What a weekend!

It was a weekend we'll never forget.

The Boys from Oklahoma four-day concert event at a sold-out Boone Pickens Stadium was a defining moment, not just for Oklahoma State University, but for Red Dirt Music as a whole.

Headlined by Cross Canadian Ragweed and Turnpike Troubadours and featuring Jason Boland and the Stragglers, The Great Divide and Stoney LaRue, the event included additional on-stage performances from special guests Dierks Bentley, Wyatt Flores, Parker McCollum and more. It was a who's-who of Red Dirt Country Music and boy, did it deliver.

At the very core of the event was the reunion of Cross Canadian Ragweed, a signature band within the genre that made its name playing the local spots in Stillwater from the late 1990s through about 2009. After an extended run as the unofficial soundtrack to OSU and Stillwater, Ragweed broke up and hadn't headlined a show together for 16 years.

The impact Ragweed had on Stillwater during its heyday and its influence on ensuing Red Dirt stars such as Turnpike Troubadours and Wyatt Flores is immense, so when Ragweed announced its return, the supporting acts filled out the rest of the lineup to perfection and a monster of an event was born.

Nearly 180,000 tickets were sold during a pre-sale event, making it the largest ticketed event in the history of the state of Oklahoma. That number doesn't even count the additional 90,000 people who never got past the queue to reach the ticketing website before the event sold out.

More than 200,000 people descended on Stillwater for a festival atmosphere that included The Boys from Oklahoma event, plus additional artists performing in venues all over town, including at "The Midway" – an area just outside the stadium that featured live music, food, merchandise and more. Every hotel was full. Every RV Park was full. Every VRBO was full. People were everywhere and the town was electric.

But there were questions.

Four sold-out stadium shows on consecutive nights? That kind of scale didn't even seem possible for Red Dirt Country acts. None of the bands involved had ever been showcased on that level.

Did Oklahoma State and Stillwater have the infrastructure to host an event of that scale and was Boone Pickens Stadium even viable as a concert venue? Since coming to its current configuration in 2009, the stadium had not hosted a concert of any size, much less the largest one in the history of the state. OSU and Stillwater were proven commodities in terms of hosting an outsized Homecoming event every year and for hosting top-level college football games, but this seemed like something that would stretch the existing infrastructure to the limit.

The answers to all those questions were a resounding yes and the event felt like both a celebration and validation of Red Dirt Country and of the capabilities of Stillwater and Oklahoma State to host major events beyond their typical scope.

Interestingly, only about 30 percent of all tickets sold went to people with existing ties to OSU, but what those people found when they arrived were friendly hosts, a well-prepared city and an outstanding concert venue, both in terms of acoustics and amenities.

There was no damage done to the stadium stemming from the event, nor was there any damage to campus landscaping. There were hardly any reports of unruly behavior.

The bands passed the test.

Boone Pickens Stadium passed the test.

Stillwater and Oklahoma State passed the test.

And because of that, The Boys from Oklahoma will go down as a defining moment.

We'll never forget it.

Oklahoma State University Athletics

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