Let's Go Rodeo!
Alabama opens RodeoHouston with hit songs from glory days
Mutton Bustin' is undoubtedly a tough act to follow on opening night of the 2012 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, but legendary Southern rock band Alabama did its best. As 10-year veterans of RodeoHouston, the group knows how to put on a show.
Overhead lights at Reliant Stadium flickered out one by one as the livestock left the field, and after a flurry of fireworks and lasers, the opening notes of the first song rang through the dark stadium: "If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You've Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band)."
For whatever reason, "Song of the South" began with a series of hip gyrations (courtesy of Owen) and ended with a fond reminiscence of his families' truck loyalties.
"Now ladies and gentlemen, we came here tonight for one reason and one reason only. We came here to have a party with y'all tonight," said Randy Owen, the band's guitarist and lead vocalist. At 62, Owen is still graced with a full head of hair, a statement mustache and a spry body adept at kicking and jumping along to the music.
Wearing a personalized Texans jersey and enlivening the crowd with claps and yells, Owen certainly commanded the stage, but bassist Teddy Gentry's fancy fretwork and Jeff Cook's dexterity on both his guitar and electric fiddle didn't go unnoticed.
Bolstered by a five-piece backing band, Alabama dipped into an arsenal of hit songs from the glory days of the '80s throughout its hour-long performance. "Tennessee River" (the single that first brought the band to the top of the country music charts) made the set list, followed by "Dixieland Delight," a tale of love in the backwoods.
For whatever reason, "Song of the South" began with a series of hip gyrations (courtesy of Owen) and ended with a fond reminiscence of his families' truck loyalties. Soon after, the tempo slowed with the love ballad "Feels So Right," then picked up again with "She and I" and "Closer You Get" before a heavy dedication to the veterans and the military men and women still serving overseas with "Angels Among Us."
"Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler)," "My Home's in Alabama" and "Lady Down On Love" rounded out the show, and by the time the closing song — the epic "Mountain Music" — came on, the stadium's crowd had largely thinned.
Still, Owen, Gentry and Cook left the stadium to thunderous applause. Exiting in the bed of a Ford pickup, bathed in a beam of light, Alabama left a longing for simpler times and an appreciation of Southern values.