HUNTER – More than 40,000 people attended the second annual Taste of Country Music Festival at Hunter Mountain Resort in Hunter, NY. Fans came from all over New York State and beyond to see country stars like Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, Brantley Gilbert and Hank Williams, Jr. for the event on June 13-15, 2014. In total there were 17 performers.

“The festival is awesome,” said Brett McElduff at the start of the event on Friday.

When asked what performance he was most looking forward to he said, “Brad Paisley, he is going to shred on the guitar.”

Billie McElduff, another attendee, said, “Dierks Bentley is going to be phenomenal and Gwen Sebastian was really good.”

Her friend, Mary Margaret, was excited to be at the event and said, “I'm ready to get weird.”

Sebastian started off the event with her performance on the Ram Guts & Glory stage. She was followed by Blackjack Billy, a band on the rise that is most well-known for its song, “Booze Cruise.”

Said lead singer of Blackjack Billy, Noll Billings when introducing a song, “I lie about a lot of things, but not today, not about that song.”

He and the rest of the band energized the crowd and concluded with a medley of popular songs.

“Y'all are so much fun.. we're going to invite ourselves back out for sure,” he said towards the end of the act.

The crowd was also blown away by the performances of Eric Paslay and then Brantley Gilbert, who shook the stage with his powerhouse performance and Southern gentleman ways.

By request Gilbert played a few of his older, top-charting songs. As a prelude to his song “My Kind of Crazy,” He asked the crowd, “Ladies, are you crazy? Well it's ok... as long as it's the good kind.”

Later on he pumped up the energy by saying, “It's a good thing there ain't a roof out here because we're about to tear it off...”

The fun continued as Gilbert played some of his most popular songs and broke them up with lines like, “Ladies, there's been a time you've had to have a bad boy in your life.”

All of the artists gave interviews either before or after their performances.