It wasn’t just any Fourth of July. It was America’s 250th birthday, and fittingly, Rolling Stone brought its inaugural Stateside festival to Kingston, N.Y. — New York’s first capital and a city steeped in Revolutionary history.
The lineup reflected the occasion. From Vermont headliner Noah Kahan to Austin native Bo Staloch, all 11 artists on the bill were born in the U.S.A., with sounds rooted in folk, Americana, country, indie rock, and soul.
And that patriotic spirit extended well beyond the stages. Scout Motors, the iconic American brand preparing to launch its next generation of all-electric and EREV (extended range electric vehicles) trucks and SUVs, brought its own celebration of music, craftsmanship, and ingenuity.
Maria-Juliana Rojas
As the official automotive sponsor of Stateside, Scout anchored its own corner of Stateside — starting with the Scout Stage — where a steady stream of emerging artists kept festival-goers gathered throughout the day. Hudson Ingram, Derby, Michaela Anne, Calder Allen, and Devon Gilfillian took turns performing for fans lounging on blankets spread across the grassy riverside field, transforming it into an impromptu picnic and one of Stateside’s most inviting destinations.
Close by was “Tailgate Sessions Presented by Scout Motors,” an open-air pavilion where the company elegantly displayed its highly-anticipated off-roader prototypes. There, attendees could view the vehicles up close: the Silo Green Terra, a 4-door pick-up with a bench seat and a 5.5 foot bed, and the 5- or 6-passenger Traveller, an SUV decked out in red, white, and blue patriotic livery. From the outside, both call to mind the rugged classic 1970s International Harvester Scout vehicles, but inside they boast tactile and super-modern tech, including huge touchscreens that complement the buttons, knobs and real door handles.
Maria-Juliana Rojas
After her Scout Stage set, indie-country singer Michaela Anne wandered over and climbed into the driver’s seat of the Terra. “This feels exciting to me, to be in this physical place together, in this beautiful region of New York, not far from the Woodstock scene,” said the singer. A “military kid” who’s lived all over the U.S. (currently in Michigan), she recently released her sixth album, These Are The Days, on her own label, Georgia June Records. “It was such an incredible crowd. And the fact that they are gonna get to see Noah Kahan in such a small space is wild, when on his tour he’s playing, like, Fenway Park!”
Later, when Kahan took the main stage, he opened — as he has throughout his Great Divide tour — with fan favorite “American Cars.”
“Noah Kahan is very much in the same demographic as Scout,” said Kathy Graham, the company’s PR manager. Founded in 2022 to revive the legendary brand with investment from Volkswagen Group, Scout plans to begin rolling out its vehicles to customers in 2028.
“We are proud to be an American company that’s bringing American jobs,” Graham continued. “We’re building our manufacturing plant in South Carolina; our vehicles are designed and engineered in Michigan; and we’ve got a team of people out in Fremont, California, that do a lot of our software engineering. We want to bring well-paying jobs to people who work hard.”
In fact, the original Scouts, made from 1960 until 1981, were work vehicles. “They were trucks, they were SUVs,” Graham explained. “[Its drivers] worked in the field, they were construction people, they hauled their families around. Though [the Traveler and Terra] are modern interpretations, all of our materials and events harken back to those original, agricultural or do-it-yourself roots.”
Maria-Juliana Rojas
To honor that, Scout set up a Field School, an interactive hub designed to look like a retro-cool garage. There folks designed their own complimentary Scout Motors Stateside work shirts, choosing from an array of badges before turning over the button-downs to be custom embroidered. While they waited, fans DIY-ed festival-survival kits, with Scout providing everything from adhesive bandages, safety pins and mini compasses to whistles, insect-deterrent bracelets and coin-sized compressed towels that expanded with cold water.
Rounding out the Scout experience was the chance to pick up some merch from the Scout Supply Spirit of ‘76 collection, a just-launched line of clothing and goods that was sold out of the back of a vintage blue-and-white truck.
“It’s such fun,” said Michaela Anne, eager to trade her performer hat for a fan’s and head to Gigi Perez’s main-stage set. “I hope this is just the beginning of a long run of Stateside. We need more smaller festivals like this.”
