10 Undercard Acts You Shouldn't Sleep On

Kaitlin Butts came to country out of musical theater, and her records still think like stage shows. Roadrunner! (2024) reworked Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! across 17 tracks. Hello, Honky Tonk, out October 30, 2026, takes its shape from the film version of Chicago: each song is a character you might run into at a bar on a night out, and Lainey Wilson narrates the spoken-word intro. Before either came What Else Can She Do (2022), an album about addiction and generational trauma. The Tulsa-born singer made CMT's Next Women of Country class for 2025 and joined the Opry's Next Stage the same year. Concept albums are a hard thing to carry onto a daytime festival stage; she's had about a decade of Oklahoma and Texas rooms to work out how.

Wade Forster was raised on a cattle station in the Queensland outback, still works it, and rode as a professional rodeo cowboy before music took over. He didn't start playing until 2017, on a $50 guitar bought off Facebook Marketplace. His American audience came through Texas dancehalls rather than Nashville: a 15-show first headline run in September 2025, arena dates supporting Treaty Oak Revival, and a duet with that band, "Can of Worms." At home, the January 2026 Golden Guitar Awards in Tamworth gave him both New Talent and Male Artist of the Year. "Anytime, Anywhere, Antoinette," from his third album, The Aftermath, has passed 20 million streams, and he made his Grand Ole Opry debut on September 30.

This is the Friday set for anyone who'd rather hear folk-leaning songwriting than radio country. The Salyersville, Kentucky songwriter was mostly a name on viral clips until April 2025, when Zach Bryan released a run of unreleased acoustic songs with him; that September Bryan put him on the bill at his Michigan Stadium show with John Mayer and Ryan Bingham. Slone's debut, Thinking Too Much, dropped in late October 2025 with about a day's notice: 16 songs, and a No. 2 spot on iTunes behind Morgan Wallen, per Whiskey Riff. A live version and a fast-selling headline tour followed in March 2026, then the EP Long Life Living for a Lover Boy that October. Holler compares him to Noah Kahan and Lizzie McAlpine more than to anyone on country radio.

This Oklahoma City five-piece came up on the Red Dirt club circuit, and its luck has been mixed. The debut, Castle Rock, was due in March 2020 with a release party the same night the Thunder-Jazz game was called off as Covid hit; it sat on a shelf for more than a year. American Grin followed in 2025, with "Me and the Bottle (Hungover You)" as the song they save for the end of the set. Play Boy, 14 songs released September 18, 2026 on Leo33, draws on Scott's Pentecostal upbringing, his years as a preacher-in-training and the crisis of faith after, with titles like "Willie, Waylon & Waltzes" and "If Heaven Had A Honky Tonk." In 2026 they made their Opry debut and opened on Morgan Wallen's Still The Problem Tour.

Glenn Awong, the upcountry Maui singer who records as Maoli, spent nearly 15 years as an island-pop and roots-reggae draw across Polynesia and the West Coast, with nine independent albums and, by his own count, more streams than any other artist in Hawaii. Country was underneath it the whole time: his grandfather was a cowboy and farmer, he grew up on George Strait, Alan Jackson, Willie Nelson and George Jones, and he'll remind you that Hawaii's cowboy history goes back to the late 1700s. His cover of Brett Young's "Mercy" has passed 18 million Spotify streams, and his Nashville records, Last Sip of Summer and MMO3, were made with Dann and David Huff. Dann Huff also produced Friday headliner Riley Green's That's Just Me, so this booking is less of a stretch than the genre tag suggests.

Sertanejo is Brazil's country music, and Gustavo Mioto has been one of its steadier hitmakers for about a decade. Born in 1997 in Votuporanga, São Paulo, he recorded his first EP at 15 and broke through nationally in the mid-2010s with "Solitário" and "Impressionando os Anjos." Brazilian paper O Povo reported "Com ou Sem Mim" as the most-listened song of 2020, ahead of tracks by Marília Mendonça and Gusttavo Lima. He writes his own songs, mostly about love and heartbreak, and has recorded with Anitta and Henrique & Juliano. In a 2023 interview he called sertanejo too formulaic, named American country music among his main references, and said the big dream was an international career. An Indio booking is a step in that direction, and the only sertanejo set on the bill.

The Arkansas singer-songwriter wears his George Strait influence openly: "The Dress," on his 16-track debut Dustpiles, grew out of Strait's "The Chair." The album came out July 17, 2026 on Music Soup/Darkroom Records, when he was 19, and re-recorded "Everything Under the Sun," a song he wrote at 16, with full production. Release day went badly. He was hospitalized in Montana with sepsis, which wiped out the album release show, a set at Under the Big Sky and what was supposed to be his Grand Ole Opry debut. By late October he was back out on the Dustpiles World Tour, with banjo and pedal steel in the band and his dad running the merch table.

Frankie Cassidy and Nathan Ross met as students at Montana State in Bozeman and started out playing in dorm rooms. What they make is harmony-heavy, stripped-down folk, the only act on the 2027 bill tagged that way. "Fool's Gold" took off in late 2025, passed 130 million streams and reached No. 3 on the AAA radio chart; Arista signed them, and Billboard named them its Chartbreaker for March 2026. Their debut album, Pictures of You, arrived July 31, 2026, 14 songs with Ryan Hadlock and Sam Westhoff among the producers, and the tour behind it sold out. They've also opened for Dylan Gossett, who plays Friday, so anyone who likes one has a reason to try the other.

Dalton Davis's own site calls his sound outlaw country with soul, and his background explains both halves. Born in Gastonia, North Carolina, he was adopted by touring gospel artists and learned to record from hip-hop engineers, then worked the sound out in Chattanooga before moving to Nashville. MCA/Republic signed him in late 2025, and in January 2026 he sang "Fireproof," a song Billy Bob Thornton co-wrote with Ronnie Bowman and Mark Collie, on the second volume of the Landman soundtrack. He has opened for Midland, Dwight Yoakam, Ashley McBryde and Gary Allan, and says Midland and Yoakam are where he learned how to carry himself on stage. The newest release is an October 2026 duet with Jenna Paulette, "Corralin' a Cowgirl."

Tyler Nance is a fourth-generation Missouri farmer who spent time as a traveling welder living in a 34-foot camper, and didn't pick up a guitar until he was 19 or 20, learning on Zach Bryan's "God Speed." His grandmother had already given him Hank Williams, Keith Whitley and Conway Twitty. "Keeps Me Sane" spread through TikTok in 2025 and reached the Top 40 of Billboard's Hot Country Songs. At the Nashville Palace release show for his album Midwest Memoir in March 2026, he worked harmonica into "Hell If I Know" and sent the band offstage to play "Beer Tabs," "Liza Ann" and "Sorrows" with a single guitarist, a useful preview of how flexible his set can be.