FESTIVAL RECAP: Concan’s Frio River Music Festival dodges rain and brings unforgettable weekend

Concan, Texas is one of Texas’s hallmark Spring Break destinations.

Home of the Frio River, home of Garner State Park, nestled in the Hill Country, so many Texans flock to the city every spring and summer to take in all of that. Well, except for me I guess. I have spent so many years looking at Snapchat stories and Instagram posts from the banks of the Frio, the summit of Old Baldy Trail, and so many other spots around the city and telling myself, “One day I’ll make it out there.” Well, Spring Break 2024 was me finally making it out there and man oh man did I fall in love with it.

Just from the drive into Utopia, where I was staying, the hills and trees all along Ranch to Market Road 1050 were absolutely gorgeous and from the moment I parked my car at the Airbnb I rented for the weekend, I knew it was going to be pretty impossible to have a bad time. Furthermore, pulling up to House Pasture Cattle Company, the venue for the weekend, that belief was even further cemented. With Garner State Park within seeing distance, it was such a gorgeous spot to have a fest. While according to venue personnel, every year has had lots of rain, 2024’s fest got extremely lucky. There was a brief shower at the beginning of Ryan Bingham’s set on Friday and it did come down pretty heavy on Saturday about an hour after music had finished but besides that, it was clear for the whole weekend.

Enough chatter though, here’s how the weekend went for me:

Thursday:

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Each day of the weekend had a goal and on Thursday, the goal was getting my bearings and easing into the weekend. I’d say I was successful in doing that, mainly just from how laid back the first day of the fest was.

Carson Jeffrey kicked the weekend off with a bang and even though I had just seen him a few days before back home in Corpus Christi, I would’ve easily seen him two or three more times throughout the week. Him and his band are electric live performers and no matter how many or how few people they play to, Jeffrey and his band always have the crowd in the palm of their hand. I love the balance that his shows strike too. His music is very country and very western, especially his newer singles Marlboro’s at Midnight and Mrs. Lonely. When they get on stage though, they turn the amps up and they get rowdy and it’s always a blast.

Pat Green closed out the first night of the festival and there are a few good things I can say about it. As someone who grew up listening to a very steady stream of his music and as someone that still loves all of those songs, his setlist is always chock full of nostalgia for me. Songs like All Just To Get To You, Baby Doll, and Three Days spring to mind without naming the usual Wave on Wave and Take Me Out To The Dancehall. His band is also always fantastic but you have to give them massive props because they have a tough job every night, they have to play with Pat Green.

Look, I won’t beat around the bush anymore, I remember seeing Green for the first time when I was about 13 and having the time of my life. I saw him again when I was in high school and it was just as good. Sometime in between then and now, things have gotten pretty inconsistent. When Green is on point, you’re in for an incredible evening but those on point evenings are few and far between. Concan was no exception. Green was pretty clearly well hydrated on stage, if you catch my drift and he would banter a lot. Sometimes it was funny, like when a fan along the barricade asked him to take his shirt off and he addressed it by saying, “Sir I will not show you my nipples. I have the smallest nipples of all time.” He also hit some solid dance moves before performing George’s Bar. But other times, you just kinda scratched your head. Whether it was the multiple times he would turn around and very dramatically pull his pants up or just how rough most of his singing was all night. I still had fun, but I don’t know how many more times I’ll be trying to see Pat Green in the future.

Friday:

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Friday’s goal was to bring my A-game. To try my best to do some of my best work because Friday featured the two biggest artists on the full lineup in Dylan Marlowe and Ryan Bingham. Both are huge for different niches. Marlowe is blowing up for the mainstream, trucks, dirt roads, beer, girls in tight jeans crowd while Bingham, who was already a living legend for the Folk and Americana-leaning crowd, is seeing another big wave of success due to his involvement in Yellowstone both as an actor and from his music being placed in the show.

But, because of that difference in styles, Friday definitely felt like a mismatch. Marlowe is a fun performer, don’t get me wrong, but the whiplash of going from Marlowe songs like Boys Back Home and When I Look Back to Bingham songs like Hallelujah and The Weary Kind was pretty jarring. I see why people like Dylan Marlowe and a lot of people at House Pasture on Friday night seemed to enjoy his set, I just personally don’t think his music is for me but I gave him a fair shot. I am more than willing to see him again just to see if my opinion would change.

