Stagecoach: Dierks Bentley, Jerry Lee Lewis set the stage for Shania Twain
Jerry Lee Lewis put on a killer show and Dierks Bentley played to perhaps the biggest crowd in Stagecoach history Friday, but it was all just a warm-up for Saturday’s headline show by Shania Twain.
Twain, 51, is scheduled to introduce her first new song in 15 years at 10:15 p.m. on the Mane Stage and that alone is enough to catapult the 11-year-old country music festival at Indio’s Empire Polo Club into a new universe.
Twain, the best-selling female recording artist in country music history with more than 85 million records sold, has talked on television talk shows about her new song, Life’s About To Get Good, and called attention to its release as the first “fifth chair” judge in the history of NBC’s hit talent show The Voice. She has said the song is “optimistic and hopeful, no matter how bad life can get.”
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But she has refused to sing the song or put the video on YouTube until after it premieres at Stagecoach. The album, her first not produced by her ex-husband and her first to feature all original songs, isn’t due for release until the fall. She didn’t perform from 2004 to 2012 due to a weakened voice caused by a condition called dysphonia, so her introduction of the single at Stagecoach is being looked upon as a major news story.
Stagecoach programmer Stacy Vee said there’s never been so much national attention focused on the festival and it’s due to the anticipation over Twain’s new song.
Almost overlooked in all the Twain hoopla is the fact that Willie Nelson is playing his first music festival since releasing his latest album, God’s Problem Child, on April 17. It features the last recording by piano legend Leon Russell and a song written about Nelson’s late outlaw country colleague, Merle Haggard. Nelson is scheduled to perform at 7:45 p.m. on Saturday in the big Palomino tent.
Stagecoach day one fans said they were already satisfied just by the opportunity to see 81-year-old singer-pianist Jerry Lee Lewis make his Coachella Valley debut.
“This is the best part of the whole thing,” said Donna Zeller of La Quinta. “This is all I really want to see. I think it’s going to be the best.”
Lewis is one of the few performers who can say he had a major motion picture (Great Balls of Fire) and a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (Million Dollar Quartet, for which Levi Kreis won a Tony for playing Lewis) based at least in part on his life. His Sun Records producer, Sam Phillips, sold Elvis Presley’s contract to RCA in 1956 because he thought Lewis would be as big as Elvis and wanted money to promote him. Lewis never became the superstar Phillips expected after a scandal ensued over Lewis' marriage to his 13-year-old cousin.
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His performance in the Palomino tent was often overwhelmed by the bass guitar volume and he walked off stage on a cane a little early as his band continued to play Whole Lotta Shaking Going On. The packed crowd began singing along to Great Balls of Fire on the first chorus and went crazy when he began playing his solo with two hands on the treble keys. He left the audience shouting “Jer-ry, Jer-ry, Jer-ry.”
Several other senior festival-goers also said that was the best performance they saw all day. It made one part-time desert resident who attended Desert Trip last October wonder why she hadn’t been to Stagecoach before.
“We’ve been wanting to do this for years,” said Carolina Zigal of La Quinta and San Mateo. “I think I like it better (than Desert Trip). I like the variety. I just think it’s more exciting.”
But that was before Bentley capped off an evening of excitement with his headline set. He opened with Up on the Ridge, from his 2010 bluegrass album of that name, which showed off his violinist and banjo player and a drummer elevated on a platform. The second song, Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go) had the crowd singing along to the chorus.
The audience was potentially larger than any in Stagecoach history because the city of Indio increased its maximum capacity from 75,000 to 85,000 and no other band was performing at the same time as Bentley. But this Stagecoach didn't sell out, and festival officials were selling VIP upgrades.
But there were memorable moments throughout the day.
Bailey Bryan, 19, showed massive potential on the Mane Stage with honest, emotionally revealing songs like Used To and Life Goes On, but she opened the festival at 1 p.m. and there were only a handful of people listening to her at the stage's rail.
The place began hopping an hour later when the L.A.-based roots-rock band, The Blasters, opened with a tribute to Americana, American Music, followed by the hard-driving Long White Cadillac. Their song, Common Man, sounded like a knock on President Trump with its lyrics, “He wasn’t born in a cabin/He never fought in a war/But he learned to smile and quote Abe Lincoln.” But it was written by Dave Alvin and first sung by Blasters frontman Phil Alvin in 1985.
Justin Townes Earle, son of country outlaw Steve Earle, wearing a gray suit with an open-collared print shirt, round-rimmed glasses and a gray English flat cap to match his suit, revealed a dry humor to accompany his delicately written material. He climaxed his set with his 2011 American Music Song of the Year, “Harlem River Blues," a lightly swinging song about a man going to the Harlem River to drown himself.
Elle King, an indie pop star who became accepted in country circles last year for her duet with Bentley on Different For Girls, provided one of the day’s highlights with a bawdy set not really consistent with her character that sings Different For Girls. She engaged the crowd early on with Chain Smokin’, Hard Drinkin’ Woman followed by Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues. She later performed Different For Girls with Bentley during his headlining set.
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Wearing red, white and blue fringes with flag-type stars on a vest with a pin that said “Acid,” King has actually loved country and the blues since she started playing the banjo as a kid. In her set, she showed her classic rock roots with the Beatles song, Oh Darling, which got the crowd immediately singing along. The Palomino audience saved its most enthusiastic response for her indie rock hit, Ex’s and Oh’s, and her finale, America’s Sweetheart, about a woman who is not America’s sweetheart, “but you love me anyway.”
Anderson East had fans hoping he might bring on the woman he’s been romantically linked to at least since December 2015, country superstar Miranda Lambert. That didn’t happen, but, like so many of the modern country singers at Stagecoach, he mixed classic rock hits like Gimme Three Steps and Stay With Me with a varied set that often sampled the Memphis sound with his two-piece horn section and keyboards.
Some of the most sensitive music heard came from a mid-afternoon acoustic set by singer-guitarist John Moreland of Tulsa. He was deeply on Sad Baptist Rain, accompanied by guitarist John Calvin Abney.
Moreland, who has a new album dropping May 5, was making his second appearance at Stagecoach. He said after his set, “I don’t know any other chance I’ll have to be on the same bill as Shania.”