The Stagecoach Country Music Festival is doing its best to pick up where it left off in 2019.

The three-day event returned to Indio on Friday, April 29, after a two-year hiatus forced by the coronavirus pandemic.

Fans turned out on opening day to hear headliner Thomas Rhett and more than a dozen other stars perform across two large stages and a few smaller performance areas.

They rushed onto the grounds of the Empire Polo Club with lawn chairs as they angled for a spot with a view of the Mane Stage, where the headliners play, the way they did in earlier years. They laid out blankets on the dead grass trampled during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which took place at the venue the prior two weekends.

“We’ve had to wait three years to come,” Monica Reyes, of Arizona, said. “It’s awesome to be back and even though it’s been three years it also feels like we’re picking up right where it left off.”

Others, like Northridge resident Casey Gregg, have made Stagecoach a yearly tradition.

“Every year we bring our mom out here to celebrate Mother’s Day,” Gregg said. “It’s awesome to be here because we had tickets to the original one and it kept getting pushed back but now we’re here.”

Belinda Valerio of Long Beach and her husband bought tickets for the festival during the pandemic but said they were looking forward to attending Stagecoach for the first time.

“We wanted to come not just for the music, but the atmosphere with all the people seemed like a good time,” Valerio said.

Returning attractions at Stagecoach included celebrity chef Guy Fieri doing barbecue demonstrations at his own tent, Guy’s Stagecoach Smokehouse, and a late-night show by producer Diplo.

New features include a 27-foot-tall sculpture called “Mustang,” which also adorned the campgrounds at Coachella, and an equestrian troupe called the Compton Cowboys from a ranch in Compton. Their horses were on display at Yee Haw, a tent that also housed the returning Nikki Lane’s Stage Stop Marketplace.

Stagecoach will be streaming live on YouTube for the first time. Saturday’s top performers include headliner Carrie Underwood, the Brothers Osborne and Lee Brice and Sunday will feature headliner Luke Combs, the Black Crowes and Smokey Robinson.

Concert promoter Goldenvoice, which also produces Coachella, originally had COVID-19 vaccine requirements for both festivals but dropped them in February after the state and Riverside County had stopped requiring masks, testing and vaccinations for large events.

Although reported COVID-19 cases are on the rise in Riverside County and much of California and the U.S., few people wore masks at the festival’s opening day.

The last time the festivals were held was April 2019. They were all set to go in 2020, but the rise of COVID-19 pushed California into lockdown in March of that year and canceled the festivals. Goldenvoice initially hoped to hold the festivals in the fall of 2020, and then to return in April 2021, but those attempts ended in postponements.

“It’s been two years since we booked this show and it’s finally here,” performer Ryan Hurd told the crowd during his Mane Stage set Friday afternoon.

The last two Stagecoach festivals before the pandemic were touched by tragedy. The 2018 festival was preceded by the mass shooting at Route 91 Harvest, a festival in Las Vegas. And another mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Agoura Hills preceded the 2019 festival.

Survivors from both shootings met up at Stagecoach, and there will be a Route 91 reunion near the Stagecoach Ferris wheel at 3 p.m. Saturday, as there was in 2019, according to Julie Craig, a Route 91 survivor and a Stagecoach vendor.

“It was real rough,” the Norco resident said of Stagecoach’s 2020 cancellation. Not only did it hit her livelihood, it cut her off from the emotional support the festival provided.

She is back this year with a booth selling clothing and handmade items at her booth near the Compton Cowboys’ horse pen. Her merchandise includes “rope wreaths” made with loops of rope and featuring upbeat messages such as, “You are the moon to my shine.”

Her T-shirts and baseball caps are emblazoned with “Country Stronger,” an update on “Country Strong,” a phrase used by Route 91 survivors.

Friday’s festivalgoers had to contend with bright sunlight and temperatures in the low 90s. The night before there had been high winds, according to Craig.

She expects business to be brisk.

“I’ve noticed since COVID my shows have all been up. People are just excited to get out again and spend. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

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