Stagecoach 2026: Pop-ups get the party started early

Actor Gerald Downey was pleasantly surprised at the crowd filling Applebee’s in Indio, especially because it was a Thursday afternoon.

The casual restaurant at 82-894 Highway 111 turned itself into a honky-tonk in advance of the Stagecoach Country Music Festival a few miles away at the Empire Polo Club.

The occasion was the return of Bud Light Apple, a beer with a flavor like hard cider, which will be available for a limited time. The brew is popularly known as Bapple, and this particular Applebee’s was renamed BApplebee’s for the occasion. The promotion will only last through Friday, April 24, the opening day of the festival.

The restaurant was decked out to please country music fans with cowboy hats, as was a DJ spinning the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” for a pair of dancers do-si-doing in very limited space.

There was also a booth with a couple of men sewing people’s names into souvenir bandanas with chain-stitch sewing machines.

At 4 p.m. they were backed up with a stack of requests an inch thick.

Downey, who has appeared in numerous movies and TV series such as “Leverage,” is a spokesman for Anhueser-Busch, had “The Busch Guy” sewn into his bandana.

“It took about five minutes,” he said.

A few miles away, Bud Light was doing a pop-up in a rocky dirt lot. The occasion was a launch party for a collaboration with Stagecoach headliner Post Malone called Bud Light x Posty Co. Minis, 7½-ounce cans of beer with a special blue and white design.

The beer is being handed out in a wooden booth called the “Smallest Bar in the West,” featured in a short film by Malone. Other than the minis, it’s only stocked with a bowl of peanuts.

The pop-up will run through Saturday, April 25 at 82-120 John Nobles Ave. Hours are 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Guests must be 21 years and older, and ID is checked.

On Sunday, April 26, the installation will move to Stagecoach in advance of Malone’s 9:30 p.m. set on the Mane Stage.