Riley Green review

Country singer Riley Green kicks off RodeoHouston with Toby Keith tribute

Looking like a member of the Dutton clan that grew tired of the ranching business and got really into Toby Keith and duck hunting, Riley Green opened the 2026 edition of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo on Monday, March 2 in front of 59,250 attendees.

The Alabama native and former college football quarterback — because of course he was — strikes a starched jeans balance between the tender, woo-pitchin’ of guys like Merle Haggard and George Jones and the deep, blinding romance of neo-traditionalists Tracy Lawrence and fellow 2026 RodeoHouston performer Tim McGraw, with a cowboy hat resting over his epic flow.

Speaking of the Taylor Sheridan Television Universe (the TSTU), Green will soon be seen on the Sheridan-produced Yellowstone spin-off series Marshals, which premiered on CBS this past weekend, as a troubled former Navy SEAL.

The ACM New Male Artist of the Year for 2020, the 37-year-old didn’t get around to playing RodeoHouston until just last year. When Green isn’t in a recording studio, performing onstage, starting a duck hunting brand, or conspicuously vacationing with his shirt off in a tropical climate near other young country stars, he retreats to his farm or deep into a far-flung swamp on a hunting excursion. That being said, if I ever start a country punk band, I’m going to call it Riley Green’s Forearms, because they seem to attract audiences as much as his music.

Green’s show kicked off just after 9:20 pm with the man himself blowing into a duck call and launching into “Different ‘Round Here,” luckily out of earshot of any ducklings NRG Center potentially bedding down for the night.

“Hell Of A Way To Go” came with a mid-song disclaimer that it was his grandfather who was a fan of Alabama football, lest any alumni in the crowd get things twisted, before switching it to up Texas.

Green honored his mentor, Jamey Johnson, with a widescreen cover of the woolly singer-songwriter’s timeless “In Color”. Green’s earliest work was heavily influenced by Johnson, and the pair have become lasting friends.

He and fellow country star Ella Langley have become inexorably linked since their 2024 chart-topping duet "You Look Like You Love Me” like a nu-country Conway and Loretta. Sadly, there was no convertible riding out onto the rodeo dirt with Langley riding shotgun to jump into the duet, but the female audience members filled in admirably in her stead. "There Was This Girl," his gold-certified debut single, followed it up.

The late Toby Keith got some shine with a medley of his hits, including Green taking a turn at Keith’s 2002 anthem "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue," which has earned something of a resurgence due to the USA hockey team singing it at the Winter Olympics.

Green slowed things down and took a break on a stool for “Jesus Saves” and “Don’t Mind If I Do,” showing off his solo acoustic chops.

The smoldering bedroom romp “Worst Way” got the biggest squeals of the night, with tall boys hoisted over cowboy hats, while his 2019 hit, "I Wish Grandpas Never Died" — the triple-platinum tribute to his late grandfathers, Lendon Bonds and Buford Green — brought the waterworks and a sea of smartphone flashlights through the stadium.

Green made his way out of the building with his band’s take on Alabama’s “Dixieland Delight,” jumping into a Ford pickup and into a few thousand fans’ dreams.

Setlist

Different ‘Round Here
Change My Mind
Hell of a Way To Go
In Color (Jamey Johnson cover)
You Look Like You Love Me
There Was This Girl
Toby Keith Tribute Set

I Should’ve Been A Cowboy
Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue

Jesus Saves
Don’t Mind If I Do
Worst Way
I Wish Grandpas Never Died
Bury Me in Dixie / Dixieland Delight

Courtesy of Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

Country singer Riley Green opened RodeoHouston on Monday, March 2.

rodeohouston concert review

Movie Review

Camp Miasma puts a comedic twist on the classic slasher movie

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing the slasher subgenre that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death — a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask — may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference — Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard — to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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