How Stacy Vee Took The Reins Of Stagecoach — And Transformed Country Music In The Process

Growing up in rural Minnesota, Stacy Vee didn’t have particularly lofty ambitions. While attending St. Cloud State University, she says, “my dream job was maybe I could be a special events planner at this hotel on the freeway one day and do weddings and conferences.”

Vee did end up planning events — just on a far larger scale than that highway-­adjacent hotel. Now she’s executive vp of Goldenvoice/AEG, where she has been in charge of the world’s largest country music festival, Stagecoach, since 2015, greatly expanding the three-day, Indio, Calif.-based event that launched in 2007 — and altering perceptions of country music in the process. Attendance at the late-April festival, capped at 85,000 per day, rivals its eclectic cousin, Coachella, which Goldenvoice holds on the same grounds the previous two weekends each year (and which Vee is also involved in booking).

On the day Billboard meets with her, Vee is sentimental, sad, elated and tired. It’s the last day of Stagecoach and she’s sitting in her trailer in the artist compound, which she has made cozy with a bowl of fresh nectarines, macrame pillows strewn on the sofa, vintage lamps, Christmas lights and cowboy boots and hats.

After all these years, she still gets pre-festival jitters. “On the night before day one of Stagecoach, I woke up at one and I just couldn’t get back to sleep,” she says. “It’s excitement and nerves and we’ve been working on the show for so long.” In fact, she adds, “I’ve been working on 2026 for a year already. It’s 80% booked.”

Vee, who is 48, has her hand in every facet of the festival. She smiles as the clock strikes 1 p.m. and Quiet Riot’s “Cum on Feel the Noize” blasts through the loudspeakers, signaling that the grounds are open for another day. “Heck, yes. I pick the song that plays when gates open for Stagecoach!” she says. The first day’s choice was AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and day two was Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” but high winds delayed the opening, so no song was played. “I was feeling a little metal this year,” Vee says. “I very ­seriously don’t take myself and Stagecoach too seriously.”

When Goldenvoice president Paul Tollett started Stagecoach eight years after he had co-founded Coachella with the late Rick Van Santen in 1999, Vee would’ve seemed an unlikely choice to be his successor to helm the festival, given how little she followed country music.

“I listened to a little Mavericks, a little Dwight Yoakam, a little Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks in high school,” she says. “But then after that, I was really into indie and alternative and college rock.”

So much so that after graduation, Vee worked as promotion director at a Minneapolis alternative radio station for two years before moving to Los Angeles in 2000. She became an agent’s assistant at WME before shifting in 2002 to Goldenvoice (which AEG had acquired the previous year), where she started as former Concerts West co-CEO Paul Gongaware’s assistant and quickly joined Tollett’s team as well.

“I had noticed [Tollett] didn’t have an assistant and Coachella was coming up, so I asked if I could also assist him. Paul Gongaware’s response was, ‘Well, if you want to work twice as hard for the same money… go for it!’ I said, ‘Thank you!,’ thinking it was the coolest thing that had ever happened to me, professionally,” she says.

That willingness to step in wherever needed made Vee stand out, says Tollett, to whom she still reports. “She was organized from the beginning and could always follow the conversation. That’s what I love about Stacy,” he says.

The two worked hand in hand on Coachella and then Stagecoach. Though her indie and alternative rock tastes were more aligned with Coachella, she learned country through osmosis. “Over the years, I began anticipating needs, studying and putting ideas in front of him,” she says. “Paul graciously allowed me the opportunity to run with the ball, make decisions and get my feet wet booking.”

Vee took on increasing responsibility until, in 2015, Tollett told her, “You’re ready,” and handed her the Stagecoach reins.

“You could turn over anything to Stacy. That’s the key,” he says. “It turned out to be Stagecoach, but it could have been anything. When you’re someone like her, where success is where you just want to be, she’s going to work toward it, no matter the challenge or the hurdle.”

Plus, by then, country was shifting; edgy country-rock artists like Nikki Lane and Sturgill Simpson had come onto the scene. “The first time I heard those two, it was a switch that kicked on for me,” Vee says. “I was like, ‘OK, this s–t is cool.’ It always was, but I just really identified with it.”

Just as Coachella’s aesthetic reflects Tollett, Stagecoach’s now reflects Vee. She has made country cool again by, paradoxically, expanding Stagecoach’s purview beyond the genre’s strict musical parameters. That’s especially evident on the Palomino Stage, a tent that has far less capacity than the Mane Stage but is viewed as the hippest spot to play. At Palomino, Vee books acts that, if not country, are compatible and share fans with core country artists; legends like Tom Jones, Smokey Robinson and, this year, Lana Del Rey have appeared there.

