Ocean City, MD - Country Calling - Ocean City Inlet Beach
October 5th, 2024
Ocean City, MD
Ocean City Inlet Beach
Preface: Tyler Childers and the Food Stamps live on the beach?! Sign us up!!! We love any chance we get to see concerts in unique places and Ocean City seems to be the perfect place!
Professor Jesse Wells
Show Notes: Kicking off with Shake the Frost the crowd was already captivated early!
The setlist has now become very similar at each show as the band is getting much more tightknit and not missing a beat. Each night sees each member getting their own spotlight throughout different songs and simply is wonderful to see.
One of the biggest notes about this setlist is that Lady May wasn’t played, nor was anything done acoustic. Lady May is THE staple song you can count on seeing at nearly every single Tyler Childers show so not seeing it here was slightly a shock.
Even without Lady May this setlist was hits heavy, Shake the Frost, I Swear (to God), All Your’n, In Your Love, Whitehouse Road, Way of the Triune God, House Fire, and Universal Sound all found their way onto the setlist as we’re used to see now.
These songs got the crowd to go absolutely nuts as everyone in the crowd knew basically every word.
The rest of the setlist was Country Squire, Rustin’ in the Rain, Purgatory, Cluck Old Hen, Old Country Church, Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? Two Coats, and Heart You’ve Been Tendin’.
While those aren’t ‘hits’ necessarily they don’t lack their ability to get the crowd involved. The crowd spends their time during Cluck Old Hen and Two Coats swaying from side to side and bobbing their heads.
The other songs which aren’t instrumental are spent hurling the words back toward the band as they play. While they might be lesser known songs there’s not a lack of crowd singing and certainly the crowd that doesn’t know the songs are engaged nonetheless.
Country Calling fit the whole band very well and the scenes here were nothing short of amazing!
Tyler Childers and the Food Stamps, Universal Sound
Venue Notes: This venue is one of the best you can imagine. You’re on a pier where there’s tons of open beach-themed shops and endless food options.
The concerts are held in the parking lot and on the beach itself. Tyler and the guys played at the ‘Boot’ stage which is surrounded by sand and some grassy areas. It was surreal to be able to see a concert literally on the beach.
The grounds, being that it’s on sand, are as good as possible. They do their best to make it easy to move around and make walking in the sand less hectic than it usually is. The venue provides walkways and areas where they’ve put down walking material so that trekking from one stage to the other is more simple.
We’d highly recommend you check out something here!
Parking Notes: Parking was PACKED around the venue. We ended up in a parking lot about a half mile away for $30. It’s what you’d expect at most bigger shows. Nothing too crazy.
There is tons of parking but it’s all super close to the venue and fills up fast, so make sure to get there early!
Travel Notes: For this show we drove up through Virginia and FINALLY got to travel over (and under) the bridge-tunnel!
For those not familiar with the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel it’s something to behold! Closing in on 18 miles long the bridge-tunnel connects the upper VA peninsula to the Hampton Roads area of VA.
Part of this 17.6 mile road are bridges while the rest are tunnels. You’re literally going up and down between a bridge going over the bay and then diving down into a tunnel that goes below the water. You MUST find a reason to take this route simply for this.
Be sure to get enough gas to get you from one side to the other because there is no room to stop on the bridge.
This trip was also a quick turn around for us. We left the night before the show and drove most of the way back after the show.
Bonus: Were we were standing was next to this elevated platform which we later found out was a VIP platform. During Tyler’s set someone, who we didn’t know at the time, came out onto the platform and tons of people started to swarm near it. Shortly thereafter we saw this person taking a couple of photos real quick with the people in the crowd.
After a couple of photos this person, who we had now learned was Bailey Zimmerman, told the people crowding around him that he was sorry but he wouldn’t be taking any more photos because he ‘doesn’t do this shit during other people’s sets.’
We think it’s awesome to see artists respecting other artists. At a time where Bailey could have taken the fans eyes off of Tyler Childers and the Food Stamps he decided to only take a couple photos and then have the others focus their attention back to Tyler and the guys. It’s these kinds of gestures that supersede music genres and set the standard for how each artist should respect others while they’re on the stage.