Inaugural 2019 KAABOO Texas Day 1

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KAABOO TEXAS, Day 1
AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas
May 10, 2019

Written by Joseph Landeros / Photography by Denise Enriquez
Cover photo by Rob Loud, KAABOO Texas

What’s in a name? For KAABOO Texas, it would be limiting to classify the event as just another music festival for North Texas. To those unfamiliar (and judging by the first two days of attendance, there were quite a few), KAABOO Texas has been characterized as a clean, adult event with a little bit of everything for everyone – live music on four main stages, comedy, live culinary presentations from award-winning chefs, live billboard style art creations from artists in residence, and food, art, and cocktails for purchase. KAABOO brought everything it said it would, to the point of sometimes feeling like you’re at a restaurant with too many options to make up your mind. Despite this, the options on the menu were certainly worth sampling.

It was easy to speculate why attendance might have been low for the first day of KAABOO Texas. Friday’s weather certainly didn’t give the excited feeling one would expect when attending an outdoor event. While the Bai sponsored main stage was inside the Dallas Cowboy’s AT&T stadium, many of the outside stage performances (like New York-based Indie rockers Acid Dad, or Eddie V’s Chef Brad Albers) started the day with few people to listen to their session. The overwhelmed feeling started to set in when you realize that attending one stage meant having to sacrifice attending another. While popular Netflix Chef and historian of Southern Cuisine Chef Sean Brock gave his audience a new way to cook his famous cornbread, you suddenly look down at your watch to realize you’ve just missed Bush’s opening song. I’m sad I didn’t get a chance to sample Sean’s cornbread, but I couldn’t miss a chance to hear Bush, considering my own personal influence by the band.

Despite the initial small crowds, the artists were all in top form. Ludacris and Los Lobos gave us all the songs we hold dear. With an extra $100, you could have bought your way into the BASK VIP area to kick it at the pool club during drizzling rain while listening to the likes of KAP SLAP OR CASH CASH on the Coors Light Rowdy stage. Unfortunately for media, access was limited to having to look over high fences to see the grass was greener but definitely emptier.

If you were motivated and willing to miss some of the performances, you could hop from Ms. Lauryn Hill (who was only a little late) to see the end of a glowing and very pregnant Alanis Morissette. The day quickly came to an end, though not from a lack of things to do, with Dennis Miller headlining the Humor Me stage, overlapped with a very energetic and brightly smiling Lionel Richie showing us he hasn’t missed a beat.

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