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Nashville is where country-music dreams are made and also where most of them die.

For those lucky and talented enough to live the dream, Montreal has become a part of it.

The third annual Lasso Montréal Festival was held Friday and Saturday with country fans packing Parc Jean-Drapeau for non-stop music from 2 until 11 p.m. both days.

The headliners were Eric Church on Friday and Sam Hunt on Saturday — two of country’s biggest stars. There were eight other performers both days on each of the two massive side-by-side main stages, along with five other performers each day on a third smaller stage.

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The two-day pass cost $240, which in today’s concert market is a bargain considering the amount of entertainment that included other big country stars like Dustin Lynch, Tyler Hubbard, Megan Moroney, Brett Young, Kip Moore and Chayce Beckham, who was the winner of the popular American Idol TV singing competition in 2021.

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There were also up-and-coming stars like MacKenzie Porter, who grew up in a musical family on a ranch in Medicine Hat, Alta. Porter started taking music lessons at age 4, learning to play the guitar, violin and piano, and fell in love with country music while listening to it in her father’s truck. She was inspired by The Chicks and fellow Canadian Shania Twain.

In 2013, Porter sent a handful of songs to Sony Music Publishing in Canada and landed a deal. A year later, she moved to Nashville to write songs and chase her dream. Four years ago, that dream was starting to fade. She wondered how she was going to keep paying her bills when she did a blind audition — along with several other women — putting her vocals on a Lynch song titled Thinking ‘Bout You. Lynch chose Porter for the duet, which was released in 2021 and went to No. 1 on the country charts. The song has been downloaded more than 210 million times on Spotify and the video has been watched more than 22 million times on YouTube.

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Porter is now touring to promote her new 19-track album titled Nobody’s Born With a Broken Heart, including the hit song Pickup, which earned her a 2023 CMT Music Awards nomination for Breakthrough Female Video of the Year. Porter will be co-hosting this year’s CCMA Awards on Sept. 14 at Rogers Place in Edmonton alongside American country star Thomas Rhett.

At 5-foot-4, Porter is a small woman with a big voice and a ton of talent, which was on full display during her Lasso performance Saturday afternoon. She opened with her solo version of Thinking ‘Bout You and also paid tribute to The Chicks and Twain by playing Cowboy Take Me Away and Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under.

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“I think country music is becoming so mainstream now and it’s cool to see it in big cities and see people who normally wouldn’t have come to a country festival and now loving it and are loving the genre,” Porter said in the media tent shortly before her performance.

Lasso continues to put Montreal on the country-music map.

Church played for the first time in Montreal after cancelling a show at the Bell Centre in March of 2017 because of “logistical issues.”

Church — the coolest man in country music — grew up in North Carolina listening to all kinds of “funky music,” including rock, country and his father’s favourite, Motown. All those vibes are included in his unique style of country with a band that includes saxophone, trumpet and trombone players, along with three soulful backup singers. Church is like the Bruce Springsteen of country music and he closed his set with his big hit Springsteen, which isn’t actually about “The Boss” of rock and roll. Instead, the song reflects the magic of first love and the freedom of youth. Church has said the lyrics were based on his experience attending a concert in his younger days with a romantic interest, but added it wasn’t a Springsteen concert.

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The song is fantastic and so was Church at Lasso.

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“I like Montreal quite a bit right now,” Church said while looking out at the big crowd from behind the sunglasses he always wears on stage so his contact lenses won’t dry up under the bright lights. “Thank you for having me up here.”

Church was planning to spend a couple more days in Montreal checking out the bar scene with “A Drink in My Hand” and getting to know the city better. He also said he will come back.

Other Lasso highlights included Hunt and Lynch, who played hit after hit with fans singing along, which is really impressive since there isn’t a major country-music radio station in Montreal. Hunt’s set included Take Your Time, which helped put him on the road to stardom 10 years ago with his debut album, Montevallo, after he had been writing songs in Nashville for other country stars, including Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban. Lynch paid tribute to his grandparents, who celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary this year, by playing his hit song Cowboys and Angels, which he wrote about their love story.

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Brett Young, a hit-maker when it comes to country love songs and breakup songs, had couples up slow-dancing in a light rain Saturday evening when he sang the beautiful ballad In Case You Didn’t Know. Josh Ross, who is from Burlington, Ont., and is best known for hits like First Taste of Gone and On a Different Night, played an awesome country version of the Goo Goo Dolls song Iris. Ross worked in construction before moving to Nashville in 2019 to chase his country dream.

Larry Fleet poured concrete for a living and played at bars in Tennessee for 15 years before his Nashville dream started to come true when he won the Real Country TV singing competition in 2018 and then released his first big hit, Where I Find God, which he performed Friday afternoon as part of a very impressive set.

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If there were doors on Parc Jean-Drapeau, The War and Treaty husband-and-wife duo of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter would have blown them off with their mix of “gospel and Nashville” when they played their big hit Are You Ready To Love Me.

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For country fans who were at Parc Jean-Drapeau, there was a lot to love about Lasso.

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