Zac Brown Band review

Zac Brown Band jam on hits and covers during polished RodeoHouston set

Spring break was in full effect this week on the NRG campus as amiable chamber of commerce weather blew through Houston. The grounds are experiencing a bit of an adrenaline hangover after this week’s run of Los Tigres Del Norte, Whiskey Myers, Bun B’s All-American Takeover, and Nickelback pulling in nearly 286,000 into NRG Stadium alone. Which makes the 70,095 people who showed up for tonight’s performance by Zac Brown Band seem relatively paltry.

We’ve talked a lot about attendance records lately in the modern rodeo era this week and the RodeoHouston website’s attendance logs are endlessly fascinating. Like, what happened in 2001 with only 1,382,183 people? Y’all had Destiny's Child, Diana Ross, Brooks & Dunn, and Duran Duran. According to a report at the time, low attendance was blamed on construction and traffic, presumably the construction of Reliant Stadium off Kirby and the METRORail taking shape off Fannin caused mild havoc.

It sounds awfully precious to say that the Zac Brown Band is the most jam band adjacent act that RodeoHouston will see, barring an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band which wouldn’t be too far-fetched if they stuck to compact versions of the hits. Full-scale Zac Brown Band shows are a much different beast, full of extended instrumental jams and even more adventurous covers in the mix. That’s not to say that ZBB shows at RodeoHouston are lacking, but the band on the open road with two and half hours or a venue curfew ahead of them as opposed to 45 minutes on the dirt are so very different.

Thursday night’s ZBB set started with a jaunty bluegrass-injected “Knee Deep” after the briefest of delays. Hey, there’s nine people in the band these days, including the recent induction of multi-instrumentalist Caroline Jones. She’s added another dimension to ZBB’s burlier output. “As She’s Walking Away” and its interlocking harmonies benefited the most from Jones’ touch.

The first cover of the night was the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” in southern-rock goth drag. The ZBB’s island-hopping “Toes” at one time had the band nearly-anointed as the next coming of Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band, that is until Kenny Chesney made a sandy heel turn and hit the beach.

“We wanna do one for the cowboys,” said Brown, clad in his best honky tonk bouncer garb, plucking his way into Garth Brooks’ “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)”. The ZBB has always excelled at being the affable jukebox band at RodeoHouston. It wasn’t too long ago that they covered Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post”, and Van Halen’s “Panama” in this same spot.

Brown welcomed country-blues guitar slinger Marcus King onstage to slather some stadium-sized slide guitar on top of “Colder Weather” which — naturally — transitioned into the Eagles’ “Take it The Limit”.

King himself has an highly-anticipated Rick Rubin-produced album dropping on April 5. The first singles show King leaning into Americana and lush R&B with a specific fervor. He would be a welcome addition to my dream RodeoHouston 2025 bill, which already features a three-hour Billy Strings Saturday afternoon matinee.

We’re heading into the RodeoHouston homestretch with the Jonas Brothers on Friday night, Brad Paisley on Saturday afternoon, and Eric Church sending us home on Sunday after brunch.

Setlist

Knee Deep
Keep Me in Mind
As She’s Walking Away
No Hurry
Paint It Black
Toes
Much Too Young To Feel This Damn Old
Free / Into The Mystic
Lovin You Is Easy
Homegrown
Same Boat
Colder Weather >> Take it To The Limit (with Marcus King)
America, The Beautiful >> Chicken Fried

Courtesy of the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 doesn't match the first movie's enthusiasm

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2.

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films like M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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