A tough call.
Muscadine Bloodline had a huge year last year when they got the opportunity to open up for Post Malone on his F-1 Trillion tour, though they did have to cancel part of their own Coastal Plain Tour in order to take advantage of that massive opportunity. Naturally, it was an extremely hard decision knowing they would let some of their fans down by doing so and canceling dates.
One of country’s best, and truly independent, bands, Muscadine Bloodline, is fronted by Charlie Muncaster and Gary Stanton, and they appeared on the Ten Year Town podcast this week and talked about how that all came to be and what went into their decision.
Gary recalled getting a text from their manager on a Monday, which in music world, is like a Saturday because that’s when most artists are back home and have a day off. He told them it was urgent, and they quickly learned that they had to be on the bus headed to Utah by Wednesday if they were gonna do it:
“It was very… it was very hectic. Because I remember vividly, it was Labor Day, and you’re a musician as well, we kinda treat our Monday’s, like, that’s our weekend. Our Saturday, unless you’re really important, I’ll go do this, Charlie will go play a round of golf, whatever it is. It’s our day to just decompress. Adam texted us, like, ‘Hey, there’s something we gotta talk about right now.’
I just remember he was like, ‘Post Malone just offered y’all direct support for his fall tour. We gotta know by tomorrow, bus leaves Wednesday, tour starts Thursday in Utah.’ I mean, it was a tough decision in the fact that we’ve never had to be in a situation to let people down. I had E. Coli once and we canceled one show, and that was the only time we’ve ever had to do that. So it was like, what are people gonna think? Especially the people that this weekend and are directly affected by it.
And fortunately, I feel like 99.9% of the people were like, ‘Dude, you gotta go do that.’ And we even sought council from other artist friends that we looked up to, like, okay here’s the situation, what do you do? And everyone was like, you go do that tour. Easy.”
Charlie added that they’ve always been very accessible to their fans, so even the 5% who might’ve had something negative so say about it actually hurt their feelings, because they do feel such a strong connection tot hem and never wanted to let anyone down:
“Touching back on that too, like he said, it was a tough decision to make. But it’s like, you know, that ‘backlash,’ if you will, that we did get from like the 5%, I feel like reflecting back on it now, the way that we built our business, we’ve been so like handshake with our fans, and been so close to them. I think that was one thing that made it so difficult, and some of the stuff that was said hurt, it hurts your feelings.”
Opening for Post Malone on a massive amphitheater like that is something no musician can really turn down, and I certainly think they made the right choice, though that doesn’t always make it easier… most fans were more than happy for them, and I imagine it was something they’ll never forget and a big “you made it” moment in their career.
While it’s a TON of work to move all those shows around and rework an entire tour, it certainly helped get their music out there, as the Muscadine boys recently scored their first charting single on mainstream country radio.
They have already been on the road this year making up tour dates up North they missed late last year, and they have a new album coming out this Friday, April 11th, called …And What Was Left Behind, which will include already- released songs like “Ain’t For Sale” with Josh Meloy and “Chickasaw Church of Christ.”
You can watch them talk about opening for Post here:
“Ain’t For Sale”
