Pilgrimage Festival 2022: Chris Stapleton closes weekend with sunset performance

Nothing sounds quite like Chris Stapleton at sunset.

Hearing “Starting Over” — his restless and road-traveled song about new beginnings — as the day slowly surrenders to a breezy fall night?

Yes, please.

On Sunday, Stapleton closed down the 2022 edition of Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival with an evening set that drew sunburnt families, 20-something beer-drinkers holding tight to the last hours of the weekend — and everyone in-between. They gathered inside The Park at Harlinsdale Farm in Franklin for the first Pilgrimage in years not shadowed by rainout recovery of COVID-19 conditions.

And for onlookers standing shoulder-to-shoulder near the stage or sitting in foldable chairs on the sprawling festival lawn, Stapleton put on a show worthy of shutting down another year at Pilgrimage.

"I know everybody's probably gotta work tomorrow," Stapleton said early in the show, "but that doesn't mean we can't have a good time tonight."

The Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter belted his brand of bearded, big-voiced country-rock for the two-hour show. He and the band — including harmonica player Mickey Raphael (a longtime member of Willie Nelson's band), lap steel guitarist Paul Franklin (a go-to Nashville session player) and bedrock vocalist-wife Morgane Stapleton — ripped through a can’t-miss list of his growing catalog: the Southern rock roller “Arkansas,” bold ballad “Cold,” fan-favorite “Parachute” and tender-hearted “Millionaire,” to name a few.

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At times, he and the band played plenty loud — like on riff-heavy rocker “Midnight Train To Memphis” and barn-burning jam “I Was Wrong.”

"[We're] gonna keep on goin' now, 'til they make us stop," Stapleton said between songs, a subtle nod to the 8:30 p.m. curfew. "Which isn't too far off. But we're gonna keep goin' 'til they make us stop."

And the show glowed brightest after the sunset when Stapleton “fired his band” for a three-song solo set. Or in his words, "How I used to do it ... and I still like to do it sometimes."

The stripped-down intermission took listeners through Stapleton’s formative years: His debut single "What Are You Listening To?," breakout album title track “Traveller” and the so-called “saddest song we're gonna play all night," in Stapleton’s words: “Whiskey and You.”

After “Fire Away, “Outlaw State Of Mind” and “Broken Halos,” Stapleton closed the night with the cover that helped propel him to festival headliner after years in Nashville: “Tennessee Whiskey.” He took lead vocals, but a chorus of thousands singing along helped bring the song home.

Read on for more highlights from Sunday at Pilgrimage (in order of appearance).

Molly Tuttle & The Golden Highway

Consider the grass in Franklin sufficiently cut.

Molly Tuttle and her ace band Golden Highway took the stage Sunday for a set of blazing bluegrass tunes under the mid-afternoon sun.

"It is so great to be back here," said Tuttle, a 29-year-old Nashville musician. She continued, "It's nice to feel like a hometown show for us."

The 2019 Pilgrimage alum pulled largely from her 2022 album "Crooked Tree" for the set, dishing her return-to-roots bluegrass sound with progressive storytelling on songs like "She'll Change" — a celebration of freewheelin' womanhood — and "Dooley's Farm," a marijuana-farming reimagining of a classic folk tale.

Arguably known best in roots music for her award-winning picking, Tuttle and her band pushed through minor audio hiccups to swap riffs and extend songs into breezy, crowd-pleasing jams — including a standout cover of Jefferson Airplane's psychedelic rock staple "White Rabbit" (that was briefly disrupted by a nearby marching band performance, of all things).

Prior to Tuttle's set, fast-rising country singer Brittney Spencer closed her set with a rowdy romp of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" that set the bar notably high for Sunday performances.

Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives

A little September heat can't slow Marty Stuart down.

Dressed in head-to-toe black and wrapped in a signature scarf, Stuart took the Pilgrimage stage smiling and dancing to a surf jam delivered by his well-oiled touring band.

After two songs, he howled into the center-stage microphone, "That's all, goodnight!"

He was kidding, of course. Stuart and company schooled Pilgrimage during an hour-long set that spanned 1960s pop-rock influence, laid-back surf riffs, Nashville classics and Stuart's own Country Music Hall of Fame catalog.

Stuart played rollicking 2012 number "Tear The Woodpile Down" and 1991 hit "Tempted" before opening his songbook to share a few classic country stories.

"On the way over here this morning, we passed the street where Waylon Jennings used to live," Stuart said on stage. "On Old Hickory Boulevard. ... We also passed by really close where a great country singer [lived] that my mother named me after, his name was Marty Robbins.

"A couple of cool cats from this place."

Stuart and band proceeded to cover Robbins' country epic "El Paso" and paid tribute to Jennings with the 1970s tune "I've Always Been Crazy ."

Elle King

Like a liquor-soaked pre-party, Elle King took the mainstage ahead of headliner Chris Stapleton to deliver a strong pour of her whiskey-soaked soul singing.

King mixed rock 'n' roll riffs with a dash of country and splash of blues influence as she embraced Pilgrimage as a "hometown" show. For King, the performance comes during a wave of success rooted in nearby Nashville: She inked a deal last year with Sony Music Nashville, topped country charts with boozy Miranda Lambert duet "Drunk (And Don't Wanna Go Home)" and released earlier this year a duet with Music Row mainstay Dierks Bentley.

But Sunday afternoon belonged solely to King. Holding a drink in the air, she took the stage to a beefy Southern rock riff before diving into no-nonsense anthem "Good For Nothing Woman." The set followed with a line-straddling collection of rock hits ("Ex's and Oh's") country-pop (the aforementioned "Drunk") and the sonic world in-between (2022 single "Out Yonder").

An alum of the 2018 Pilgrimage rainout, she soaked up Sunday's sun with a drink in her hand.

"I'm glad that we were asked to come back," King said. "I'm still having a very wonderful day. I'm happy to be here."

Avett Brothers

If Elle King gave Pilgrimage an afternoon shot of musical whiskey, then Avett Brothers provided the chaser.

The family folk-rock outfit closed down the festival's Gold Record Road stage with a carefree set kicking off with the likes of fan-favorite songs "Laundry Room" and "Live and Die," among others.

A shoulder-to-shoulder audience filled much of the shaded field for Avett tunes "SSS" and "Satan Pulls The Strings." A beach ball jumped between festival-goers watching the band bounce along to Americana tunes anchored by fiddle playing and banjo picking - a high-energy close to one of two premier stages for the weekend.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Pilgrimage Festival 2022: Chris Stapleton closes weekend in style