Despite having one of the hottest country albums of the moment and several top-charting singles, new Nashville darlings Lady Antebellum suffered one of the cruelest fates at RodeoHouston in Reliant Stadium on Monday Night.
Audience indifference.
Unlike other typical music showcases —the famed South by Southwest in Austin, for example — where the newest bands generate the most buzz and biggest crowds, Houston rodeo fans prefer their country acts long in the tooth and with a resume of several dozen No. 1 singles before it's worth their while to stay up late on a school night.
(Strangely, this tenure rule only applies to country acts. Untested rock, hip-hop and especially pop acts like Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus or Hilary Duff pack RodeoHouston like it's Disneyland.)
It's the only way to explain how a middling Toby Keith could sleep-walk his way through last Friday's performance and get cheers like he was a returning king while Lady Antebellum's Charles Kelly, Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood couldn't seem to catch fire despite a slick 13-song set show, a spring break crowd and even a John Mellancamp cover.
Beginning with the "yeah, yeah, yeah!" audience sing-along party starter, "Stars Tonight," from recent sophomore release, "Need You Now," Lady Antebellum fooled the crowd on hand ( the announced audience was approximately 61,000, but appeared to be less crowded than that) by offering an adult-contemporary, soft rock program masked in Nashville gift wrap.
"Perfect Day," opened with the same Celtic-influenced electric guitar chords used by rocker Rod Stewart on his rendering of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young," back in 1988. Haywood delivered a bit of Led Zeppelin crunch to open "Our Kind of Love," and he and Scott shared the seat in front of a baby grand and offered backing support for Kelly's pop balladry on "Hello World."
If anything, Lady Antebellum functions as two different bands: When Kelly took the lead on the jaunty, rhythm-driven "Love Don't Live Here," or a cover of Mellencamp's "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A," they are a harmonizing, easy rock trio emulating Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles.
Strangely, it's only on the Grammy-winning, chart-topping hit singles like "Need You Know," and "American Honey," where the instruments strings get looser, the guitar picks turn to slide bars and Scott's, sexy hiccup morphs Lady Antebellum into the new toast of Music Row.
That full-on country was kept to a minimum for the hits, however. The rest of their hour-plus set was closer to pop rock.
Perhaps next time the rodeo should market Lady Antebellum as such, at least until they have a few dozen more hits and can draw Houston's country crowd out on a weeknight.
