There may not be much bull riding or bronco busting happening on Fremont Street during Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, but you’ll still find plenty of NFR veterans there; they know at the end of the day the music is happening downtown. Once a year The Showroom at Golden Nugget becomes a hallowed hall for honky-tonk heroes, high-lonesome songwriters, cowboy crooners and country outlaws. The 10 p.m. shows start just as the last Golden Nugget shuttles leaving Thomas & Mack Center arrive in the City of Las Vegas proper.
Unfortunately, singer-songwriter Mark Chesnutt will not be able to launch the concert series due to a health condition that caused him to cancel his November shows. This makes Mark Wills the lead-off performer with his Friday night (Dec. 8) slot. Wills went from paying dues at The Buckboard in Atlanta to becoming the 218th member of the Grand Ole Opry in a seven-album career that produced 19 charting singles.
Wills emerged with “Jacob’s Ladder” in 1996 before firming up the foundation of a successful career with “Wish You Were Here” and “I Do (Cherish You).” The Academy of Country Music Awards’ Top New Male Vocalist for 1998 had his biggest success with nostalgic number “19 Somethin’,” which spent six weeks atop the country charts with images of “Skating rinks and black Trans Ams/Big hair and parachute pants” striking a chord with listeners. Wills comes to Vegas after recently playing a three-song tribute to the late Keith Whitley at the Opry, and may include a medley of Ronnie Milsap classics if the audience at The Showroom is lucky.
For more than 35 years, Confederate Railroad (Dec. 9) has been energizing venues with its wide array of country rock hits. Fronted by David Allan Coe, expect the band, founded in Marietta, Georgia, to deliver songs like "Trashy Women," "Jesus and Mama," "She Took It Like a Man," "Queen of Memphis" and many more.
Ray Wylie Hubbard is hardly reaching the end of his road, though. He may cover a song (“Choctaw Bingo”) by fellow Texan James McMurtry, but he’s an American original in every sense and returns to Golden Nugget’s rodeo shows on Sunday night (Dec. 10) for the fourth time.
Hubbard’s a subterranean homesick poet, a reluctant outlaw, a dedicated rock ’n’ roller and living country blues legend. The best place to start for newbies is 2006 album Snake Farm, from which Hubbard draws the title cut and “Rabbit” as set staples. Hubbard is equally at home delivering slow-churning boogie as he is with the lyrical illuminations of “Mother Blues” (“The days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations/Ah! Well, I have really good days”) and “Drunken Poet’s Dream,” his grizzled voice encapsulating a lifetime of uncompromising spirit and road-weary wisdom.
Little Texas may have been formed in Nashville but, like Hubbard, are very much a product of the Lone Star State. Monday night’s (Dec. 11) featured act helped kick-start the ’90s with current set opener “Some Guys Have All the Love” from 1992 debut First Time for Everything breaking the country singles Top 10. The band would score more than a dozen hits including 1994 No. 1 “My Love,” but can safely claim “God Blessed Texas” as a signature tune and a cover of Eagles’ “Peaceful Easy Feeling” as a live highlight.
Knoxville-born Rodney Atkins has a 10 p.m. show on Tuesday (Dec. 12). He’s on track to appear at The Showroom despite a lung infection that led to early October canceled appearances in Oklahoma and Colorado. Atkins began a six-song streak of No. 1s in 2006, beginning with “If You’re Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows)”, which spent four weeks at No. 1 and become Billboard’s top country song of 2006. Follow-up “Watching You” topped the chart for four weeks as well, becoming the top country song of 2007. Atkins’ chart success continued through 2019 with the title track from Caught Up in the Country, and he tours as much as possible with wife Rose Falcon.
Twenty-three years after charting with “Dust on the Bottle,” David Lee Murphy (Dec. 13) was surprised to share Musical Event of the Year honors with Kenny Chesney at the 2018 CMA Music Awards for their collaboration “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.” Murphy had a successful track record co-writing No. 1 hits for Chesney (“Living in Fast Forward”), Jason Aldean (“Big Green Tractor”) and Thompson Square (“Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not”) since withdrawing from his own recording career, so it was an unexpected honor for the cowboy from Illinois. Murphy’s sets cover the spectrum of his songwriting history.
The history of Thursday night’s (Dec. 14) headliners dates back nearly a half-century to when David Bellamy co-wrote “Spiders and Snakes” with Jim Stafford. The success drew David and older brother Howard into A-list circles and a song written by a roadie for Neil Diamond. Diamond turned down “Let Your Love Flow,” enabling The Bellamy Brothers to record it and become hitmakers. Follow-ups “If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me” and “Do You Love as Good as You Look?” became pickup lines as well as Top 40 hits (and eventually part of the yacht rock canon). By then, they became the live draw they remain today.
Eddie Montgomery planned to continue as Montgomery Gentry in honor of the memory of Troy Gentry, who died in a 2017 helicopter crash. The final act (Dec. 15) of Golden Nugget’s rodeo concert series now tours under his own name but delivers the hits he created with Gentry beginning in 1999 with “Hillbilly Shoes.” The Southern rock influence in their sound set them apart on the airwaves and helped them earn Vocal Duo of the Year honors at the 2000 CMA awards, ending eight years of dominance by Brooks & Dunn. Each successive album beginning with 1999 debut Tattoos & Scars climbed higher up the country chart until You Do Your Thing debuted at No. 2 in 1994. Montgomery could always form a superduo with younger brother John Michael Montgomery, but for now, the spirit of his longtime partner is very within him, and Montgomery Gentry’s music lives on.
Golden Nugget, goldennugget.com
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