Photo: Appleby, Matt
COLUMBUS, Ohio. – Buckeye Country Superfest has announced a brand new lineup for 2024. GRAMMY® nominated artist Zach Bryan is returning to Columbus on Saturday, June 22, 2024 as headliner of the annual Ohio Stadium event. Appearing alongside Bryan is GRAMMY® Award-winning singer, songwriter, and musician Billy Strings, along with Red Dirt artists Turnpike Troubadours and special guests Charley Crockett, Charles Wesley Godwin, and Levi Turner. 2024 follows last year’s record-setting attendance of 63,891 country music fans and will mark the seventh year for Buckeye Country Superfest at Ohio Stadium.
Fans can register for Presale access now at BuckeyeCountrySuperfest.com. Tickets will go on sale to the general public Friday, September 8 at 10 am EST. American Express® Card Members can purchase tickets before the general public beginning Tuesday, Aug. 29 at 10 am EST through Thursday, Sep. 7 at 10 pm EST.
About Zach Bryan
Hailing from Oologah, Oklahoma, Zach Bryan has quietly gone from serving in the U.S. Navy to rising to the forefront of country as a captivating storyteller, tried-and-true performer, and once-in-a-generation voice without comparison. After grinding it out independently and building a devout audience one fan at a time, he arrived as country music’s brightest and boldest star in 2022, tallying over 6.8 billion global streams. He notably earned a pair of platinum singles, “Heading South” and the now 5x-platinum “Something in the Orange.” The latter also garnered a 2023 GRAMMY® Award nod in the category of “Best Country Solo Performance.” Meanwhile, his debut album, American Heartbreak, bowed at #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart and in the Top 5 of the Billboard 200, enshrining it as one of the most successful country album debuts in the genre’s history. Bryan also topped the Billboard Country Songwriters Chart at #1. Simultaneously, American Heartbreak emerged as the “#1 Country Album on Spotify” for 2022. The record closed out a banner year at #1 on The New York Times “Best Albums of 2022” and Billboard’s “Best Country Albums of 2022,” and attaining Platinum sales status in the US. The single “Something In The Orange” graced year-end lists by NPR, Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Consequence, SLANT, RIAA, and more. The song has become a global chart hit in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Bryan’s American Heartbreak Tour sold out every show which included headlining theaters and amphitheaters coast-to-coast and performing at prestigious music festivals such as Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, and Stagecoach. He chronicled his Red Rocks Amphitheater stop with his first-ever live album, ALL MY HOMIES HATE TICKETMASTER (LIVE FROM RED ROCKS), released on Christmas Day 2022 as a heartfelt “Thank You” to his fans. As 2022 drew to a close, Bryan and band performed “Motorcycle Drive-By,” and “Summertime Blues,” on the hit TV series Yellowstone season 5, episode 7, (Dec 18) which also featured the song “Quittin Time.” “The Good I’ll Do” has been featured in a previous episode and reacting in a big way on Shazam. Throughout 2023, Bryan has traveled the globe for his fully sold out Burn, Burn, Burn headline tour, breaking arena attendance records along the way. To date, Bryan has garnered a total of 16 RIAA Gold & Platinum track certifications. On August 25, 2023 he released his new, self-titled, fourth full-length album to immediate global critical acclaim. The album topped all DSP charts at multiple genres upon release.
About Billy Strings
Raised in Michigan and now based in Nashville, Strings is known as one of music’s most compelling artists. Since his 2017 debut, he has been awarded Best Bluegrass Album at the 63rd GRAMMY Awards, Artist of the Year at the 2022 Americana Music Awards, Entertainer of the Year and Song of the Year at the 2022 International Bluegrass Music Awards (the organization also named him Entertainer of the Year and Guitar Player of the Year in 2021), Best New Headliner at the 2022 Pollstar Awards, Breakthrough Artist of the Pandemic at the 2021 Pollstar Awards and has performed on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” PBS’ “Austin City Limits” and “Bluegrass Underground.”
His most recent release, last year’s collaborative album, Me/And/Dad, featured Strings along with his dad, Terry Barber. The product of a longtime dream, the record features new versions of fourteen bluegrass and country classics that the two have been playing together since Strings was a young child. Released to overwhelming acclaim, NPR Music praises, “exuberant interplay…a match made tender by the familiar harmonies of these two lifelong picking partners,” while The Wall Street Journal declares, “Me/And/Dad works beautifully…the guitars from the principals along with mandolin, banjo, fiddle and bass are expertly played with joy and verve” and Billboard proclaims, “Top-notch, wooly bluegrass picking wraps around distinct, family harmonies throughout.”
About Turnpike Troubadours
Everybody loves a good comeback story. After releasing five genre-defining albums and building a fiercely loyal fanbase, Turnpike Troubadours — the Tahlequah, Oklahoma kings of Red Dirt music — all but fell apart in 2019, taking a three-year hiatus to find clarity amidst the noise of a red-hot career. But after the break, something remarkable and even unprecedented happened: the band returned more popular than ever. Not to mention stronger. The proof is in the group’s sixth studio album, A Cat in the Rain. Produced by three-time Grammy winner Shooter Jennings and recorded at the legendary FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and in Los Angeles, the 10-song album is a tale of reliability, rebirth, and redemption. It’s the story of brothers — frontman and chief songwriter Evan Felker, fiddler Kyle Nix, steel player Hank Early, guitarist Ryan Engleman, bassist RC Edwards, drummer Gabe Pearson — six musicians who ran the gauntlet of success, scrutiny, and even personal troubles, and would fight tooth and nail for one another. Turnpike Troubadours’ fans can feel this. That bond is in the band’s songs and in their live performances — they’ve racked up 1.5 billion streams globally and are selling out arenas and headlining festivals. Still, to some, they remain a mystery…the most popular band they’ve never heard of. But with A Cat in the Rain, that’s all about to change.
