Night 1 Photo Gallery: CMA Fest’s Nissan Stadium With Dierks Bentley, Garth Brooks, Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan & More

Night 1 Photo Gallery: CMA Fest’s Nissan Stadium With Dierks Bentley, Garth Brooks, Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan & More

More than 50,000 fans packed Nissan Stadium for Night 1 of CMA Fest to see performances by Brett Eldredge, Cole Swindell, Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert and Luke Bryan.

But the crowd also got a couple of surprises: both Garth Brooks and Lauren Alaina made unannounced visits to the stage. Garth treated fans to a set of some of his biggest hits, including “The Thunder Rolls,” “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” “The River” and “Friends in Low Places,” while Lauren joined Cole onstage to sing “Middle of a Memory.”

Other highlights from the evening included crowd-favorites “Drunk on a Plane” by Dierks; “Vice” and “Automatic” by Miranda; and Luke closing the evening with a set that featured “That’s My Kind of Night” and “Country Girl (Shake It for Me).”

Check out our photo gallery from Night 1 at Nissan Stadium.

photos by Jason Simanek

Nash NOtes

Driver’s Den

Driver’s Den

Miranda Lambert fans in Atlanta got more than they bargained for at her concert on Saturday night (Jan. 20), when the singer and her band burst into a high-energy cover of the Joe Walsh classic “Rocky Mountain Way.” Lambert struts the stage and does the heavy song justice with a high-octane vocal performance, but the…