top troobs

Turnpike Troubadours kick up some red dirt redemption in RodeoHouston's top-selling show to date

The last time the Turnpike Troubadours played RodeoHouston in 2019, it could have very easily been one-and-done for the group. Just two months after turning in a grizzly set on the rodeo's revolving stage that year, band leader Evan Felker's offstage battles with the demons inhabiting the group's songs forced the band into an extended, somewhat hopeless hiatus hours before a sold-out set — at Houston's White Oak Music Hall no less.

Photo courtesy of Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo

The Turnpike Troubadours drew a crowd of 74,657 — the highest-selling show this year.

No news wasn't good news, and die-hards consoled themselves with a handful of albums of jittery country rock. Absence and COVID only made the heart grow fonder.

Fans started 'Turnpike Reunion' savings accounts, made lovesick memes, virtually sighing into the ether for an end of the drought. The time away only cemented them as scene idols, and upon 2022's return, they took a rightful place next to new-school country acts like Zach Bryan, Margo Price, and Cody Jinks as somewhat-elder scene statesmen.

Even though the band last played the lawn at Houston's White Oak Music Hall in May 2022 – seemingly making up for that abrupt cancellation three years previous – the set on Saturday, March 11 inside NRG Stadium seemed like the Troobs' truest return to the Bayou City, picking back where they left off in 2019.

And what a return, with a crowd of 74,657 — one of the biggest rodeo shows to date.

Like Ferris Bueller, Turnpike brings together the country music tribes. Saturday night's matinee crowd was a healthy mix of well-scrubbed Midtown couples fresh off the corporate party bus, roving bands of leather cowgirl dresses, and tattooed, black-denim-clad outlaw country devotees straight from the Vinyl Ranch Instagram feed.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an act as rabidly revered as the six-piece Turnpike currently are, riding high on a reunification ritual a year deep with thousands of tickets sold across the country, including a legacy-defining two-night stand at the Red Rocks Amphitheater last May.

Now over a year into Turnpike 2.0 – as some have dubbed this incarnation – is a bonafide arena act. It's all been done without a proper new album of material since October 2017's lauded "A Long From Your Heart". A new album, according to Felker, looms on the horizon.

Mixing equal parts shambolic stomp from The Band, Uncle Tupelo, Paul Westerberg's most twangiest of adventures, and old-fashioned Oklahoma Red Dirt romp, the Troobs could seem like the most unlikely of RodeoHouston headliners, better suited for mid-size honky tonks, indie clubs, and your coolest friend's turntable. Formed in 2005, they've got some road under them.

On Saturday night, Turnpike returned to the revolving stage with "Every Girl" from 2010's "Diamonds & Gasoline" LP, a sturdy mission statement of an album that's seemed to influence everyone that's given it a spin. You can hear echoes of it even on the most plastic of pop-country albums. Nashville's ears are the biggest in the industry, able to Frankenstein parts from a not-Nashville act like Turnpike for something radio-friendly. It's a fascinating phenomenon and weirdly flattering.

2012's paper-hearted "Good Lord Lorrie" brought the Romeo & Juliet drama, the Americana-drunk "Morgan Street" and its fiddle cut like a saber.

In a perfect world, "Shreveport" could have turned the floor of NRG Stadium into the city's largest dirt dancehall. Shows like this would be perfect for a temporary dance floor where the muttons get busted. Fittingly, the custom Ford chariot came for the band as set-closer "Long Hot Summer Day" kicked off, sending the city's sweatiest people into the humid night air.

Turnpike 2.0 is comfortable with RodeoHouston's biggest of stages, which bodes well for the years ahead of what should be magical if new music is in the cards. The band is ready to grasp the next wrung of its choosing at its own pace, and lord knows some debts have been long since paid.

Setlist

Every Girl

7&7

Before the Devil Knows We're Dead

The Bird Hunters

Good Lord Lorrie

Morgan Street

Shreveport

Pay No Rent

A Tornado Warning

Gin, Smoke, Lies

Kansas City Southern

Long Hot Summer Day

Movie Review

Denzel Washington brings new spectacle to the Colosseum in Gladiator II

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Paul Mescal in Gladiator II.

There are some films for which making a sequel is natural, and others where a follow-up is wholly unnecessary. Gladiator, which made both tons of money and was named Best Picture at the Oscars, told an impactful stand-alone story that ended with the protagonist dead and no real loose ends. And yet because there’s always more money to be made, here we are 24 years later with Gladiator II.

The lead character this time around is Lucius (Paul Mescal), a general in a North African army who becomes a prisoner of war when the Roman army led by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) bests him and his troops in battle. Taken back to Rome, he is put in the pool of captured men forced to fight at the Colosseum for the amusement of twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracella (Fred Hechinger).

Lucius is controlled by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), an ambitious schemer who bets liberally on his prized fighter and always has an eye to move up in the world. Meanwhile, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the sister of Emperor Commodus from the first film, is now married to Marcus Acacius and has a unique connection with Lucius that is fairly obvious from the get-go.

Directed once again by Ridley Scott and written by David Scarpa, the film commits a number of sins throughout its 150-minute running time, the most blatant of which is that, aside from a few embellishments, it essentially tells the same story as the first film. Lucius, like Maximus, is a deposed military leader who’s out for revenge on the person who killed his family. Instead of one obnoxious emperor, there are now two. And the only way for Lucius to earn his freedom is to fight his way out.

Stories told in the same world can echo each other and, if done well, overcome those similarities. But Gladiator II is shockingly boring for a purported sword-and-sandals epic. Scott and his team try to introduce new elements to the fights, like a gladiator riding a rhinoceros or a ship battle inside the Colosseum (with sharks!), but most of the sequences are inert with no propulsion to them.

The action fails because none of the relationships in the film amount to much. There are stand-out characters like Macrinus and the twin emperors, but instead of creating antipathy or strong feelings of triumph or defeat, the story just kind of happens without any sense of excitement or importance. Much of that issue lies at the feet of Lucius, who simply doesn’t inspire in the same way that Russell Crowe’s Maximus did.

Mescal is a fine actor who’s done good work in more intimate roles, but he’s not up to the task of being an action star, at least not in this film. Any bombast he shows with the character feels forced, and the story doesn’t give him enough opportunities to counteract that lack. Washington, however, fills up the screen with his charisma, and it’s during his scenes that the film comes closest to being rousing. Quinn and Hechinger are a lot of fun as the twin emperors, but in the end they feel like retreads of Joaquin Phoenix from the original.

Any sequel should have a purpose that sets it apart from what came before, but Scott, Scarpa, and the rest of their team fail in that respect in Gladiator II. It’s a mostly lifeless film that delivers scenes that would be exciting if they had any kind of good story to back them up.

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Gladiator II opens in theaters on November 22.

movies film

top troobs

Turnpike Troubadours kick up some red dirt redemption in RodeoHouston's top-selling show to date

Movie Review

Denzel Washington brings new spectacle to the Colosseum in Gladiator II

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