Regardless, I’m okay with turning a blind eye to that mismatch because of just how incredible Ryan Bingham was. To win me back over, Bingham getting booked for this fest was a soft toss right over the plate for him to hit about 500 feet. There wasn’t much he could’ve done to make me not enjoy it. For starters, Bingham is an incredible songwriter and an incredible singer, this is no secret. Also, The Texas Gentlemen make fantastic music and are a fantastic band. Why do I bring The Texas Gentlemen up? Well because they’re Bingham’s backing band and it is so unfair for a band already as great as The Texas Gentlemen to be tearing it up with Bingham. It’s the alt-country equivalent of that time Mick Jagger played SNL and had the Foo Fighters backing him. They just add a whole new flavor to a lot of his songs and elevate them to new heights. You think Hallelujah is a good song? Just wait until you hear how much heavier it is live with fuzzy guitars blaring through the chorus. Or how much rowdier they make the song Southside of Heaven with a super speedy bluegrass-inspired outro.

If I haven’t made it obvious yet, Bingham was an absolute slam dunk for the fest drawing the biggest crowd of the whole weekend. He absolutely delivered. It should be illegal for anyone to come on stage and rip through an opening song as hard as Bingham and The Texas Gentlemen ripped through Nothing Holds Me Down. The bar was set very high right out of the gate and it just got better and better. Even through the back half of the set and their encore, it still felt like Bingham and The Texas Gentlemen were barely hitting their stride when they got to Sunshine and Bread & Water to close out the show. The only rain during any performances over the weekend came a few songs into Bingham’s set as he played Top Shelf Drug, Long Way From Georgia, and Sunrise, the latter of which was the closest I came to a religious experience all weekend.

Leaving House Pasture after the second day, I was just in awe of how great he was and while I wasn’t planning on skipping his set at Two Step Inn next month, he elevated from being someone I just wanted to check out to being an absolute must-see.

Saturday:

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Saturday’s goal was extremely simple and pretty much the polar opposite of Friday’s goal: just have fun.

Seriously, that’s all I wanted to do on Saturday. I didn’t put any pressure on myself, I just wanted to take some pictures, see some friends, and hear some good music. I started that early by getting a fantastic pizza from Hippie Chic’s River Shack, hanging out with a few buddies at the house they had rented down the road from the venue, then strolling into House Pasture right as The Droptines started trying their best to make sure the stage was no longer standing at the end of their set.

This was my fourth Droptines show. I’d seen them three times at Blue Light previously but you could just tell that frontman Conner Arthur and bassist Dillon Sampson were thrilled to be home. Arthur was a bit more blunt about it saying from the stage, “The king of Concan has returned.” No matter what stage they play, The Droptines are always going to bring the heat, and as their self-titled debut album keeps gaining traction, it’s gonna be awesome to watch them get to even bigger stages and play to even bigger crowds. Hop on The Droptines train now so you don’t complain about missing it in five years time.

Josh Abbott Band closed out the festival on Saturday night and I have a lot of thoughts about it but I’ll open by saying this. On Friday night, Ryan Bingham was incredible but I sort of expected that. On Saturday night, Josh Abbott Band was incredible and I did not expect that at all. Their headlining set on Saturday night was the best show I’ve ever seen the band play, tied with Bingham for the best set of the weekend, and honestly in the running for one of the best shows I’ve seen all year, period. The band was so tight, the chemistry was unreal, and everyone was on point. Adam Hill on fiddle crushed it, the energy from David Fralin on keys and Cale Richardson on guitar kept the crowd super engaged and the mood on stage super fun.

The biggest thing though: Abbott sounded great and his stage presence was insane. Maybe he was well-rested from vacationing during the week, or maybe he just felt extra inspired. Whatever it was, you could tell he was loving every second of being on stage and the crowd fed off his energy extremely well. The band’s set was nearly two hours of nothing but pure fun and that translated into the songs as well. Live it While You Got It and Touch seemed to have a little extra fire under them, songs from their fantastic new album Somewhere Down the Road fit into the set like a glove, especially What Were You Thinking. The sing-alongs for She’s Like Texas and Oh, Tonight, two of the band’s biggest songs, almost drowned out Abbott’s voice at points, and halfway through the set, the band called an audible and threw in a cover of Brooks & Dunn’s Brand New Man that brought the house down. It was an absolutely perfect way to close out the weekend and if their shows continue to be that incredible, I’ll keep seeing them for a long time.

And just like that, six artists up, six artists down, the weekend came to a close and within an hour, Mother Nature tried to wash us away with rain as is usually tradition during shows in Concan. Regardless, I left the city extremely fulfilled and bummed that I even had to leave. I don’t know what I expected Concan to be but I didn’t expect it to be so pretty, the experience to be so great, and the people to be so nice. I loved every second of being there. I loved my daily excursions into either Garner State Park, Utopia, or the strip of restaurants and bars along River Rd. leading to the venue. The weekend is one that’s gonna take a while to forget and I hope that I can make it back to Concan at some point this summer.

I want to give a huge thank you to Candace and Parker Ray, Abi Haines, Elly Mae, security guard John, and Dillon Sampson of The Droptines for being so great to me over the course of the weekend and for making me feel at home in a place I had never been. I’ll be forever grateful for all of them.