About 10 miles west of the border between Florida and Alabama, Gulf Shores has held the Hangout Music Festival on its sugar white sand beaches for the past 15 years. The affair has revolved, as have so many of its peers over the same period, around a mix of pop music insurgents and established stalwarts that could comfortably suit an all-ages, genre-agnostic crowd— Zach Bryan and Lana Del Rey headlined last year. Then, in the last year of their franchise agreement with the town, festival organizers worked out a new plan: hand the reins over to the tastes, name, and sway of Morgan Wallen.

The Sand in My Boots festival, the country megastar’s takeover of the Hangout that took place last month, was a showcase for Wallen’s collaborators and influences—with a lineup pulled from Nashville

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