in no shape to perform anymore, and the less the media covers that, the more money for his handlers.
Just my cynical take from down here in the muddy bottom of the swamp.
July 6, 2026 @ 3:03 pm
Willie Nelson played the Luck Reunion here 3 months ago, and that is a media/industry-centric event with probably 100+ media members and 25+ photographers on site. Nobody’s trying to hide anything. I’ve covered the Luck Reunion every years for going on a dozen of them, and the last time I covered a Willie Nelson 4th of July Picnic was in 2013. The reason for this is the event has always been strangely extremely restrictive to the media, and I’m usually out of town anyway. All that restricting the media and photographers does is ensure the public’s window into the event is grainy cell phone footage from far away that makes everything look uninteresting.
July 6, 2026 @ 4:08 pm
Darlin Shotgun does not need media approval or anyone else hahahah ✌️😎
July 6, 2026 @ 8:21 am
Of course, the media are free to cover Willie Nelson’s 2026 4th of July Picnic. I Googled it and only a site called Live For Live Music has anything on it, post-concert. They have a photo of the finale wiht Billy Strings and others sitting with Willie.
I suppose Willie’s “picnic” is of very limited interest now, and if the promoters are going to be hostile to the established media, it won’t get much coverage unless Willie is carried out in an ambulance.
Well, I’ll guess that this will turn out to be the last one of these things It’s Willie’s and the promoters’ loss not to have capitalized on that.
July 6, 2026 @ 8:29 am
Live for Live Music was not there reporting on the ground. They took the photo of Billy Strings and Willie from Billy’s Facebook page. But yes, that’s the only thing that even passes for a “live review” of what is the longest-running annual live event in country music.
I have no problem paying to get into events to cover them, as long as I can get a camera in. I did this in 2013 for Willie’s 4th of July Picnic (back when digital photography was not nearly what it is today):
https://savingcountrymusic.com/40th-annual-willie-nelsons-4th-of-july-picnic-live-blog/
July 6, 2026 @ 4:31 pm
Sigh…remember Willie playing clubs and wrestling arenas. Saw the show a nu.ber of times. Even played an audience extra in Honey Suckle Rose. Got photos..Willie and Slim Pickens autograph from that one. . Everyone and everything is aging and changing. At 75? I would like to see him one more time but probably ain’t gonna happen. Nothing Cold As Ashes After The Fire Goes Out.
July 6, 2026 @ 10:10 am
“…and I took that personally.”
That’s such a shame, and a truly bad decision.
July 6, 2026 @ 10:18 am
Not sure what you’re implying here, but for the record, I didn’t take anything personal in this situation because nothing was personally targeted at me. The Austin-American Statesman, The Austin Chronicle, if Rolling Stone was planning to cover this event, they were all denied. It was a media moratorium, and this can be verified by the fact that there’s no media coverage of it.
This is one of the most historic country music events. And there’s no public archive of the scenes and moments. We know more about what happened at the Willie Picnic’s in the ’80s than we do the most recent ones. I feel like that is a failure of society.
July 6, 2026 @ 10:35 am
What am I missing? Why are they not having media to the event? I struggle a bit figuring out specifically what is bad about having media there.
July 6, 2026 @ 11:14 am
I used to love reading concert reviews from the Boston Globe from shows I did or didn’t attend.
Many were cut out of the paper and I still have.
I am curious what you think of Setlist.fm which is a great resource for upcoming concerts and for past ones. Its a catch-22- nice to know what likely will be played but it does take the spontaneity away from the show.
My wife wanted to see Paul Simon and when I looked at his setlist online, there were maybe 6-7 big hits played, more deeper tracks for die hards. She loved Simon & Garfunkel and Paul growing up but I didnt want to spend over $100 per ticket to not hear the big ones. My son surprised us with tickets, but knowing the setlist ahead of time really affected my thoughts on going or not.
July 6, 2026 @ 12:45 pm
I think Setlist.fm is a good tool, and I use it upon occasion for research. I probably wouldn’t use it to preview a concert, but it certainly helps keep with with the different eras of performers.
July 6, 2026 @ 1:17 pm
I always use it to jog my memory the next day or to see if an artist cut a song or 2 for time etc… They often many times tell you if a song was a cover and by who originally. I also like going back years or decades to see the setlist from 1982 for someone. Great website!!!
July 6, 2026 @ 1:43 pm
A little disappointed that Billy Strings didn’t sing Gild the Lily or the Rodney Crowell didn’t sing She’s Crazy For Leaving and I Couldn’t Leave Her if I Tried. Great day of music, nonetheless,
July 6, 2026 @ 4:00 pm
For unexplained reasons Crowell just doesn’t seem to want to revisit his best selling award winning career defining album Diamonds and Dirt. The one that has those songs you just named. Its like to him that album never happened. And of course we all love it. Fortunately he does have a lot of great material in addition to that album. Go figure though. Perhaps he thinks its ” too commercial sounding.”?
July 6, 2026 @ 3:08 pm
It’s to bad you could not cover it i drove down from Omaha and saw the show in Irving Friday and then went down for the picnic Saturday and both shows where unbelievable must have been the heat or a Texas thing but both shows didn’t fill up till half way through the night and all the performance where great both nights looked pretty full to me for both shows for me it was well worth the trip Willie is a National Treasure no better way to spend America’s 250th Birthday.
July 6, 2026 @ 5:14 pm
Echoing comments that press won’t sell tickets. Even quality press like yours, Trigger. Love to Willie, Family, and organization but yeah…
July 6, 2026 @ 7:51 pm
As I said in the article, the influence the press has is diminishing by the day, and the journalists unwilling to acknowledge this truth are fooling themselves. But the idea the press “won’t sell tickets” is categorically false. I have the emails from artists, booking agents, mangers, labels heads, etc. over the years thanking me for directly helping to sell hard tickets, tracked by inbound traffic from Saving Country Music to artist’s tour pages and ticketing houses. I have sold many thousands of tickets here, and so can other outlets. Is it at the same capacity it was a decade ago? No, it’s not. But the fact that tour press has fallen off a cliff can’t help the situation for touring performers.
July 10, 2026 @ 3:02 am
“I have sold many thousands of tickets here”. You definitely sold several to us. There have been many up and coming or smaller bands/artists that came through our area, and we bought tickets solely because we knew about them from this blog. Your tour date announcements always grab my attention, and I scan them for nearby venues so I can snag tickets early. You have also covered a number of festivals that were new to me, and I have put a couple of them on my retirement to-do list.
I truly do not understand why an event like the picnic denies media access. I wish someone in the business would give us their rationale. I’m sure they have one, and I’d love to hear it.