The 2024 RodeoHouston season will be remembered for record-breaking crowds, heaps of millennial nostalgia, spring hail storms, rolling SLABs, a mini-concert from Drake, and the debut of femme country boss Lainey Wilson.
The 20th and final day of Houston’s urban cowpoke convention was also Championship Sunday for the rodeo athletes — animal and human — that defy gravity and the laws of nature every night. It was also the final stand of Leon Coffee, the greatest and most colorful rodeo clown that RodeoHouston will ever see.
Fittingly, Eric Church’s brand of stoic foot-stomping Waylon-meets-Wilco country rock was perfect for a humid, rain-ridden Sunday afternoon matinee in front of 64,473 people. Sunday night was Church’s first RodeoHouston stand since 2015, when he opened that season.
Sunday night’s Church service kicked off just after 6:30 pm after the last mutton was busted on the stadium floor. Church’s 2021 single “Heart on Fire” was a great showcase for his expanded band, which now features horns and three brassy backup singers, giving everything “Exile on Music Row with the E Street Band” vibes. Church’s recorded output is decidedly more soul than outlaw, with Church sampling most every genre aside from Norwegian black metal.
2011’s “Country Music Jesus” pushed Sunday gospel brunch back into dinnertime. In retrospect, the song seemingly prophesied the coming of Chris Stapleton. “Drink in My Hand” was, of course, perfect for a Sunday St. Patrick’s Day set. In 2021, Church ventured into soul country territory with “Heart” and its companion “Soul.” In a live setting, the material gets along like a house on fire.
Sunday night’s audio quality in the stadium was impeccable, with every bit of burly brass onstage bouncing around the room. 2018’s “Desperate Man” gave Church some time to show some love to his mentor Ray Wylie Hubbard who he co-wrote it with, “Sympathy for the Devil”-style woo-hoos and all.
Church will be christening his own Nashville bar, Chief’s, with a 19-night residency at the six-story honky tonk starting April 5, and he recently gifted members of his Church Choir fan club with deeds to bricks in the walls of the music venue.
Judging by Sunday night’s RodeoHouston show, Nashville crowds are in for a fun, hellacious time over the next few months. Church is hitting a stellar bandleader peak.
Setlist
How ‘Bout You
Heart On Fire
Country Music Jesus
Drink In My Hand
Pledge Allegiance to the Hag
Hell of a View
Desperate Man
Record Year
Cold One
These Boots
Smoke A Little Smoke
Springsteen
Courtesy of the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo
Eric Church returned to the rodeo for the first time since 2015.
