Mile 0 2025: Red Clay Strays, Kaitlin Butts and More of the Best Things We Saw at Red Dirt Fest

Now in its eighth year, Mile 0 Festival in Key West, Florida, has earned pilgrimage status. For fans of Red Dirt country music, the fest has become a yearly rite; for those who have yet to attend, it’s a must. This year, Mile 0 powered through a historic cold snap and blustery winds to showcase genre icons along with rising stars from Texas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere. Rolling Stone was on the ground to cover the surprise reunion by Cross Canadian Ragweed — the band’s first onstage performance together in 15 years — and catch some stellar sets. These are the best things we saw.

Kaitlin Butts takes fans on a ride through their feels.

Musically, Butts is one of the flag-bearers of the emo-country movement gripping the industry, but she pairs it with a live show that at times feels like it could be a longstanding Vegas residency. Despite a north wind blowing salty mist onto her and her band, she ripped through her catalog and took the crowd on a ride through their feels. Butts acknowledged the elements early on: “I know it’s cold so here’s some cactus juice to warm you up,” before launching into the swinging “Wild Juanita’s Cactus Juice.” Later, she told a personal story of growing up poor with her mom and living in her grandmother’s garage, “getting our feet pulled out from under us all the time” to intro the heart-wrenching “It Won’t Always Be This Way.” She returned to levity to close out the set with Kesha’s “Hunt You Down” and a freewheeling reading of the Chicks’ “Sin Wagon.”

Summer Dean has honky-tonk charisma.

Since dropping her third album, The Biggest Life, in 2023, Summer Dean has gone from “your favorite band’s opener” to a Texas Music headliner whose fan base grows by the minute (check out her new single, a cover of Terri Gibbs’ “Somebody’s Knockin’”). Her combination of onstage charisma and biting honky-tonk lyrics was on full display for an early main-stage set. The standout moment came when she told a story about a failed social media pickup attempt by a fan, setting up her cheeky singalong “Clean Up Your Act If You Wanna Talk Dirty to Me.”

The Red Clay Strays graduate to headliner.

In a pale pink suit and a pompadour sculpted with enough pomade to withstand the unrelenting January wind, Red Clay Strays singer Brandon Coleman looked as if he walked straight out of Sun Studio. The band behind him sounded like it too, steamrolling through a set rich in vintage sounds. But, time and again, the Strays have proved they’re not some throwback parody. With brooding songs like “Disaster” and “Drowning,” off their latest studio LP, Made by These Moments, the Alabama band mix rock & roll danger with sweet salvation. There’s a reason they graduated to headliner this year.

Ellis Bullard, the coolest act in Texas Music? Could be.

Combining a range of baritone harmonies with a hardcore Austin honky-tonk sound and never-give-a-damn vibe, Bullard is arguably the coolest act at every festival he’s played of late. At Mile 0, he grabbed the early-afternoon crowd by the collective collar for an hour of swampy, swinging melodies. Bullard endeared himself when he proclaimed, “We’re a beer drinking band, so we’re gonna drink some beer right quick” as he and his band imbibed. The musical highlight was the introspective “Chasing Numbers,” which he introduced by telling fans that his career took off once he learned to ignore music charts and analytics. Mile 0 is a festival that saw breakout artists like the Red Clay Strays and 49 Winchester playing mid-day bar sets as recently as a year ago before landing coveted late slots on the main stage in 2025. The response to Bullard suggests he is primed to follow suit.

49 Winchester bring the soul.

The guys from the Russell County Line sure have a lot of soul, and it was heard loud and clear Friday night during at the Coffee Butler Amphitheater lineup. As the lead-in to headliners Red Clay Strays, 49 Winchester were a hard act to follow, with singer Isaac Gibson stomping about the stage while showing off the wide range of emotion in his voice. His vulnerable crooning of “Damn Darlin’,” a Nashville shout-out, was a high point, especially when fans joined him in singing the payoff line, “Hearts break harder/at the old Exit/In!” On the coldest night of the fest, the sense of community was as warming as a shot of whiskey.

John Fullbright shows why he’s so damn revered.

For an artist with a Grammy nomination to his name, Fullbright has built a career under the radar, even while co-writing and producing well-known songs for the likes of Turnpike Troubadours and American Aquarium. The Oklahoma native is reserved right up until he takes the stage, alternating between guitar and keyboard and delivering some of the strongest lyrics in Americana music. This all happened at his Backyard Bar set at Mile 0. All of Cross Canadian Ragweed filed into the bar to catch Fullbright’s set, too, emphasizing how his peers feel about his music. When he played “Paranoid Heart” off the 2022 album The Liar, he brought the crowd to a standstill. “I will never speak your name,” he sang, “if it’s not out of love again.”

Stephen Wilson Jr. floats like a butterfly.

With his boxing background, Indiana native turned Nashville breakthrough artist Stephen Wilson Jr. all but glides about the stage. His performances, at the amphitheater on Thursday night and again Friday at a windswept pier, underscored his magnetism: Fans couldn’t look away from Wilson’s slashing attacks on his acoustic guitar or his lightning-fast footwork. But of course it’s the songs from his album Son of Dad, that are the main draw, each an exercise in unguarded human emotions, from grief to joy. With the addition of his cover of “Stand by Me” to the set list, Wilson’s crafted a live show not to be missed.

Them Dirty Roses create their own encore.

If Them Dirty Roses’ only contribution to Mile 0 had been frontman James Ford’s rendition of Cross Canadian Ragweed’s “Constantly” at Thursday night’s Ragweed tribute, it would have been a successful festival for the band. Instead, they followed it up with a show the next day that drew one of the largest side-stage crowds of the entire week, with fans eager to devour a Southern rock set that leaned heavily on songs from the upcoming EP Lost in the Valley of Hate & Love Vol. II. But there’s no room for encores during daytime shows at Mile 0, so Ford’s drummer brother Frank stepped in to create their own — demanding fans gather near the front of the stage for the rousing closer “Shake It.”