Last Call for Shorts Weather: The Concerts, Fairs, and Festivals Left Before Fall Takes Over

The Fourth of July Is a Memory. The Coolers Are Still in the Garage.
Labor Day weekend arrives with a certain finality to it.

The kids are back in school. The football schedule has taken over the television. The sun starts checking out before you've finished dinner. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice suggests it might be time to put the folding chairs away.

Ignore that voice for about four more weeks.

Because between now and the first weekend of October, New Mexico is running a State Fair, a chile festival in the Chile Capital of the World, a wine festival on Labor Day weekend, a mariachi celebration on a 19th-century plaza, a piñata festival that goes until midnight, and a southern state fair that stretches into October. El Paso, meanwhile, has quietly assembled the strongest concert calendar in the region — the kind of slate that makes a two-hundred-mile drive look reasonable.

This is the last honest stretch of shorts weather. Here's what's left.

Albuquerque Runs the Show: The State Fair

The New Mexico State Fair takes over Expo New Mexico from September 10 through September 20, and it remains the center of gravity for the entire month.

The Tingley Coliseum lineup this year is better than the usual fair-circuit filler. It opens with Turnpike Troubadours on Friday, September 11, paired with the Chevron PRCA Xtreme Bulls — arguably the strongest country booking in the state this fall. Ian Munsick follows Saturday, September 12, with the second night of Xtreme Bulls.

Then it gets interesting for anyone who owned a CD player in the 1990s. Everclear takes the Tingley stage Thursday, September 17, a booking that landed exactly where it should have. Friday the 18th is currently listed as a concert to be announced alongside the Chevron PRCA Rodeo, so watch the fair's schedule if you're planning that night. And The Warning — three sisters from Monterrey who play louder than most bands twice their size — closes the run Saturday, September 19.

The practical detail worth knowing: concert-and-rodeo tickets include admission to the fair itself. You are not paying twice to eat a turkey leg the size of a fence post.

Albuquerque also has a free outdoor alternative that week. Bands of Enchantment films three free nights at the KiMo Theatre September 16 through 18, then shuts down Central Avenue on Saturday the 19th for a free outdoor music festival running 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., tied to the Route 66 Centennial. Free admission is the correct price for standing outside in September.

Northern New Mexico: Leather, Amps, and a Ranch

Buffalo Thunder is doing the thing casinos do best in September: booking bands your older brother still defends in arguments.

W.A.S.P. arrives Monday, September 14, with KK's Priest, which is roughly as subtle as it sounds. Sawyer Brown plays Friday, September 18, for the country crowd. And if you'll stretch the calendar one day past our cutoff, Gary Allan brings the Ruthless Tour on Friday, October 2 — a genuinely good show for anyone whose Labor Day plans went poorly and who needs a do-over.

The most striking option in the state, though, is not in a casino ballroom. The Blossoms & Bones Ghost Ranch Music Festival runs September 10 through 12 in Abiquiú, and the lineup is not a courtesy booking. Cowboy Junkies open the Thursday welcome night. Violent Femmes and The New Pornographers headline Friday. Sylvan Esso and Arlo Parks close it out Saturday.

Live music, red cliffs, and considerably fewer deep-fried objects than the State Fair. If you have ever wanted to hear a band play in the landscape Georgia O'Keeffe spent decades painting, this is your weekend.

Southern New Mexico Actually Shows Up This Time

For months, the southern half of the state has been the thin section of every concert roundup we've published. Not this time.

Labor Day weekend belongs to Hatch. The Hatch Chile Festival runs September 5 and 6 with free admission — parade, carnival rides, live music, artisan vendors, and roasters turning all day in the village that calls itself the Chile Capital of the World. If you want one photograph that explains New Mexico in September, it's the smoke coming off a roaster drum in Hatch.

The same weekend, Las Cruces pours. The Harvest Wine & Music Festival takes September 5 through 7, noon to 6 p.m. daily, at the Southern New Mexico State Fairgrounds. Three days of New Mexico wine, live music, artisan shopping, and food. It is, if we're honest, a slightly more respectable explanation for daytime drinking than a warm can in a stadium lot. Same outcome. Better optics.

The following weekend, Mesilla does what Mesilla does. The Diez y Seis de Septiembre Fiesta takes the plaza September 12 and 13 with folklórico dancing, mariachi, authentic Mexican food, and a parade. It is one of the oldest continuous celebrations in the state, held on a plaza that has watched considerably stranger things happen than a mariachi group and a taco stand.

Then wine gets a second weekend. The La Viña Harvest Wine Festival runs September 19 and 20 at La Viña Winery in Anthony, noon to 7 p.m., with more than 20 wines available for tasting and a $30 adult admission that includes a souvenir glass.

