Best Things We Saw at Willie Nelson’s Ranch

Shortly before 11 p.m. on the main stage at the 2026 Luck Reunion, a curtain dropped. Behind it was Willie Nelson, flanked on either side by sons Lukas and Micah Nelson, and the Family band. Immediately, Nelson launched into “Whiskey River” and brought the 14th installment of the boutique festival to its crescendo. After two songs, the 92-year-old Nelson paused to say simply, “Thanks for coming out.”

This year’s event drew nearly 5,000 fans to Nelson’s ranch in Spicewood, Texas, just west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country. On a hot, dry March day, the dusty festival grounds — a movie set where Nelson filmed 1984’s Red Headed Stranger — took on the grit and hue of a classic Western. On the stages, the music oscillated between vintage and cutting edge. The lineup of more than 40 artists featured St. Vincent, Trampled by Turtles, Booker T. Jones, and Fred Eaglesmith mixing it up with Kaitlin Butts, Shelby Stone, and Joshua Ray Walker. One special guest, Waylon Payne, joined the Nelson family for the headlining set. Another, Leon Bridges, was simply attending as a fan.

The 90-minute headlining set featured Nelson staples like “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” “On the Road Again,” and “You Are Always On My Mind” with a rotation of Lukas and Micah Nelson numbers peppered in.

A steady stream of guests joined throughout. Lily Meola, a family friend from Hawaii and fast-rising country artist in her own right, sang on “Will You Remember Mine.” When Payne came out to sing Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” he changed one of the final refrains to “Lord, I’m singin’ with Willie Nelson tonight.”

At one point, Nelson implored Micah, “Do that song … we’ve been watching too much TV, so he wrote a song about it.” The Particle Kid founder then played “Everything Is Bullshit” while the elder Nelson echoed “bullshit, bullshit” during each chorus. Early in the set, Micah set up another one of his songs — “Die When I’m High” — with a short story about his father.

“A few years ago, we were playing dominoes,” Micah told the crowd. “And Dad said, ‘If I die when I’m high, then I’ll be halfway to heaven,’ and I said, ‘That’s a great song.’ Then, he said, ‘You write it.’ Well, I wanted to write it from his perspective. So, I got so high that I thought I was dead, and I wrote this Willie Nelson song.”

Lukas Nelson had the luxury of an hour-long set ahead of Willie at World Headquarters — the name the festival gives to its main stage. He opened with a solo performance of “American Romance,” the title track of his 2025 Grammy-nominated LP, before bringing his band out for the duration. During “Turn Off the News (Build a Garden),” Nelson ad-libbed the line, “Maybe I’ll turn off the fucking news,” drawing the loudest cheers of the entire festival.

Across the five total stages, the day’s music ran the gamut, from hard country to indie pop and blues. These are the moments that stood out to us.

Kaitlin Butts
After grinding out a career in Oklahoma’s Red Dirt scene for a decade, Butts has spent the past two years captivating country audiences with her gut-punch lyrics and don’t-fuck-with-me persona on stage and off. The early-evening crowd at Luck got a taste of this when Butts played an hour-long set at the Roberts Western World Barn, a major side stage under a tent filled beyond capacity, with fans spilling into the festival grounds in all directions. Before her swinging drinking number, “Wild Juanita’s Cactus Juice,” she told the crowd they need to drink every time she says the word “cactus” (nine times in total). When she played her viral hit “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead to Me)” she relayed a story of wishing ill upon her estranged father before her mother reminded Butts, “Kaitlin, he doesn’t have to die. He can just be dead to you.”

St. Vincent
As the sun set, the indie rock icon showcased the distorted riffs and solos that have built her reputation as one of the best guitarists in all of music. Her intro to “Girls in Cages” — following a battle with an uncooperative microphone in which she briefly considered breaking the stand — was one of the festival highlights. She later sang the first verse of “Candy Darling” backed only by a piano before a steel guitar and harmonica accompaniment joined in for the chorus.

Shelby Stone
Stone drew an audience two to three times the size of the tent where her half-hour set took place. The blue-haired Texan powered through a set of passionate heartbreak songs. Before singing “Air It Out,” written by Jordan Nix, Stone said she wished she could get the lyrics tattooed down her back, “Star Wars style, because they hurt me that good.” During a break between songs, Stone talked about her rise from barbecue restaurants to major stages over the past 18 months. “For the longest time, I was just background music to someone’s dinner,” she said. “I just wanted people to listen. Now they do, and Jesus, it’s terrifying.”

Fred Eaglesmith
The Canada-born roots-rocker played to a full house under a tent on the festival’s Revival Stage, powering through his standards such as “I Like Trains” and “Dangerous,” but it was Eaglesmith’s banter that endeared him to the Luck crowd. At one point, he declared his show to be 30 percent smaller because of tariffs. At another, he asked, “Do you know how to get a bunch of women to say ‘Fuck!’ in Oklahoma? Yell ‘Bingo!’ around them.”

Robert Lester Folsom
Decked out in a Georgia Bulldogs cap with a four-piece band behind him, Folsom blended psychedelic stylings with pure Americana during his set. The crowd was particularly energized by “See You Later, I’m Gone,” and “Singing in the Shower,” the latter of which found a few dozen fans making room to dance in front of the stage. Late in his set, Folsom took a sip from a can of beer before joking, “Don’t tell my mama, she don’t like me drinking.”

Julianna Rankin, Leon Majcen and Emma Ogier Song Swap
The mid-day acoustic set featuring three fast-rising singer-songwriters quickly delved into a lovefest. At one point, Rankin said of Ogier, “She has the voice of an angel.” Before Majcen kicked off his ballad “Thinking About Love,” which he augmented with a harmonica solo, he said of the audience, “There’s a lot of love out there.” Only when Rankin played her new single, “Little Miss Behavin’” — which features Gretchen Wilson in the accompanying video — did she break the spell. “This is what happens when you cheat on me,” she said as she introduced the defiant, spurned-lover tune.

Marcel
In the heat of the afternoon, the Fort Worth blues singer Marcel — as in Brandon Marcel, a close collaborator and backing singer for Leon Bridges — crooned his way through a half-hour set while Bridges swayed and applauded from the side of the stage. “I’m asking you all to be present with me today,” Marcel asked the fans in the Fort Worth tent, where he was appropriately billed.

Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose book (Almost) Almost Famous will be released April 1 via Back Lounge Publishing.