Despite the sweaty, 89-degree heat on Friday afternoon, 13-year-old Jackie Griffin wrapped herself in a warm blanket adorned with photos of Morgan Wallen as she waited in a merch line.
Griffin was about to see the country artist for the first time, though she estimates she’s been a fan since age 7 or 8. The concert was a belated birthday gift.
“I love his accent,” she said. “I just love his songs and stuff. They're very connectable; he has a story behind every one.”
Wallen shared dozens of those stories across two nights as the Grammy-nominated artist made his Gainesville debut.
He swung by The Swamp nearly halfway through his “Still the Problem Tour” on May 15 and 16. Wallen headlined back-to-back shows at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, accompanied by Thomas Rhett, Ella Langley, Gavin Adcock and Zach John King.
The concerts were the first held in The Swamp since country music legend Garth Brooks performed in 2019 — the stadium’s first large-scale performance in 25 years after The Rolling Stones in 1994.
Workers began setting up the concert stage early in the week, while locals braced for road closures and traffic.
University Avenue and Stadium Road were flooded with thousands of southern-styled fans donning denim, cowboy hats and boots and baseball caps. It wasn’t too dissimilar to a Saturday football game crowd.
Patrons picked up buy-one-get-one-free cowboy hats and took to the RTS cooling buses to escape the heat before they entered the sauna of a stadium. However, there was no escaping the beaming sun on the east side of the stands.
Zach John King opened the concert Friday around 5:30 p.m. with “Hole In The Wall,” a song off his 2025 EP “Slow Down.” King’s songs about life in the rural south allowed him to connect with the Gainesville audience, despite his early jokes about being a Georgia Bulldogs fan, which were met with boos from the crowd.
The second artist of the night — Watkinsville, Georgia-born Gavin Adcock — had a humorously crass approach to his performance. He entered the stage by throwing a case of beer ahead of him, shotgunning one while others fizzed across the platform.
Adcock was the only musician to have previously performed in Gainesville. His first show was to a crowd of around 600 people.
Thomas Rhett, the main opener of night one, took the stage to a nearly full crowd at his first concert in Gainesville. The crowd filled in the choruses to “Die A Happy Man,” Rhett’s most-streamed song, and sang and danced to all 14 tracks in his set.
As Rhett’s set reached its midway point, the last sliver of sun was disappearing over Section 33. Sitting on the shady west side of the stadium was Halle Pevoroff, a 19-year-old Florida Atlantic University student from Orlando. She had already seen the headlining act twice — once in Tampa, a second time in Miami. She’d left both shows with a face wet and red from crying, she said.
Seeing Wallen before her own teary eyes felt surreal, she said — and sharing the moments with friends only made the memories more special for Pevoroff.
“All I remember is in seventh grade, I was listening to ‘Chasin’ You’ with one of my best friends, Colby, and I Facetime him every time when we're at the concert when that song plays,” she said.
Lucky for her — and for Colby — Wallen played the 2018 track sixth in Friday night’s set.
Half an hour after the expected start time of the evening’s most anticipated set, impatience growing among the fans, Wallen walked out as he usually does — with a local legend at his side.
The crowd roared when the camera panned to former Gators quarterback Tim Tebow, as the pair patted the alligator statue in typical pre-game fashion. On night two, Wallen walked through the tunnel with former Gators football coach and player Steve Spurrier.
At Wallen’s previous show May 9 in Indianapolis, he walked out with Indiana Fever basketball player Caitlin Clark.
Wallen emerged Friday night from a cloud of smoke to kick off his set with “Don’t We.” He rocked a Gainesville Harley Davidson muscle tee, jeans and boots. His orange baseball cap was perhaps a nod both to UF and the University of Tennessee.
The Sneedville, Tennessee, native played songs throughout his discography. He brought out Adcock and King to perform “Up Down” from Wallen’s 2018 debut album “If I Know Me,” and Wallen performed songs like “20 Cigarettes” from his latest album “I’m the Problem,” which turned 1 year old on Saturday.
Wallen celebrated his own birthday on Wednesday, which makes the artist 33. Fans held signs wishing him a happy belated birthday.
The artist’s first appearance in Gainesville saw a 28-song set illuminated by flames, fireworks and light-up bracelets donned by the audience of 70,000 people. Wallen joked he thought his first time in The Swamp would be to witness the Tennessee Volunteers football team lose to the Gators.
“I Won’t Back Down” blared from the speakers before Wallen’s three-song encore. After he retook the stage, fans sang “It’s Great to be a Florida Gator.”
The night concluded with “Whiskey Glasses,” after which Wallen stuck around to sign T-shirts and cowboy boots. All the acts autographed signs and took selfies with fans during their sets.
It’s Wallen’s personable persona that Wendy Vivian found most appealing.
Vivian arrived in a VIP line at 2 p.m. Friday. Others had started lining up as early as 9 a.m.
The 56-year-old had caught Wallen in Miami, too, and was eager to experience his engaging performance for a second time.
“[He was] very relatable when he was on stage, you know what I mean?” she said. “He felt like he brought you in with him.”
Contact Isabel Kraby at ikraby@alligator.org and Brandy Sumner at bsumner@alligator.org. Follow Isabel on X @isabelgkraby.
Brandy Sumner is an anthropology and English junior and this summer's music and performance reporter. This is their first semester working at the Alligator. In their free time they enjoy playing guitar, reading and writing.
Isabel Kraby is a journalism senior at UF and the Summer 2026 editor of The Avenue desk. She has served as both a general assignment reporter and the music and performance reporter for The Avenue. Izzy loves going to concerts, crocheting and practicing guitar in her spare time.