And Las Cruces gets the last word on the whole season. The Southern New Mexico State Fair and Rodeo celebrates its 60th year September 30 through October 4 — livestock, rodeo, carnival midway, and one final fairground weekend before the weather stops cooperating entirely.

Roswell Keeps It Local

Roswell is not landing an arena tour this month. That was never the deal.

What Roswell has is Piñata Fest, September 11 and 12 at the Cultural Plaza, running from 3 p.m. until midnight. Colorful, loud, local, and the kind of event where you run into four people you owe a phone call.

That same Saturday offers the opposite experience. The Dragonfly Festival runs all day September 12 at Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, free to the public — a considerably calmer way to spend the daylight hours, and a reminder that Bitter Lake is one of the more underrated pieces of public land in southeastern New Mexico.

Downtown's Chile Cheese Festival and Farmers Market is expected back in late September with fresh-roasted green chile, the stew contest, and the pecan pie eating contest. Watch MainStreet Roswell for the confirmed date.

El Paso Brought the Big Names

Here is where the regional math changes.

El Paso's September and early October calendar is the strongest in the entire radius, and it isn't close. The month opens with Karol G playing two nights at Sun Bowl Stadium, September 5 and 6 — a stadium-scale Latin pop event on the same weekend New Mexicans are drinking wine in Las Cruces and eating chile in Hatch.

From there it barely slows down. Godsmack plays Speaking Rock on Sunday, September 6, and it's a free show. The Mars Volta brings the hometown-adjacent return to the Abraham Chavez Theatre on Thursday, September 10. Los Tigres del Norte fill the Don Haskins Center on Friday, September 11. Theory of a Deadman and Sevendust hit the Abraham Chavez on September 15. Alejandro Fernández brings the De Rey a Rey tribute to his father, with Camila Fernández, to the Don Haskins Center on Saturday, September 19. Lady A is booked at Speaking Rock on September 26, alongside the El Paso Film Festival downtown that same weekend.

Then October arrives and El Paso refuses to concede the season. Chayanne brings the Bailemos Otra Vez tour to the Don Haskins Center on Thursday, October 1. And the closer we'd build the whole article around: Usher and Chris Brown at Sun Bowl Stadium on Saturday, October 3, doors at 7 p.m.

A stadium R&B show in the first weekend of October is a fitting way to end the outdoor season. If you're going to give up on shorts, give up loudly.

Lubbock: Three Worth the Drive

We'll keep this short, because the honest answer is that West Texas is thin this month.

Three names clear the bar. Riley Green brings the Cowboy As It Gets tour to United Supermarkets Arena on Saturday, September 12, with Randy Houser and Kashus Culpepper opening — a legitimate arena-country bill. George Lopez plays Buddy Holly Hall on Sunday, September 20, rescheduled from June. And Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas takes the Helen DeVitt Jones Theater on Saturday, September 26, which is the pick of the three for anyone who prefers musicianship to pyrotechnics.

The Panhandle-South Plains Fair also runs September 25 through October 3 in Lubbock, if you want to make a weekend of it.

Don't Sleep on the County Fairs

While the State Fair collects the headlines and the press releases, county-fair season is still working its way across New Mexico.

Socorro County runs September 2 through 6 and Cibola County September 3 through 7, both landing on Labor Day weekend. Later in the month, Grant County goes September 23 through 26 and Otero County September 24 through 27.

These are the fairs where the livestock barn matters more than the midway, where the 4-H kids have been working since spring, and where the rodeo announcer knows half the contestants by their parents' first names.

They don't book Everclear. They were never trying to. But if you want to understand how New Mexico actually spends its Septembers — outside of Albuquerque, outside of a ticketing app — a county fairgrounds on a Saturday afternoon tells you more than any arena will.

Roswell readers, your turn comes next: the Chaves County Fair runs October 5 through 10.

The Honest Bottom Line

You have roughly four weekends left. Spend them accordingly:

Labor Day weekend, September 5–7: Hatch Chile Festival, the Harvest Wine Festival in Las Cruces, or Karol G in El Paso if you want scale over sunshine.

September 11–12: The busiest weekend of the fall. Turnpike Troubadours at the State Fair, Piñata Fest in Roswell, Mesilla's plaza, Violent Femmes at Ghost Ranch, or Riley Green in Lubbock.

September 17–20: Everclear and The Warning at Tingley, Sawyer Brown at Buffalo Thunder, Alejandro Fernández in El Paso, La Viña's wine festival, and the free Bands of Enchantment street festival on Central.

September 26: Alison Krauss in Lubbock, Lady A at Speaking Rock, or the Roswell Chile Cheese Festival.

September 30–October 3: The Southern New Mexico State Fair opens in Las Cruces, and Usher and Chris Brown close the whole season out at the Sun Bowl.

After that, the jackets come out and we all pretend we're fine with it.