Cotton Fest 2024: Long Time Partiers, First-Time Sellouts
This festival is going to be around for a long while.
I never thought I would feel weird missing Cotton Fest.
When I found out I would be on vacation the weekend of Cotton Fest, I figured I’d be fine and I wouldn’t feel too much FOMO. However, as the days continue to pass, it keeps hitting me just how truly special this year of Cotton Fest was.
Every video, every photo, every Snapchat and Instagram story, everything just felt different this year. A different energy was stoking the fire this year. Was it because of the sellout? Was it because all of the Tech students in attendance didn’t have to worry about going back to class on Monday, thus leading them to party harder? Was it just because William Clark Green and his team put together an insanely strong lineup? I’m not sure, but this year, Cotton Fest went from being a fun treat for Lubbock locals to genuinely becoming one of the top country festivals in the state of Texas.
This is going to be a weird recap just because I wasn’t there and I’m going to try and give my thoughts from the outside looking in, however, my friend Olivia Raymond was on hand to grab some photos this weekend and was the first friend to offer a little help for this publication.
There’s still plenty to write about even though I wasn’t there.
For starters, one of the best parts of the festival every year is that Green allows for so much local talent to shine on such a huge stage. Newcomers Haydon Wiginton and Hudson Westbrook are still getting their feet wet playing live shows, Aiden Logsdon has played at Cook’s Garage before but only on the smaller, indoor, bus barn stage. The three of them all getting a chance to play their songs in front of the majority of 7,000 people is a positive double-edged sword. They’re getting the experience of playing to huge crowds and on big stages and at the same time, they’re getting to play their songs to tons of new ears.
Slade Coulter is a slight exception, just given he’s no stranger to playing in arenas and on the Cook’s main stage. However, each time he comes back, it feels like he’s gained more and more traction and he leaves with more and more fans each time. There’s no doubt in my mind that Six Shooter, the lead single to his forthcoming sophomore album, set the crowd on fire.
Coming out of the weekend though, there are three sets I’ve heard the most about from friends and from general social media chatter.
The first one, unsurprisingly, is Friday night’s headliner The Panhandlers. On their own, John Baumann, Cleto Cordero, Josh Abbott, and William Clark Green are all fantastic songwriters. All four of them on stage is a red dirt dream and it manages to happen a few times a year when the four of them find time in their busy individual schedules to play shows all together. That’s part of the reason why it’s taken them so long to make it to Lubbock (the band did mention a return in January). However, a band whose whole identity and foundation is based around West Texas is bound to make a panhandle show feel special and it seems like their headline set truly was. Everything I’ve seen and was told about this show made it feel like a truly special moment. Few people love Lubbock more than the four members of The Panhandlers do, and that passion seemed to shine through in their debut in the city.
Also unsurprisingly, one of the most talked about sets coming out of the weekend is the band that’s taking the state and the world by storm right now, Treaty Oak Revival. Green and his team have a knack for booking a killer rock and roll band before he closes off the weekend’s festivities and this year was no exception. The second I saw Treaty Oak’s name on the lineup, I hoped they would be in that slot. They were, and every picture and video I’ve seen has shown them playing to a crowd of mindblowing size.
The band is riding a rocket ship to the moon right now and the craziest part about it is there’s no massive team and/or major label behind them. Their success has all been attributed to word-of-mouth marketing, both about their shows and their music. My dad mentioned the other day that videos of the band’s show at Whitewater Amphitheater in Canyon Lake hadn’t stopped showing up on his “For You” page on TikTok. If those videos do well enough and get in front of enough people, there’s no doubt they’re making people want to listen to their music and come to one of their shows. Every time a video of the drop in Boomtown does well, every time someone tells a friend to listen to Have a Nice Day, a new fan is made, and it continues to grow the band’s profile. They’re back at Cook’s Garage on October 11 opening for Koe Wetzel. May God watch over all of us that evening.
Lastly, but certainly not least, the only band blowing up at a faster rate than Treaty Oak currently is the band that played before them, Red Clay Strays. Hailing from Mobile, Alabama, the band has been touring relentlessly for the past five or six years and is just now seeing the successes of an “If you build it, they will come” approach. Another band that spent so much time building a brand just based off word of mouth, their sound was crafted on stage and on the road before they even considered stepping into a studio. Their shows are second to none and few bands are as tight and operate on a higher level than Red Clay Strays are every night. It also helps that lead singer Brandon Coleman has one of the most powerful and distinct voices to hit the scene in a while. While their Cotton Fest set didn’t seem as energetic or as theatrical as their shows can be, most likely due to the heat, it doesn’t change the fact that they still crush it live and I cannot wait to have their sophomore album, Made By These Moments, in my hands this month.
I’ll wrap this up by sharing some more general thoughts. The sleeper hit from friends who attended was Mike Ryan. While his music has never really been mine or anyone I knew who went’s cup of tea, his shows are a ton of fun, he’s super interactive on stage, and when you’re shooting, he does give you a lot to work with. Also never surprising, the early-in-the-day sets crushed. Josh Weathers and Jacob Stelly playing back-to-back is criminally good and there’s no better way to get a party really started than by having those two playing in tandem.
If there’s one complaint I heard all weekend, it was just the heat. It’s something no one can do anything about but with the fest moving to June, it seemed unavoidable. Luckily, I didn’t hear much about anyone passing out or getting hit too hard by the sun so kudos to everyone who planned ahead and took care of themselves.
And for me personally, a slight complaint, it is a bummer that the lineup only featured one female performer. There are a ton of strong female voices in the Texas and Red Dirt scene right now: Kat Hasty, Graycie York, Holly Beth, Shelby Stone, and Kaitlin Butts (even though she played last year) all spring to mind off the top of my head. Even outside of that scene too, artists like Harper O’Neill, Maggie Antone, and hell, let’s shoot for the moon if we’re dreaming things up, Megan Moroney would fit this festival super well. I’m not asking for next year’s lineup to be only women plus William, I just hope that more than one lands on the bill.
I’ll finish this little recap off by saying that I really hope I do not miss Cotton Fest next year. I doubt that this year was a fluke and I feel like next year’s lineup has the opportunity to be just as strong, if not stronger than this year. Whether it stays in June or moves back to April, I can’t wait to see what Green and his team have up their sleeve.
Here’s a bunch of more pictures from across the weekend:
Friday
Jacob Stelly:
Cooder Graw:
Mike Ryan:
The Panhandlers:
Saturday
Slade Coulter:
Red Clay Strays:
Treaty Oak Revival:
William Clark Green:
If you enjoyed any of these photographs, send all thanks to Olivia Raymond! I am eternally grateful that she picked up the call and shot such a beast of an event with not much live music experience. She’s a beast though, and as the name alludes to, this publication gets by with a little help from my friends.