Florida Georgia Line, Garth Brooks + Keith Urban head 2018 Stagecoach bill

Sept. 13, 2017 10:54 AM PT

Garth Brooks, Keith Urban and Florida Georgia Line will headline the 2018 Stagecoach country music festival.

To be held April 27-29 on the grassy fields of the Empire Polo Club in Indio, the festival will also feature everyone from Kenny Rogers, Jason Isbell and Gordon Lightfoot to Dwight Yoakam, Tanya Tucker and Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real.

The festival typically draws 20 percent of its 225,000 attendees each year from San Diego County. That number could jump in 2018, following an increase in capacity for the festival, which debuted in 2007 with a lineup that included Willie Nelson and San Diego’s Nickel Creek.

“Everyone knows Stagecoach is the biggest country festival in the world,” Brooks said in a statement accompanying the Wednesday morning announcement of the 2018 festival. “We are coming with the sole purpose of making it the biggest party on the planet!”

The lineup also includes Brooks’ wife, Trisha Yearwood, along with Kacey Musgraves, the Georgia Satellites, Brothers Osborne, Temecula Road, Walker Hayes, Kelsea Ballerini, Aaron Watson, Banditos, Brett Young, Jake Owen and Molly Hatchet.

Stagecoach is produced by Goldenvoice, which also produces the annual Coachella festivalat the same Indio location. Goldenvoice owns a controlling interest in San Diego’s Valley View Casino Center and exclusively books the annual Humphreys Concerts by the Bay series on Shelter Island.

As in previous recent years, no single-day tickets will be sold for the 2018 edition of Stagecoach. Three-day passes go on sale at 11 a.m. Friday at stagecoachfestival.com.

They are priced at $329 for a general admission pass and $389 for a general admission pass with shuttle ticket. A three-day Corral standing pit pass costs $1,199, while a three-day Corral C1 reserved seating pass costs $1,199 and a three-day Corral C2 reserved seating costs $899.

Stagecoach 2018 line-up (in alphabetical order)

Aaron Watson

Ashley McBryde

Banditos

Brett Young

Brothers Osborne

Carly Pearce

Chris Janson

Chris Lane

Cody Jinks

Colter Wall

Dwight Yoakam

Florida Georgia Line

Garth Brooks

Gordon Lightfoot

Granger Smith

Jade Bird

Jade Jackson

Jake Owen

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Jillian Jacqueline

Jordan Davis

Joshua Hedley

Kacey Musgraves

Keith Urban

Kelsea Ballerini

Kenny Rogers

Lee Brice

Lillie Mae

Lindsay Ell

Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real

Midland

Molly Hatchet

Morgan Wallen

Muscadine Bloodline

Paul Cauthen

Ronnie Milsap

Runaway June

Seth Ennis

Tanya Tucker

Temecula Road

The Georgia Satellites

Tyler Childers

Walker Hayes

Walker McGuire

Music

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”