Asher on Aspen: Luke Combs, Marcus King close out JAS Labor Day Experience

The JAS Labor Day Experience is Aspen’s unofficial curtain call of the season — summer’s final hurrah before the tourists clear out, the locals retreat into their caves, and the town limps into shoulder season with a collective hangover. Every year, it’s a guaranteed weekend of fun, music, and chaos — a tradition that locals and visitors look forward to all year. Snowmass Town Park is the stage for the whole grand spectacle, and if you’ve never seen it, imagine a sprawling field of 10,000 rowdy music lovers framed against the towering ridges of the Elk Mountains.

By the time I rolled into the gates on Sunday afternoon, Marcus King Band had already seized the stage. His voice hit me before the security wand did: a raspy, soulful bellow that belonged as much in a gospel tent revival as on a blues-rock stage. He looked every inch the Southern bluesman. He wore a taco-shaped cowboy hat, lamb chops flaring from his cheeks, turquoise rings glinting under the lights, a brown leather vest over Wrangler denim, and tattoos crawling across his hands as he worked the guitar.

The crowd was hooked from the first note. “Honky Tonk Hell” had everyone tapping their feet and nodding along, beers in hand, soaking in every riff. By “Hard Working Man,” I was moving with them — helpless against the groove and helpless against his voice, which drilled into my spine and cut straight to the bone. And when he crooned “Wildflowers and Wine,” it hit me with a quiet, overwhelming beauty that made the whole moment feel alive, leaving me caught somewhere between awe and pure, unshakable joy.

Then came Luke.

Luke Combs hit the stage just as the sun was bleeding pink and orange across the valley. Perfect timing. They rolled out a runway, so he could charge into the audience like a bearded bull in a Bass Pro Shops shirt, grinning wide and drinking in the roar. I’d seen him before, down at Stagecoach — a faraway speck on a monster stage in the desert — but this was different. This was closer, more intimate, like having a prizefighter swing right past you instead of staring at him through pay-per-view.

He opened with “Back in the Saddle,” his voice round and booming, like a cannonball coated in honey. The crowd bellowed back every word, and suddenly summer felt alive again. When he tore into “Hurricane,” the whole field shook. You could see couples clutching each other, reliving whatever storm had torn through their lives when that song first hit the radio. “When It Rains It Pours” was pure, beer-can ecstasy — everybody screaming the chorus with the kind of reckless glee that only happens when you know Monday is coming and you don’t give a damn.

“She Got the Best of Me” hit like a gut punch — raw, aching, delivered with the kind of sincerity that made even the drunkest frat boy stare down at his boots for a second. And “Beautiful Crazy”? Forget it. The field went soft. Women swooned. Grown men got misty-eyed. I looked over at one point, and there he was: Kevin Costner, yes, that Kevin Costner, crooning along with the chorus, like some cowboy prophet descending from the silver screen. Only in Aspen does the star of “Yellowstone” show up in your peripheral vision, swaying and mouthing lyrics about heartbreak with a beer in his hand.

By the time Combs closed with Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” the whole park was suspended in a kind of collective reflection. He told us it was one of the first songs he’d ever learned on guitar back in college, and you could hear it: the reverence, the intimacy, the sense that we’d all stumbled into a campfire confession.

And then it was over. Just like that. The final note hung in the thin mountain air, the lights flickered off, and suddenly we were standing in September. The leaves are already turning yellow at the edges, and the air is sharp with the promise of snow. Where did summer go? It vanished somewhere between Marcus King’s lamb chops and Luke Combs’ roaring voice, caught between the mountains and the stars above Snowmass, a fleeting memory of warmth and light before the long season of cold.