by Dalton Mont
The McHenry Music Festival is an annual country music festival with some of the biggest names headlining. This year’s headliners were Sam Hunt, Slightly Stoopid, and Bailey Zimmerman. I was able to make it to two days of the festival: Friday for Sam Hunt and Sunday for Bailey Zimmerman.
I was most excited to see Sam Hunt. He burst on to the country music scene and made a name for himself in the 2010s, so I’ve been listening to him for a long time. Throughout my childhood, my dad always played country music on the radio in our living room, and my siblings and I would get super hyped up every time Sam Hunt’s “House Party” would play. Hunt’s opener was Dustin Lynch. I thought I didn’t know much about him so before the concert, I listened to a few of his most popular songs and realized I knew almost every song he played. While Sam Hunt was performing, I was excited for a lot of his older songs because of the memories I have of listening to him while growing up, but I didn’t know a lot of his newer music. Still, I liked every song he played, even the ones I’d never heard before.
Sunday was my second day at The McHenry Music Festival, and the headliner was Bailey Zimmerman. I wasn’t as excited to see him, but he’s been getting more and more popular in the country music scene over the last few years, and I’ve seen a lot of cool videos of his concerts. The big reason that we bought tickets to Sunday’s show was because my little sister and her boyfriend are big fans of Bailey Zimmerman. His opener was a bit of a surprise: Flo Rida! I thought it was a little weird because he’s definitely not a country artist. Flo Rida was super entertaining, though, and he really put on a hell of a show. The one odd thing that stood out about his performance was that his music played in the background and he didn’t rap much; he just let the song play on the speakers. So, it was an odd artistic decision in my opinion.
Bailey Zimmerman was great, and I enjoyed a lot of the songs that he played. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t play my favorite of his songs, even though it was on his setlist and he did fewer songs than Flo Rida. He ended up cutting three songs from his setlist, possibly because Flo Rida went over on time and the town has a curfew.
Overall, I really enjoyed both days at the festival and I hope to go again next year. Right before Bailey Zimmerman went on, they announced that two of next year’s headliners were going to be Hardy and Kane Brown, and I’m a big fan of both. I’ve already got the dates set on my calendar!
