Post Malone and Miranda Lambert Enlist Country Legends at Stagecoach

Beyonce did not show up. Reba did. And it was enough. At least it was for the 70,000 in Indio watching the Stagecoach festival live, if not necessarily all of the probably hundreds of thousands more tuned in at home strictly in hopes of a Bey sighting. As single ladies doubling up, Miranda Lambert and Reba McEntire may not quite have broken the internet the way a “Cowboy Carter” cameo would have, but in the flesh, it felt like their climactic three-song duets segment sure broke Stagecoach.

And for his part, Post Malone did not need the help of any of the superstar artists whose albums he’s had featured appearances on to be a hit at Stagecoach. His penultimate set on the main stage Saturday was, as billed, a performance of all country covers (with a billboard on the way out to the festival site offering an 800 number where he was supposedly taking requests). He didn’t necessarily make any breaking news with his time on stage, unless good taste in Alan Jackson covers is news. But his emphasis on the 1990s/2000s hits of his childhood and youth (plus Tyler Childers, for good modern measure) would have captivated the crowd even without Dwight Yoakam, Brad Paisley and Sara Evans showing up to seal the deal.

Posty’s opening song, Childers’ 2013 “Purgatory,” nearly counted as an oldie, albeit one that may not have been familiar to everyone in the crowd. With its chorus references to cocaine, some fans who don’t know Childers’ catalog may have wondered if this was an obscure number from the ’70s outlaw-country movement. But from there on, there would have been nothing for anyone with the slightest grounding in turn-of-the-century mainstream country to not recognize. Before he was finished, Malone touched on some of country’s corniest sentimental songs (George Strait’s “Check Yes or No,” Tim McGraw’ “Don’t Take the Girl”), some of its corniest but funniest (Paisley’s “I’m Gonna Miss Her,” Toby Keith’s “Who’s Your Daddy”), one of its most rocking (Vince Gill’s “One More Last Chance”) and one of its most reverent and sobering (Randy Travis’ “Three Wooden Crosses”).

He could have been mistaken for a true country traditionalist if not for his habit of inserting the F-word into literally every sentence, or close to it, between numbers. (Evans may have been the only person in his set who did not get an F-bomb as their new middle name, or at least a prefix.) But first up among his guests was Yoakam, who’d had the top spot in the Palomino tent the night before, walking out partway into “Little Ways.” Earlier in the set, Malone had done a little bit of wiggling, so it seemed clear he was familiar with Yoakam’s ouevre.

Evans got the classic “Suds in the Bucket” all to herself as a lead vocalist, as Malone apparently decided he was not the one to tell a young woman’s story. (“Suds,” for any younger fans who may not be familiar with it, is basically the precursor to Taylor Swift’s “But Daddy I Love Him.”)

But the most stage time was given over to MVP Paisley, who sidled up alongside Malone for a duet of the fish-over-ho’s anthem “I’m Gonna Miss Her,” stayed on stage to be a Gill proxy as guitar soloist on “One More Last Chance,” and then returned at set’s end for more fireworks on “Chattahoochie,” as Jelly Roll came out and sang along. Paisley may have gotten more soloing time than he bargained for; the set went several minutes past its scheduled ending time as Malone worked the ramp to sign autographs and pose for pictures, while the band, Paisley included, vamped through a very extended outro.

By all rights, Lambert should have had a hard time following that. She did not. Even without the added power of a big McEntire attack, Lambert reminded the audience — song by song — that she has a strong a catalog as anyone in country music, and that on top of that, she has an hour and a half’s worth of rich, recognizable, high-concept bangers, with only “Bluebird,” “Tin Man” and obviously “The House That Built Me” built into the set as mellow moments. Her band played with a consistent rock ‘n’ roll fury, albeit with steel guitar licks now laden liberally over almost everything… to everything’s benefit. Whoever the entertainer of the year may be at any given recent point, Lambert has a strong claim on being country’s entertainer of the two-decades.

“Drunk (and I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” was performed as a duet, albeit with Lambert’s backup singer, not Elle King, who had apparently moved on after playing the main stage Friday night. (King, who rearranged some of her material to better befit the rock band she’s out with, had done a less immediately recognizable version of their joint hit the night before, albeit still a good one.) Even though it represented a moment of shared and not individual glory in her career, Lambert’s “Drunk” felt like a natural set climax, especially when someone hit the pyro button for finale-suggestive fireworks.

That wasn’t the case, as Lambert called out the need for “a sexy redhead from Oklahoma” to join her, and assuming there had not been a reconciliation and a hair coloring session with her ex, this meant McEntire, who braved the insane desert winds to join Lambert for a dynamite denouement. The hardest-rocking version ever of Reba’s “Fancy” was sandwiched between duet versions of “Mama’s Broken Heart” and “Gunpowder & Lead,” before the fireworks lever got pushed a second and final time. How potent it would be to get a co-headlining tour between these two, capped by an extended, explosive moment like the one this show ended with? Surely this space won’t be the first or last time where that idea gets floated.