On Saturday night, Zach Bryan rocked an exhausted, overheated, jam-packed Nissan Stadium.
With humidity added, it felt like triple digits as Zach Bryan launched into a solo take on his Maggie Rogers duet "Dawns" near when the clock struck 11 p.m. CDT.
And yes, Kacey Musgraves appeared and collaborated Bryan on their 2024 Grammy winner "I Remember Everything." Plus, that was, indeed, Grammy-winning producer Shooter Jennings sitting in for the night on piano with openers Turnpike Troubadours.
One of the night's most profound takeaways was symbolic and deserved to be staged on a football field.
For the better part of three decades, "Red dirt" country music — a roots-driven sound inspired by the culture near the Red River separating Oklahoma and Texas — has been an economic driver in country music's mainstream industry.
But for the better part of the past 15 years, it has inarguably waned in influence.
Like a college quarterback playing in a big bowl game with nothing to lose, Bryan stepped to a microphone on a stage somewhere around Nissan Stadium's 30-yard-line. Over two hours — while armed with a guitar, 80 original songs he's written and released in the past five years and backed by a band from his hometown of roughly 1,000 people — he scored sonic touchdowns to the crowd's roar.
The night ended with the strains of Bryan's 2020-released "Revival" played from a stage in Nissan Stadium's end zone as a string of backyard-style lights twinkled and fireworks lit up the Nashville skyline.
Surprise performance: Kacey Musgraves surprises guests at Robert's Western World after Zach Bryan show
Kacey Musgraves shows up for 'I Remember Everything'
Kacey Musgraves — as if a bird delivered to the stage from its woodland home — materialized onstage on Saturday evening.
She received a deafening ovation.
Something hits perfectly about the type of ethereal delivery Musgraves lands when she sings, "You'll never be the man that you always swore / But I'll remember you singin' in that '88 Ford."
Her voice is now permanently attached to Bryan's art forever. The result? The song's success has ultimately softened Bryan's rugged persona and increased his marketability.
Zach Bryan's super-everyman appeal
Zach Bryan's success as an artist rips the new clothes off of many of country music's would-be emperors.
"Red dirt country" — be it from Garth Brooks and Brooks and Dunn or Toby Keith and Blake Shelton — is a fundamental facet of modern country music. Taking the same skills required to cover John Prine and Bruce Springsteen with the work needed to replicate The Band and The Rolling Stones, plus Willie, Waylon and the Boys (and let's add Cross Canadian Ragweed and Jerry Jeff Walker — among many, for good measure) isn't simple.
But if you live a life where working six days a week or playing 25 nights a month is commonplace, the lyrics to those artists' catalogs become the tent posts for survival.
Songs like "Oklahoma Smokeshow" and "Burn, Burn, Burn" arrive guttural and wrestled from Bryan's heart, loins and bones. These aren't the easily sung songs of Nashville writers' rounds. These are the songs scribbled on takeout napkins with chord progressions wrestled with like wild steers on the side of Highway 35 at dawn.
"Something In The Orange" was Bryan's breakout hit, but he knows his crowd isn't there to feel sad.
Thus, it's in the set but humbly, almost apologetically, delivered.
Overall, Bryan's best-received songs are built on complex emotions but delivered with simple twists of rhyme.
"Tourniquet," "Dawns," "Godspeed" and "Quittin' Time" are singalong therapy for a crowd of anxiety-riddled young people who want their pain plucked from their souls by a guitar-picking troubadour. When they reach their crescendos, or the words cut too profoundly, Bryan knows — at every one of those moments, he paused singing and let the crowd scream the words.
He gets his people. Moreover, perhaps in a keen salute to his military service, he understands why serving the people he gets is essential — and he's grateful for the opportunity to do so.
Turnpike Troubadours, Levi Turner showcase depth of Red dirt's impact
Unlike when Turnpike Troubadours played at The Ryman Auditorium 10 months ago, in Nissan Stadium, the fun of amplifying the band's songs to the heavens like a choir — then having those songs rain back down on people ready to start a foot-stomping party — wasn't there.
Instead, for the Zach Bryan fan new to roots-driven country music, their set — alongside 20-year-old south Atlanta suburbs native Levi Turner — showcased the scope of the style and why it's endured.
Turnpike played a workmanlike 13-song set, highlighting how well they evolved under Shooter Jennings' guidance in the past few years. Having the Grammy-winning producer onstage with them added to the party, but lead singer Evan Felker laying into classics of the band's catalog like "Whole Damn Town" and "Gin, Smoke and Lies" felt time-worn and comfortable, like the peace found in wearing an old sweatshirt on the first cool night of autumn.
On a night with scorching heat, it was an exceptionally charming feeling that drew hearty applause from the crowd.
So plentiful are the earmarkings of John Prine, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and Turnpike's Evan Felker in Bryan's work that he offered that he and his band were not worthy to be playing after the group at Nissan Stadium.
And yes, even deeper, after playing his recent single "Nine Ball" (as its video featuring Matthew McConaughey played behind them on a video wall), he followed with "East Side of Sorrow."
"If you ever get the time come on home / I heard Turnpike's back together and they're writin' songs," says God, according to Bryan's lyrics.
Because, of course, according to Zach Bryan, God's a fan of Turnpike Troubadours, too.
What does it all mean?
Zach Bryan's success is driven by the confluence of people needing a tough shoulder to cry on meeting people energized by the sudden rush of remembering something they'd almost forgotten.
Those crowds commingled at Nissan Stadium for the first time. What transpired is important not as a standalone thing but as something upon which a movement can be built.
A palpable joy shoots from people's chests when they're proud of themselves again.
For many reasons, many Americans have felt profound sadness of late.
But after a barnstorming trio of acts played for four hours in a football stadium, it was clear that for as much as Zach Bryan was winning, Turnpike Troubadours could be thanked for their service in holding down the "Red dirt" culture and Levi Turner offered hope for the future. America's healing spirit — as seen via tens of thousands of giddily dancing people — reigned supreme.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Zach Bryan brings out Kacey Musgraves, rocks Nashville's Nissan Stadium with anthems
