Organizers behind the Cross Canadian Ragweed reunion concerts announced two additional dates after Monday's presale involved the sort of long waits and high demand usually associated with major acts like Taylor Swift or Oasis rather than the Red Dirt scene.
Ragweed and co-headliners the Turnpike Troubadours have added Thursday, April 10, and Sunday, April 13, to their 2025 “Boys from Oklahoma” weekend at Boone Pickens Stadium on the campus of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. Originally announced as a one-night only concert on April 12, it has ballooned into a four-night mega-residency.
“I knew people wanted a reunion,” Ragweed frontman Cody Canada tells Rolling Stone. “I've been hearing it for years. I had no idea it would be this big. I am so grateful.”
The lineups for the additional nights will once again include Jason Boland and the Stragglers and Stoney LaRue. The Great Divide and he Mike McClure band will round out the bills. The bands are sharing codes for a presale that starts Tuesday, Oct. 8, at noon Central. The public sale is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 11, but all tickets for the first two shows sold out in Monday's presale.
When the April 12 show was brainstormed by executives in the Oklahoma State athletic department and Russell Doussan, president of Doussan Music Group, the expectation was for a single show that would — optimistically — sell out the roughly 40,000 earmarked tickets for the concert. When presale registrations soared over 150,000 within a day of the show's announcement, they added the April 11 date. When all tickets sold out in the presale on Monday, organizers tell Rolling Stone there were more than 200,000 fans still logged in to purchase tickets, so they reached out to the bands about adding the third and fourth nights.
“I've been in the business 31 years,” Doussan says. “I've been a part of some major, major projects, and I have never witnessed anything like this before. I was in Stillwater this weekend [for an Oklahoma State football game]and for the entire day, I could not take two steps without somebody either coming up to me or overhearing a conversation about this concert, as if it was going to happen next weekend. It's still six and a half months away.
“I was part of the Guns N' Roses reunion tour,” he continues. “I did their stadium show in New Orleans, and this is beyond that.”
Stillwater, with its population of 50,000 residents, routinely hosts sold-out Oklahoma State football games in Boone Pickens Stadium, but the concert has pushed the city's tourism infrastructure past its limit, with hotels filling up for the weekend before the event was even announced, and fans reporting price-gouging on popular accommodation sites such as Airbnb and vrbo. Add in the prospect of a multi-day concert while the university and its enrollment of more than 25,000 students are in session, and the preparations on the part of both OSU and Stillwater will be under scrutiny ahead of the concerts.
“We have a lot of practice with big events in town, but this will definitely be the biggest party we've thrown in a while,” Stillwater mayor Will Joyce tells Rolling Stone. “Our public safety and emergency management teams work very closely with OSU staff to ensure everyone has a safe and enjoyable time in Stillwater, and there will be a lot of meetings over the next few months to make sure this event is a great experience and wonderful memory.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose third book, Red Dirt Unplugged — which includes a 2024 full-band interview with Cross Canadian Ragweed — is set for release on December 13, 2024, via Back Lounge Publishing, and available for pre-order.
