Lexington, KY - Railbird Music Festival, The Infield at Red Mile - 2026
June 7th, 2026
Lexington, KY
The Infield at Red Mile
Preface: Our second show in 3 days! We drove home after Greenville and then picked up Daniel’s brother, Ryan, to head to Railbird! Ryan is a co-host for a festival themed podcast, The Roo Report, so we were excited to have him along for the ride. You can find his Instagram here. After arriving in Lexington the other co-host, Kiefer, also met up with us and Kiefer’s brother joined as well! Rarely do we have a group of people at a show so it was nice to be able to include some friends and family for this and also help with their content.
The Limestone Stage eagerly awaiting Tyler Childers and the Food Stamps
Show Notes: What a night it was! As always, never miss a Lexington show! The show kicked off very uniquely with Tyler being inducted into the Railbird Hall of Fame! Then during his set Tyler spoke about the band Small Batch whom he’d played gigs with early in his career. He then introduced Melissa ‘Tree’ Jackson to the stage where they sang Jersey Giant and My Rifle, My Pony and Me (a cover of a Dean Martin song).
It’s always great to hear the stories of Tyler’s influences and it’s even better to get to see him play with these people on stage. We’ve had the chance to see this kind of thing play out a few times now and this was by far our favorite time. It is pretty rare these days that we see a song played live that we haven’t seen yet so anytime that happens it’s much more memorable for us.
This should be a reminder of why you should go to shows; you never know what might happen! Aside from those very interesting things the setlist remained basically identical to the last 2 shows but Purgatory and Old Country Church were both removed from this set and only 2 songs were played acoustic (Follow You to Virgie and Lady May).
We can’t stress it enough, NEVER miss a Lexington show; the guys always bring the energy and surprise you nearly each time with something unique.
Craig Burletic blessing the crowd
Venue Notes: The Infield at Red Mile has seen very little changes since 2023; which is fine since it’s a great lay out already. The venue is a treat for a festival really, it’s quite grassy and keeps the dust down as much as possible but the main walk ways are a dirt/gravel combination.
At other festivals you often find that dust is being strewn about and a lot of people actually end up with “Festival Flu.” Festival Flu is no joke and mimics a severe upper respiratory infection all from just inhaling too much dirt. Any festival that makes a concerted effort to lessen this is topnotch in our book!
Named because it’s hosted on the infield of the Red Mile horse racing track, Railbird’s grounds don’t remind you of this too obviously. The festival is littered with horse and racing references but it doesn’t overwhelm you; if anything it reminds you of the unique-ness of where you are.
We absolutely adore this festival and anytime we can come we will. We find the whole experience here welcoming from the ample amount of bathrooms and water refill stations to the merch lines being super fast.
The biggest critique we have of the festival is how bad the cell service is. To call it hit or miss would be too kind. We go to a lot of festivals elsewhere and this does seem to be a common problem but it seems as if other festivals are able to handle it better. But, nonetheless, Railbird is one of our highly recommended festivals and ranks amongst the top that we’ve seen Tyler and the Food Stamps at.
Parking Notes: Admittedly we are very lucky as we have a local connection and have parked for free both times we’ve been here and within a half mile. This is obviously not an option for all people but for us to speak outside of that wouldn’t be fair. What we will allude to is that after speaking with people they seemingly say the parking is not ideal and often requires a hefty payment ($50+) and sometimes upwards of a mile walk. We walked past a parking area that was actually charging $100 to park as well.
Travel Notes: We made the trip from North Carolina and because of where we stayed we ended up not taking the interstate the whole way. We ended up on some backwoods highways from southwest Virginia into Tennessee and Kentucky. It was an awesome trip!
Going over the Cumberland Gap and weeding in and out of the mountains was great. There weren’t too many stopping points of note but the views make up for this tenfold. We’d make this exact travel trip for no reason other than to just see the mountains.
Also, there’s very little traffic on these routes we’ve found and that is a big stress relief.
In Lexington itself we couldn’t recommend POPS Resale enough! Labeled as a vintage clothing store it’s actually much more! They sale and array of vintage things and are certainly geared more toward music fans.
As well, do yourself the favor of checking out the Blue Door Smokehouse which is located on the east side of town. Their menu is a typical BBQ joint’s menu but the taste is anything but. They pack tons of flavor into their meats and the environment is great!
Chloe has also not stopped talking or thinking about our trip to Fazoli’s. Per usual we did the spaghetti and it was amazing! We had a few people with us here so we actually tried a wide array of things from their pizza to their Italian sub; all of which were great! This is a must stop for anyone, anywhere, anytime!