Brooks & Dunn Review

Country legends Brooks & Dunn take RodeoHouston to the '90s with nostalgic set

Brooks & Dunn performed in front of this year's largest crowd to date.

Courtesy of Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

I’ve probably overstated it to an annoying degree this year, but country from the ‘90s and early ‘00s has been the prevailing vibe at NRG Stadium in 2025, from Zach Top’s stadium-sized mustache-country revival to Post Malone’s pyro-packed pop twangers.

On Saturday, March 22, Brooks & Dunn pulled into NRG Stadium armed with 15 of their greatest hits to remind 71,265 fans of the duo's stranglehold on the country charts during the Clinton era.

Starting with the one-two punch of 1991’s “Brand New Man” and 1993’s “Hard Workin’ Man” releases. Each chart-topper came with big choruses, crunchy guitars, hair metal drums, and politely raunchy wordplay perfect for honky tonk dance floors and arenas. They were so prolific that by 2009, when all was said and done, a career-spanning greatest hits compilation spanned two discs.

Kix Brooks, 69, and Ronnie Dunn, 71, debuted next door at the Astrodome during RodeoHouston’s 1992 stand, and they remained an annual mainstay through 2010. Their iconic back-to-back stage pose is imprinted indelibly on generations of fans over 19 shows. The pair disbanded for close to a half-decade (personally coaxed back to the stage by Reba McEntire) and made their return to NRG Stadium in 2019 and 2023. The duo’s merchandise in the concourse turns the clock back to the ‘90s, complete with purple lightning and cow skulls.

Brooks & Dunn’s latest releases have included two editions of the Reboot album series, which has paired the duo with some of the biggest country acts on the scene, including Morgan Wallen, Kacey Musgraves, Megan Moroney, and Jelly Roll to reimagine hits like “Neon Moon” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” with new moods and attitudes. The best-selling country duo of all time hasn’t released an album of new material since 2007’s Cowboy Town, but they have teased the prospect of writing new songs in recent interviews.

Kicking off just after 5 pm, B&D launched into an extra punchy “Brand New Man,” delivering a wall of surgically catchy Nashville sound. Brooks hit the mic for “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone,” boosting it with some extra long notes, showing off a voice that’s now aged like a fine wine from the rodeo wine garden.

For most fans, Ronnie has always been the voice, while Kix has been the heart. The former handles the rascally tunes, and the latter laments his troubles at the end of the bar. Entering five decades into their partnership, their biggest hits now come with an additional helping of rumpled road-weariness. Brooks offered up a stripped-down “Lost And Found” after recounting the pair's early days over a cold can of beer, giving the fans a B&D history lesson.

“Hard Workin’ Man” got a hard rock makeover with four guitars upfront and some Motley Crue-biting drums. My theory has always been that the ‘90s country sound has more in common with ‘80s hair metal than we give it credit for, the mullet being the common denominator. “Play Something Country” from 2005’s “Hillbilly Deluxe” was released as a reaction to that era’s identity crisis, and 20 years later, its a quaint time capsule with the P. Diddy mention.

The crowd-pleasing “Neon Moon” provided the biggest singalong of the late afternoon, while “Rock My World - Little Country Girl” featured Brooks testing the limits of his lung capacity with an extended roadhouse harmonica solo.

With just one day left on the schedule, this year’s top drawing act has been Brooks & Dunn, with Parker McCollum, Journey, Zach Top, Grupo Frontera, Carin Leon, and Post Malone following close behind. We’ll see how Luke Bryan does at tomorrow’s final show.

Brooks & Dunn: 71,265
Parker McCollum: 71,205
Journey: 70,978
Zach Top: 70,865
Grupo Frontera: 70,775
Carin Leon: 70,603
Post Malone: 70,094

Setlist

Brand New Man
My Next Broken Heart
You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone
Ain’t Nothin’ ‘Bout You
Red Dirt Road
Lost And Found
Never Forgive My Heart
Hard Workin’ Man
Play Something Country
Cowgirls Don’t Cry
Neon Moon
Rock My World - Little Country Girl
My Maria
Boot Scootin’ Boogie
Only In America

rodeohouston concert review brooks & dunn

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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