Tortuga Music Festival 2024 returns to Fort Lauderdale Beach Park this Friday through Sunday with headliners Lainey Wilson, Hardy and Jason Aldean, but also dozens of other performers worth seeking out.
Remember, there have been times when the tinier type on the Tortuga poster has included relative unknowns such as Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, Kane Brown, Old Dominion, Brothers Osborne, Sam Hunt, Lainey Wilson, Kelsea Ballerini, Cole Swindell, Jordan Davis, Gary Clark Jr. and Dan + Shay.
With that in mind, here are 10 down-the-bill acts to look forward to at Tortuga this weekend.
PRISCILLA BLOCK
3:20 p.m. Friday, Main Stage
The North Carolina native, a champion of female fortitude and body positivity, began to get noticed in the haze of the pandemic with TikTok releases “Thick Thighs” and “PMS,” then her viral breakout “Just About Over You.” This led to debut album “Welcome to the Block Party,” which charmed critics — The New York Times put it at No. 4 on its list of best albums of 2022, between releases by Drake and Beyoncé. Priscilla Block drew a large crowd to her 2022 Tortuga performance on the Next From Nashville Stage, and this year she moves up to the Main Stage.
John McCall/South Florida Sun Sentinel
Priscilla Block, shown at the 2022 edition of Tortuga Music Festival, moves up to the Main Stage in 2024. (John McCall/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
TEDDY SWIMS
5:30 p.m. Friday, Sunset Stage
A songwriter previously best-known as part of the team that wrote Thomas Rhett‘s “Angels (Don’t Always Have Wings),” Teddy Swims hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list last week with his soulful single “Lose Control.” It was a long climb for a song that he introduced last fall on the “Today” show, describing for the audience the battle with mental illness going on behind the stylish, confident persona. Swims’ summer includes a tour of Europe and Australia, and a performance at Lollapalooza in Chicago.
TURNPIKE TROUBADOURS
6:15 p.m. Friday, Main Stage
The red-dirt country band released the album “A Cat in the Rain” last summer, a nearly six-year delay after their hit compilation “A Long Way from Your Heart.” The Turnpike Troubadours had put band activities on hold for a spell as frontman Evan Felker dealt with the tabloid churn of a rocky marriage and other issues. Felker’s marriage survives, he is sober, and “A Cat in the Rain” has the band back on a pedestal among critics. In reviewing the album, the arbiters at Saving Country Music wrote: “The Turnpike Troubadours are one of the premier country music acts of our time. It may take some time for everyone to realize that, but the world is slowly waking up to it.”
PEYTAN PORTER
3:40 p.m. Saturday, New From Nashville Stage
Peytan Porter released the gritty six-song EP “Grown” on March 1, including the single “Lemonade,” and was named Billboard’s Rookie of the Month. In speaking about the album, Porter referenced the inspiration she draws from the Laurel Canyon-era of songwriting that yielded the music of Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, and The Mamas & The Papas. “There’s just a kind of drifter, free, nomad energy that comes with that whole time frame,” Porter told Billboard. “I was … inspired by how touring fueled the music itself. It felt like they hashed things out on the road and brought it into the studio. I wanted my music to sound like it does live and I can’t do that if I’m using track and synthetic sounds. This record feels like I’m stepping into my own.”
MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD
4:40 p.m. Saturday, Main Stage
Oakland native Michael Franti is relentlessly upbeat as a human and as a musician, a perfect match for the vibe to which Tortuga aspires. No surprise, this will be the band’s fourth appearance at Tortuga. Michael Franti & Spearhead released the album “Big Big Love” in November, a heaping helping of sunny optimism, or as Franti calls it, “the different types of love that we are all capable of in our everyday lives — love for ourselves, for our partners, our community, our friends, humanity and for our planet.”
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Michael Franti & Spearhead will bring new music to Tortuga Music Festival. (Getty Images)
TLC
4:10 p.m. Sunday, Sunset Stage
Few pop acts had a higher high than TLC, also known as Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas and the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. Still one of the top-selling girl groups of all time, they closed out the 1990s with hit singles “Creep,” “Waterfalls,” “No Scrubs” and “Unpretty” that not only hit No. 1, but captured a cultural moment, saying out loud what many young women were thinking. And they’re still fun to sing to.
THE RED CLAY STRAYS
4:10 p.m. Sunday, Main Stage
The Alabama quintet has been in steady rotation in my ears since their appearance at Tortuga 2023, and their soulful, Sun Records-style mix of country, rock and gospel-tinged blues seems destined for big things. A recent Rolling Stone profile of their “gothic country” sound cited their must-see reputation and “foreboding sense of cool.” The Red Clay Strays’ 2024 tour includes three nights in September at Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium, all sellouts.
CHARLES WESLEY GODWIN
5:30 p.m. Sunday, Sunset Stage
The 30-year-old Charles Wesley Godwin is a storyteller from West Virginia whose songwriting vulnerability and evocative humanity is all his own (one of his touchstones is Bruce Springsteen), and nowhere is that more evident than on his most recent album, “Family Ties.” Saving Country Music called it “a landmark release,” continuing: “In a time when it seems like everyone wants to tear at the fabric of society and bulldoze everything established in favor of some new version of life, Godwin makes a simple plea for stability and family, which in this moment might be one of the most radical proclamations one can forward.”
STEPHEN WILSON JR.
5:35 p.m. Sunday, New From Nashville Stage
Another out-of-nowhere singer-songwriter, Stephen Wilson Jr. draws from a deep well of experience as a scientist with a degree in microbiology and chemistry from Middle Tennessee State University and a Golden Gloves boxer in his home state of Indiana. Wilson Jr. released his debut album, a 22-song double-disc titled “Son of Dad,” on Sept. 15, five years to the day that his father, his inspiration and cornerman when he boxed, died after a brief illness. By turns poignant, quirky and fiercely independent, the album has drawn critical raves. The Tennessean in Nashville calls him “the next iconoclastic leader of country’s rock revival.”
BAILEY ZIMMERMAN
6:05 p.m. Sunday, Main Stage
A name you probably know and one that seems likely to end up among the headliners at Tortuga one day, the 24-year-old former pipeline worker from Illinois came to country music with “unapologetic arena rock ambition.” His 2023 debut album, “Religiously. The Album,” has so far produced four Top 10 hits: “Religiously,” “Fall in Love,” “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Where it Ends.” In a January preview of the year in country music, Rolling Stone cited his potential under the headline “Is Bailey Zimmerman the Next Morgan Wallen?” Zimmerman will be one of the opening acts on Wallen’s summer stadium tour.
Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at bcrandell@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Instagram @BenCrandell and Twitter @BenCrandell.