Now there are multiple country music megafests planned for the spring of 2024, and all within a few hours of each other, all catering more to independent fans than mainstream ones, three of which that are on consecutive weekends.
This is bound to create a problem in the already-crowded festival and touring space. Even before Coronavirus, we saw many festivals cancelling or postponing 2020 plans due to the inability to secure talent or due to competing festivals moving into their markets. Now you will have spring festivals competing with fall ones.
Texas music artist Sam Riggs was kicked out of last week’s Larry Joe Taylor Festival for lighting his guitar on fire and smashing it on stage. On Tuesday morning (5-2), Sam Riggs released a statement about the matter, after saying there was, “Lots of untruths and BS out there right now.”
Texas music artist Sam Riggs was kicked out of the Larry Joe Taylor Festival for lighting his guitar on fire and smashing it on stage on Wednesday night (4-26) of the annual music event. Furthermore, Saving Country Music has confirmed that the Sam Riggs camp was told expressly to not use fire on stage, and that they lied to stage managers.
See, don’t feel excluded. Being a Texas music fan can be embarrassing too. And after all the work people have done to plead with folks to not look at Larry Joe Taylor Fest as a drunken dudebro convention in a field no less. I don’t think Waylon done it this way. Or Sturgill.
Country music songwriting legend and performer Billy Joe Shaver has been forced to cancel his show Friday evening (4-14) at Riley’s Tavern in Hunter, TX near New Braunfels, as well as Saturday night’s (4-15) show at Love & War in Lindale, TX near Tyler, due to a heart issue. Shaver is currently in the hospital.
Scheduled to take place this year between April 18th to the 23rd, the Larry Joe Taylor Festival will welcome an estimated 50,000 people through the gates over 6 days, and feature music on three stages from over 50 bands at the Melody Mountain Ranch in Stephenville, TX. One of the biggest and oldest music festivals in the country, Larry Joe Taylor Fest has been going on for over a quarter century.
Texas music is becoming hard wired and institutionalized, and this creates a few game-changing, long-term effects on the overall country music landscape. It is offering a template to the rest of the music world, and not just country music, of how to regionalize and organize a group of like-minded musicians and fans together to where they’re not dependent on corporate America’s traditional musical industrial complex.