Coachella and Stagecoach dates announced

Time to book a hotel room in Indio.

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will be April 17-19 and its country cousin, the Stagecoach Festival, will be the following weekend, April 25-26.
The lineups will be announced in the weeks to come but there's already two interesting developments. First, Coachella is moving up early in April. Why? The answer lies in Louisiana, of all places. AEG Live, the concert promotion company that became a partner in Coachella in 2001, is also the corporate engine these days behind the grand old New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which will be April 24-26 and April 30-May 3. Both massive events are now national (or international even) in their target audience and media coverage and for logistical reasons the decision was made to spread them out a bit.

The other interesting wrinkle is the fact that Stagecoach will go back to a two-day affair in this its third year. Is that a sign of tough economic times? Or perhaps an indication that, after two all-star years, the promoters are finding hard to find new faces worthy of the main stage? Maybe a little bit of both? Stagecoach promoters say no to both. They said the three-day slate last year was a quirk that only happened when the Eagles came available for that Friday night appearance in the low desert. As Coachella co-founder Paul Tollett told the Desert Sun not long ago: “Last year The Eagles popped up, so that was just an anomaly. California’s coolest band pops up and you grab it.”

-- Geoff Boucher

RELATED Coachella and the Goldenvoice success story
ALSO All Coachella 2008 coverage at Soundboard

Photo: Wilco at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2005. Credit: Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Geir]

I've always stayed away based on people's stories of sweat, dust and eau-du-port-a-pottie. Will this year's lineup be good enough to make me get past that?