You just know the Farmborough festival, country stars galore, is, weather permitting, gonna be one of the great festivals of our time. Promoted by the guys who brought us Governor’s Ball, Founders Entertainment, plus Live Nation -a company reinventing the shed, and with three headliners of the first order, Brad Paisley, Luke Bryan and Dierks Bentley, the rest of the line up seems to be missing something, maybe a Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town , a Lady Antebellum or two, but they may add that in the weeks to come, and what is is awful damn good any way.
Plus, for a three day show, from June 26th to June 28th, the $225 General Admission and $599 for VIP three day passes sound reasonable to me. The way to go is VIP if you can swing it, it is really a blast to swagger up to the lip of the stage. Of course, sometimes even VIP won’t help enough, the Outkast set last June was pandemonium.
The concept whereby New York is not a country friendly city is now officially over with our first country fest. I’ve caught Kenny Chesney, Blake Shelton, Brad Paisley, Jason Aldean and others perform sold out gigs around the City, Jersey and Long Island. And while I have my problems with bro Country on record, live they always deliver the goods.
The thing is, these bands have terrific songwriters and even better Nashville Cat musicians playing them. Forget the “hip hop” production question, that’s just telling you it’s State Of the Art, and keep your eyes on the songs themselves: whatever they are doing, the best of these performers are qualified by content not form.
Canaan Smith
Ashley Monroe
Chris Stapleton
The Cadillac Three
Brothers Osborne
Jon Pardi
Joe Nichols
Kip Moore
Dierks Bentley
Brandy Clark
Dallas Smith
Charlie Worsham
Striking Matches
Wade Bowen
Brad Paisley
Lindsay Ell
The Railers
Maddie & Tae
RaeLynn
Cassadee Pope
Dustin Lynch
Randy Houser
Luke Bryan
