Kacey Musgraves Just Wanted Fans to Two-Step at Surprise White Horse Show

Kacey Musgraves was in Austin playing two capacity shows at The Moody Center as part of her “Middle of Nowhere” Tour October 7th and 8th. And though the big story coming out of the shows was how she brought out Miranda Lambert to sing their “bury the hatchet” song “Horses and Divorces” for the audience, what strangely went under-reported is that on Thursday (10-8), Musgraves stopped into Austin’s famed honky-tonk The White Horse to play a surprise intimate show for the two-stepping crowd, reprising a bunch of old school country covers in the process.

For Musgraves, it was sort of a full circle moment. She grew up playing classic country on the small town “Opry” circuit in east Texas. That’s where her and Miranda Lambert first rubbed elbows as up-and-comers. Musgraves also lived in Austin briefly, though before The White Horse was opened. She did, however, shoot her video with Willie Nelson for the song “Are You Sure” there in 2015.

Some of the songs Musgraves reportedly performed were “(Hey Baby) Que Paso” by the Texas Tornados, Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight,” “Hey, Good Lookin'” by Hank Williams, “Luckenbach, Texas,” “I’ve Been Everywhere,” and others. Musgraves showed up with her backing band for the performance, and they were doing their best to keep up with Kacey’s requests.

Sweet Megg was in town from Nashville to play The White Horse that night, along with Austin two-step favorites Bovine and Sentimental Family Band. They all sceded time from their sets so Musgraves could show up and play at midnight. Though the set was somewhat of a “surprise,” word started to trickle out, and by the time Kacey took the stage, a line was snaked around the block and it was “1 in, 1 out” at the door. The counterfeit merch sellers even showed up selling T-shirts and keychains of Kacey’s now famous glittery bovine testicles.

The White Horse is pretty famous for attracting a two-step audience almost exclusively these days, meaning most audiences aren’t allowed (or able) to crowd up near the stage. But with so many Musgraves-dedicated fans there and the bar pushed to capacity, the two-steppers got pushed to the margins and near the back.

“It really felt like an ode to her relationship with the dance halls,” says Nick Fichter of the band Bovine. “She kept asking everyone to dance. I was a little bit sad. She was like, ‘I came here to play so everyone could dance to it. Why would you come to a show at The White Horse if you’re not here to dance?’ But it was a really neat experience, and that it fell into our laps like that. It was great to be part of it.”

“I felt like I saw her in that moment standing up on stage, saying, ‘I came to The White Horse, and I was hoping you guys were gonna dance.'” says Kat Foree of Bovine. “She mentioned that she used to play dance halls when she was younger. I saw that younger self wishing for people to connect with her music in that way. We are so fortunate to get that. Austin is pretty magical for that. We can make money, and have a really engaged crowd without our name needing to sell tickets.”

Along with no media coverage of Kacey’s surprise show, there’s only a little bit of video and photos from the show, including from the Musgraves camp. In fact, the one viral post about the show was from the next day, and from Bovine singer/bass player/founder Georgia Ferguson at her regular job at a pizza restaurant throwing a bag of trash into a dumpster and saying, “No one at my restaurant job knows my band opened for Kacey Musgraves last night.”

The caption of the Instagram post reads, “the duality of working in an up and coming americana band…”

As enamored as a band like Bovine might be of all the success and the cushy lifestyle someone like Kacey Musgraves gets to lead, it’s interesting to note that in her White Horse moment, it was Kacey Musgraves who was envious of all those Austin two-step bands who get to play for enlivened audiences that dance and interact with the music in that most intimate and connected of ways.

This is the kind of culture places like The White Horse, The Broken Spoke, Sagebrush, Sam’s Town Point, and others have cultivated in Austin. And whether it’s the lyrics of Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas,” or a Kacey Musgraves surprise show at The White Horse, they’re all trying to tap into that culture that is so elemental to country music.

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