About Charley Crockett
Tapped by Garden & Gun as an artist “shaping up to be one of country music’s most prolific torchbearers,” a “must-see live performer” by Rolling Stone, and a “force to be reckoned with” by CMT, Charley Crockett crafts his singular “Gulf & Western” sound — described as “very 21st century and very vintage” by NPR Music — by synthesizing country, blues, soul, Cajun, R&B and other pieces of American Roots music. And when his voice comes out of your speakers, there is no confusing him for any other artist. As the Wall Street Journal writes, “Mr. Crockett’s unique vocal style is one third Ernest Tubb honky-tonk with clipped-word diction, one third Bill Withers low-key, soulful crooning, and one third jazzy French Quarter second-line swagger.”
The trajectory for 2023 and beyond continues to light up for Crockett, who is set to appear on stages across the country this year in both headline shows and alongside fellow artists like Tyler Childers, Chris Stapleton, Marcus King and more. With an aggressive schedule on the calendar for the remainder of the year, Crockett has already gone overseas for his first-ever headlining tour in Australia, made his debut on NPR’s Tiny Desk, and joined the lineups of major festivals and events including Bonnaroo, Railbird, NASCAR Chicago, and Willie Nelson’s 90th Birthday —in addition to releasing and creating new music throughout the year, including the new-to-radio single, “Trinity River.”
About Charles Wesley Godwin
A native of West Virginia, Charles Wesley Godwin makes cinematic country-folk that's as gorgeous and ruggedly raw as his homeland. It's Appalachian Americana, rooted in Godwin's sharp songwriting and backwoods baritone. With 2021's How the Mighty Fall, he trades the autobiographical lyrics that filled Seneca — his acclaimed debut, released in 2019 and celebrated by everyone from Rolling Stone to NPR's Mountain Stage — for a collection of character-driven songs about mortality, hope, and regret, putting an intimate spin on the universal concerns we all share. "I started a family around the time Seneca came out," he remembers. "After my son was born, I remember sitting in the hospital, thinking about how that very experience would eventually become one of those life moments that flash before my eyes when I'm old. I realized that time is passing, and my time will pass, too. Becoming a father made it all sink in." Those realizations quickly found their way into his writing. If Seneca painted the picture of a southern son in the middle of American coal country, then How the Mighty Fall — produced once again by Al Torrence — zooms out to focus on wider themes of time, transience, and the choices we make. Songs like "Strong" "Bones" and "Blood Feud" are roadhouse roots-rockers, driven forward by fiery fiddle, lap steel and plenty of electric guitar. Godwin does most of his painting with more subtle shades, though, often waiting until How the Mighty Fall Softer moments to make his biggest impact. On "Cranes of Potter," he delivers a murder ballad with finger-plucked acoustic guitar and elegiac melodies, unspooling the narrative with a storyteller's restraint. Meanwhile, "Temporary Town" finds him returning to West Virginia after spending five years in the midwest, celebrating his homecoming not with barely-contained enthusiasm, but with measured excitement, light percussion, and a steadily-building arrangement. "I try to write with a sense of place," he explains. "Up until now, that setting has always been my home, but I don't think this new album is as locally-focused as my previous release. I hope these songs will connect with people wherever they live." The son of a coal miner father and a schoolteacher mother, Godwin began forging those musical connections in 2013, while studying abroad in Estonia. He'd learned the acoustic guitar several years earlier, looking for a diversion after failing to secure a spot on the West Virginia University football team. Halfway across the world in Estonia, he started strumming songs in his apartment, summoning the sights and sounds of West Virginia for a group of new friends who'd never laid eyes on the state. Fans were made, gigs were booked, and Godwin launched his full-time music career shortly after graduation. Marriage soon took him to Ohio, where his wife worked as a fundraiser. Even so, West Virginia remained at the forefront of Godwin's mind, and he saluted the area's influence with his 2019 debut. Seneca was a hit, with Billboard praising the album's "the vivid language and scenic ambience," and Rolling Stone enthusing, "His voice, with its tight, old-world vibrato, is perfect." Godwin hit the road in support of its release, touring domestically one minute and selling out shows in European destinations like Stockholm the next. When the global pandemic brought his touring to a halt, he set his sights on How the Mighty Fall, creating the album during a period that also witnessed the arrival of his son and the migration of his growing family back to West Virginia. Charles Wesley Godwin has never been afraid to blur the lines, and How the Mighty Fall proudly straddles the borderlands between several genres. It's a country album by an Appalachian-borne folk singer and blue-collar believer, laced with enough electricity to satisfy the Saturday night revelers and enough scaled-down acoustic balladry to soundtrack the slow, gentle pace of Sunday morning. For every "Lyin' Low" — a driving folk anthem, its larger-than-life melodies flanked by banjo — there's a softly sweeping song like "Lost Without You," which finds Godwin's voice echoing between stretches of pedal steel and symphonic strings. This is music for campfires and car rides, for pool halls and mountain peaks, for big-city diehards and small-town loyalists. It's Charles Wesley Godwin at his best, diving into character studies and richly-created fiction while still offering glimpses of the man behind the music.