Rodeo Hay at the Garden, Kacey Musgraves Brings Texas to Midtown
A sold out stand at Madison Square Garden, a mirrored prop that got everyone talking, and a long goodbye to Dolly
There is hay on the floor of Madison Square Garden. It runs from a small stage dressed like a roadside motel to the main platform, which is built like a rodeo ring. Kacey Musgraves makes that walk, and the building above Penn Station starts to feel like somewhere much farther west.
This was the Middle of Nowhere tour, which pulled into the Garden for two sold out nights on August 31 and September 1. The tour opened in Chicago on August 21 and carries Musgraves across the country through the end of October. Then comes a winter run through Australia, Scotland and England, according to Billboard. New York got the full production. It got a rotating stage, a few covers and one very large prop that has become the talk of the tour.
The Record Comes Home
Middle of Nowhere is her seventh studio album. It debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in May. The New Yorker, previewing the Garden dates, called the record a homecoming. It reaches back to older forms of the music. Western swing and bluegrass sit next to zydeco and norteño, carried on pedal steel and plenty of acoustic guitar. It is a long way from the cosmic disco country of Golden Hour, the 2018 album that won her the Grammy for Album of the Year and turned a clever Texas songwriter into a crossover star.
On the first night the new songs carry the show. She opens with "Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy," and "Dry Spell" comes right after. "Back on the Wagon" and "I Believe in Ghosts" land before the halfway mark. In its review, Consequence praised the low harmonies on the opener. The crowd already knows the new words, and Musgraves thanked them from the stage for singing along.
The older catalog arrives in careful doses. "Merry Go 'Round" is here, and "Follow Your Arrow." So are "Slow Burn" and "Space Cowboy." There is a Texas Tornados cover, "¿Qué pasó?," and the night closes with George Strait's "All My Ex's Live in Texas." Consequence noted that nothing from her 2024 album Deeper Well made the Monday setlist. The show leans instead on the new songs and on Golden Hour.
This is a woman who plays the Garden and still sounds like she is talking to one friend at the end of the bar.
Then there is the prop. During "Rhinestoned," Musgraves rises over the crowd seated on a giant pair of mirror tiled disco balls, sculpted in a shape that leaves little to the imagination. It first appeared at the Chicago opener, and it has divided opinion since. On Monday, Consequence reported, she joked that this is what happens when nobody tells her no. That same night, according to Billboard, she credited her grandmother, her Nana, with the idea behind it. Anything worth doing, the advice went, should be done big and done with sparkle. On Tuesday she tightened the line. "My manager didn't tell me no," she said, in a moment Billboard shared on video.
A Song for Dolly
The joke lands because the rest of the night is so sincere. Dolly Parton died on August 25 in Nashville at 80, less than a week before the first Garden show. NPR and Rolling Stone both reported her death that day. Musgraves has carried that grief onto the tour stage ever since. In Boston the previous Friday she played "Rainbow" in Parton's honor and said that Parton had inspired the song.
In New York she stops the show to talk about it. Images of Parton fill the screen above the stage. "I'm not over it, and I'm never gonna be over it," she told the Garden crowd, according to Rolling Stone. She called Parton a supernova of a person and said she would not be able to do what she does without her.
"I'm not over it, and I'm never gonna be over it," Musgraves told the Garden crowd.
Then she plays "Rainbow," the Golden Hour ballad, and follows it with "9 to 5." Parton wrote that song for the 1980 film of the same name, and it has outlived the movie as a work anthem. The whole arena sings along. It is the rare arena singalong that feels less like a finale and more like a wake.
The tribute carried past the Garden. On September 27, Musgraves took the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles and sang Parton's "I Will Always Love You" over piano, after an archival clip of Dolly herself opened the moment, as Billboard and NBC News reported.
The Second Night Surprise
Tuesday brought something the first night did not. At the second sold out show, Musgraves brought out Troye Sivan. The two performed "Easy," their 2020 duet, together on stage for the first time, according to Rolling Stone. It came six years after the song's release. He was the first surprise guest of the tour. He walked out dressed in brown with a country touch, a quiet contrast to her sparkle.
Sivan has been open about his admiration. He has put Golden Hour among his five favorite albums of all time. In a new TikTok from backstage, the two dance to his new single "She's the Best." It is the kind of guest spot that makes sense only in New York. A country singer and an Australian pop star meet in the middle of an arena in Midtown and sing a soft pop song on a rodeo stage.
It says something about where Musgraves stands now. This is a woman who plays the Garden and still sounds like she is talking to one friend at the end of the bar. The New Yorker called her the genre's greatest crossover story. Country is louder than ever on the charts, and she is not trying to win the argument about what counts. She is doing her own version, sequins and pedal steel together, and filling the room two nights running.
If you have caught Harry Styles during his own stand at the Garden this fall, the arena may have felt familiar. Disco balls, costumes and a crowd dressed for the occasion. The difference was the hay on the floor. Musgraves brought the rodeo to Midtown, and she let the whole building mourn a legend in public.
The last word goes to George Strait. For the full setlist and the rest of the night, Consequence has the review, and Rolling Stone has the Dolly tribute in her own words.
