“This is pretty cool, huh? How ‘bout this?”

How about this, indeed. The question was posed by Red Clay Strays frontman Brandon Coleman a few songs into the band’s set Thursday night in Orange Beach. The full-throated answer came from a capacity crowd at the Wharf Amphitheater.

The Strays, a band that formed in Mobile around 2017, released a major-label album titled “Made By These Moments” in 2024. Thursday’s show marked the start of one of the biggest moments a band could have: The first night in a tripleheader at the biggest concert venue in its home region, literally a few steps from some of the bars and restaurants where the group started paying its dues.

“This is the biggest show we’ve ever played that’s our show,” Coleman said. “It’s pretty incredible. There’s 10,000 of y’all here tonight. It just makes it that much more special, that we got our start down here in Orange Beach. We played everywhere there is to play, right there in the Wharf, starting with The Hot Spot, Intracoastal, [the] Daquiri Bar, then graduated from there and went on to the Flora-Bama and played a good while over there … It just feels good to be home, and it feels good to be here. Never in our wildest dreams, man, it’s pretty crazy.”

The exhilaration of a rock-star dream coming true was a theme throughout the night. For this three-night stand, the Strays brought a whole slate of Alabama acts. Thursday’s bill featured Justin Jeansonne of Mobile and Muscadine Bloodline, another group formed in Mobile. (Friday’s show was to be another all-Alabama night, featuring Laurie Anne Armour and Muscadine Bloodline. Saturday’s lineup includes Mobile-area songwriter Abe Partridge plus two groups not from Alabama: Band of Horses and The Revivalists.)

Jeansonne, who thanked the headliners for providing “an opportunity to share some of my stories with y’all,” brought a distinctive voice to the show, bolstered by an interesting band that featured guitar, keyboards and harmonica gunslinger Dayton Olson. This allowed Jeansonne to range from swampy blues to dry western twang. And if the latter seemed to reflect the influence of Willie Nelson, that was probably no illusion: Later in the night the Strays brought Jeansonne back to the stage for a rendition of “Seven Spanish Angels” that many doubtless will remember as a highlight.

For Charlie Muncaster and Gary Stanton of Muscadine Bloodline, as for the Strays, the show was a homecoming.

“I came to my first concert at the Wharf when I was 17 years old, I saw the Black Crowes and I was sitting about right there in this pit,” said Stanton, pointing at a spot in front of the stage. “If you’d have told Charlie and I when we were 17 years old that we’d get to play the Wharf Amphitheater one day, we’d have thought you were being outside your mind. We’re thankful for the grace of God we got to be here tonight.”

Muscadine Bloodline, like the Strays, has broken out to national notice in recent years, and the two acts’ music pairs well. Where the Strays are a roots-rock group that draws on gospel and Southern rock, Muscadine Bloodline’s sound is more tightly focused on energetic guitar-driven honky-tonk country. Muncaster and Stanton also delight in referencing the geography of southwest Alabama in their lyrics.

“We’ve been waiting for this night for a really long time,” Muncaster told the crowd. “Growing up in Mobile, Alabama, we got a couple of guitars when we were young. And we really didn’t know that it was even possible to pursue music as a [career]. But on the back of you guys … you’ve allowed us to let our dreams come true every single time we come out on this stage.”

The Red Clay Strays made a grand arc of their two-hour allotment, opening with the twangy, driving “Killin’ Time,” the slinky “Stone’s Throw” and the lighter boogie of “She’s No Good.” Then they delved into the more meditative, gospel-drenched portion of their catalog before ramping things up to a grand finale, with an encore that included “God Does” and the anthemic “I Just Want To Be Loved.”

Somewhere in there, Coleman took a tongue-in-cheek shot at attempts to pigeonhole the band.

“A lot of people, though, they say we play country music, and I disagree,” he said. “We are country people and we’re from the South. We do not play country music, we play more rock and roll than anything else. So here’s another country song for you.”

It was easy to joke, on a night when all the dues were paying off.

“We used to drive an hour and a half to get here, twice a week, and play four hours a day, everywhere around here,” said guitarist Drew Nix. “Now we’re here, playing in front of y’all. Absolutely nuts.”

“I’m not used to 10,000 people singing our songs,” said Coleman. “Pretty cool.”

“Man, this is cool,” said Coleman. “Super, super thankful, man. Grateful, thankful. Around 2017, 2018, we had just played a show over there at The Intracoastal, and Chris Stapleton was here playing a show. And we couldn’t afford tickets, but you can walk all the way up, if you didn’t know this, you can walk all the way up to those back bleachers before they stop you. So we walked all the way down to the very back, behind the bleachers, and listened to the show, man.

“And now this,” he said. “This is wild.”