RodeoHouston 2018

He said what about The Astrodome? Garth Brooks talks Rodeo and Houston

Garth Brooks poses for selfie with fans to announce RodeoHouston appearances

Garth Brooks is a master of warming up the crowd before a RodeoHouston show.

Photo courtesy of RodeoHouston

Garth Brooks appears downright jolly as he courts the Houston media February 27, hours before his first Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo performance since 1993. Seeming only slightly less pumped to be answering questions than he is singing in concert, he notes that his two Astrodome shows in the early ’90s pushed him towards adopting wireless microphones onstage, and, personally, represented huge strides toward following in George Strait’s footsteps.

RodeoHouston, Brooks says, is “a place of great history for us...it’s the reason why we started.”

If anyone can get away with the royal “we,” it’s probably Brooks, now 56. The reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year, he has sold upwards of 148 million albums in the U.S., and 6.1 million seats on his recently concluded Garth Brooks World Tour, which began with 11 straight sellouts in Chicago.

The morning after the first show of his June-July 2015 stand at Toyota Center, Brooks says, the phone rang with an offer to come back to RodeoHouston. Of the heavy promotion he’s done this week, he jokes, “they’ve been working us like a rented mule since we got here.”

His groundbreaking turn as the first entertainer on the the rodeo’s new high-tech star-shaped stage wasn’t lost on him either. “We don’t want to push every button,” says Brooks, noting he expects his show to be much different when he returns to close the season on March 18.

Before heading off to sound check, he took the time to meet individually with a handful of local reporters, including CultureMap.

CultureMap: What do you like to do in Houston if you have any time to kill?

Garth Brooks: Oh, it’s just a fun place. It’s a great place to come here to get, you know, your clothes. It’s a great place to come because you’ve got so many choices. But my favorite thing is still hanging out with my buddies. My brother lived down here for a while; he’s back up in Tulsa. But still, all the relationships from there. It’s just the people.

CM: What do you remember about your days here playing the honky-tonk circuit?

GB: It was fun, man. I remember coming here. Clint Black was out of here. When we first started Clint just cast this shadow, man. No matter how hard you worked, Clint was the guy. His family came out; I remember seeing them, hugging them, which made me feel really good.

We played a little place, I almost want to call it the Library, but it wasn’t. It was a club. We had a great time. There was a dancehall. And here comes The Woodlands, with Reba. And then Compaq. And then before Compaq, it might have been...I can’t remember the name.

CM: The Summit.

GB: Summit. Yeah. So it was the Summit before the Compaq [now Lakewood Church]. And in between those you’d play the livestock show. So it was fun. This has always been a place that I’m not from but has treated me like I’m from here, if that makes any sense. They’ve always supported me and treated me like a hometown guy and made me feel good.

CM: What do you think about when you look over and see the Astrodome over there?

GB: What about it? It’s cool? Have you ever been in the Superdome?

CM: No.

GB: It’s the same thing, man. Because they were the new kind of big structures at that time, so it was neat to get to play there. I love to say that I played there.

I’ll tell you this from just rehearsal right here — this place is amazing. This is a lot different. The Astrodome, if you said [sings] ‘Oh say can you see…’ and before you got to the end of it you heard ‘oh say can you see…’ The sound here is phenomenal. Loved playing over there; really going to love playing over [here].

CM: One music question: Is it tough to decide which song to play last?

GB: It’s not hard for me, because “The Dance” has always been that space for me. It would be like going to see Strait, and not hearing “The Cowboy Rides Away.”

Movie Review

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck square off in Netflix crime thriller The Rip

Photo by Claire Folger/Netflix

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in The Rip.

For as closely tied together as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are, it might come as a surprise how few times they’ve led a movie together. They’ve appeared alongside each other in Good Will Hunting, The Last Duel, and Air, but the only time they were on equal footing in a story was Kevin Smith’s Dogma. So the fact that they are the two true stars of the new Netflix movie The Rip makes it a rare opportunity for the longtime friends to square off against each other.

Damon and Affleck play Lt. Dane Dumars and Detective Sgt. J.D Byrne, respectively, the two highest ranking members of a Miami police department squad that specializes in drug and drug money raids. A tragedy to begin the film already has the team — which includes Detectives Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor), and Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandina Moreno) — on edge, with the FBI and DEA breathing down their neck.

Going off a tip, Dumars gathers the team to raid a house in nearby Hialeah that is supposed to have a stash of a relatively small amount of money. But when they get to the house occupied only by Desiree Molina (Sasha Calle), they discover close to $20 million. The team, required by law to count the money on site, must not only fight the urge to skim a little off the top for themselves, but also worry about the Cartel and other agencies that might want a slice of the pie.

Written and directed by Joe Carnahan, the film is a surprisingly effective crime thriller made even better by its high-quality cast, which also includes Kyle Chandler as a DEA agent. The story is designed for the audience to not know who’s trustworthy until the last possible second, and the various twists and turns it takes are well done, with barely a hint of narrative cheating.

Taking place entirely at night, the mood is set right from the start, with the only surprise being that Carnahan didn’t add in rain for extra effect. He keeps things tense with a number of subtle elements, including having the house located in a seemingly deserted cul-de-sac. This allows for the characters to remain on high alert at all times, with anything out of the ordinary — an unexpected noise, a flashing light, etc. — adding to the stress of the situation.

The only element that could have used a bit more of a punch-up is the characterization. The story is set up to cast suspicion on almost everybody, making it tougher to understand exactly what type of person each of them is. As the two leads, more time is spent with Dumars and Byrne, leaving everyone else with slightly underwhelming arcs. It’s to the credit of the actors that everyone else below Damon and Affleck is still compelling.

Damon and Affleck play their sometimes friendly, sometimes adversarial roles well, showing an ease together that’s a result of their friendship and the acting skills they’ve honed over 30+ years. Taylor, an Oscar hopeful for One Battle After Another, and Oscar nominee/Emmy winner Yeun have a pedigree that elevates their supporting roles. Chandler, Moreno, and Calle each get just enough to demonstrate why they were cast in their respective roles.

Damon and Affleck have had their individual ups and downs throughout their careers, but when they choose to work together, the results are usually good-to-great, as they are in The Rip. It’s a different take on a crime thriller that features a story that will keep viewers guessing until the very end.

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The Rip is now streaming on Netflix.

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