Regardless of the stage, Vee says, “I think my stamp on Stagecoach is looking just outside of country and bringing these artists in. Nelly toured with Florida Georgia Line, so he belongs at Stagecoach. Post [Malone], he’s Texan. During the pandemic, he was doing at-home performances, and I saw him cover a Sturgill Simpson song. I was like, ‘That man has to come play Stagecoach.’ ” In 2024, Post Malone performed a full set of country covers on the Mane Stage months before the release of his star-­studded country album, F-1 Trillion. “I keep my eyes and ears peeled for people who just belong in the space,” she says. This year, that also included rapper ­BigXthaPlug, who has a collection of country collaborations coming out.

She has learned that veteran acts of all genres — in addition to Nelly, this year’s Palomino roster included Backstreet Boys, Goo Goo Dolls, Creed, Crystal ­Gayle, Sammy Hagar and Tommy James & The Shondells — pack the tent. “All bets are off in there, and I can get as creative as any person ever could at a festival,” she says. “People just love to sing some of these iconic anthems and songs where everyone just puts their arms around each other.”

Still, Vee knows she can impose her personal tastes only so far: “I still have to sell 85,000 tickets, so I have to get the biggest headliners. I have a job to do, but I can put some of myself in there, too.”

Vee is always looking for ways to enhance the experience for festivalgoers, such as Stageshop Marketplace, a vintage clothing store run for several years by Lane that also included its own performance space. That’s also how both Diplo and Guy Fieri ended up as cornerstones of the festival. Fieri’s Stagecoach Smokehouse, which serves barbecue and holds cooking demonstrations with music guests, debuted in 2018 and has become a popular hangout. “This was Stacy’s idea,” Fieri says. “If you’re going to bring people here and you’re going to set this environment around country music, you have to give them all the senses. Stagecoach is Stagecoach because of Stacy Vee.”

Even before Diplo put out his first country album in 2020, he wanted a platform at Stagecoach, but Vee, protective of her patrons, had to be convinced he was coming for the right reasons. “Diplo’s managers really wanted him to come and play Stagecoach,” she says. “I was like, ‘I don’t think so. He can’t come here and make fun of people.’ They said, ‘He wants to respectfully come into this space. He wants to collaborate with these artists. He wants to write.’ His managers came to Stagecoach [in 2018], and each of them were wearing T-shirts that had Diplo wearing a cowboy hat.”

Diplo played a late-night set in 2019 and now curates the Honky Tonk Tent, which programs during the day as well. The tent has become so popular that even members of the Backstreet Boys were left waiting in line late one afternoon this year when Paris Hilton’s DJ set, with special guest Lizzo, packed the tent so tightly that security quit letting people in.

“Stacy is a superstar. She took a random idea me and my managers cooked up in a trailer backstage at Coachella and turned it into a full-blown tent at Stagecoach with my name on it,” Diplo says. “She saw the trend of country taking over pop light-years before anyone else and has built such an amazing festival with something for everyone — old school, new school, outlaw and pop. Stagecoach is my favorite show every single year… Stacy truly is the queen of Stagecoach, and I always look forward to seeing her, even though, somehow, she always manages to have better outfits than me.”

Vee considers Fieri and Diplo part of her brain trust. “I find it fascinating — other people’s interpretation of Stagecoach, other people’s interpretation of country music,” she says. “I want to know what draws Guy in. I want what Diplo is ­excited about. A way for me to keep learning and to keep expanding is to have this trusted posse of people that we work with and see what ideas they bring in.”

In addition to Stagecoach, Vee is in charge of Morgan Wallen’s new festival, Sand in My Boots, which took over the Gulf Shores, Ala., grounds and mid-May calendar slot of former all-genre Goldenvoice fest Hangout. She also runs June’s Buckeye Country Superfest in Columbus, Ohio, and is on AEG’s touring team for Zach Bryan, who this year headlined Stagecoach alongside Jelly Roll and Luke Combs. “Anything high level for country music domestically, or even ­internationally, I have my hand in,” she says.

Beyond country, she runs Goldenvoice’s Just Like Heaven, a May indie-­rock festival in Pasadena, Calif., and is on ­Coachella’s five-person booking committee. “We lock ourselves in a conference room a lot and just discuss ideas,” she says of the Coachella booking process. “We throw up a lot of grids, throw up a lot of stats. Take a look at playlists. Just all the things.”

Her future seems limitless, bolstered by a team, including Tollett and AEG Presents chairman/CEO Jay Marciano, that supports and empowers her. And unlike the college kid whose goal was to work at the local hotel, her aspirations have ­greatly expanded, especially when it comes to her role in building country music.

“[I want to] pull people into our community because it is such a loving, vibrant, supportive, artistic, fulfilling community,” Vee says. “I want to not let people underestimate the genre or the fans. I want to grow the genre. I want to change country music. That’s my dream.”

This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.

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