Will The Circle…Pt. II
Billy Bob’s 2016
Billy Bob’s is a place in Ft. Worth, TX where you can go hear a concert and also attend a bull riding competition. Is that what it’s called? NO good grief, Marion, I mean rodeo. Let me start again.
We played Billy Bob’s many times. I think they say it’s the world’s biggest honky-tonk. If you haven’t been, I think it’s worth checking out if you get down to Texas. The stage feels very small, but the atmosphere is its own thing. There are tons of big cafeteria style tables set up in rows and if I remember correctly, nobody is allowed to stand and dance because of this seating arrangement? I may be wrong on that, but my memory says that everyone is seated, and everyone is very excited to be there. You can see everyone’s face there, unlike other kinds of venues, and I just remember everyone looking so happy at those shows. I think I heard that Trace sang there before he became Trace Adkins, so maybe that’s why the energy of those shows always felt a little more sparked.
Billy Bob’s is a huge place, and, as I mentioned earlier, they also host the sport where an infant boy sits atop a raging angry beast that wants nothing to do with a hiney on him and makes jerking actions to get this infant boy off of him.
I am from Maryland. I am from people who are from DC and Philadelphia, and in no way was I exposed to the rodeo until the very moment we pulled up to Billy Bob’s when I was 28 entire years old. It would be the first of MANY rodeos we’d play, but it was literally my first rodeo, and I was hellbent on seeing what it was all about. So I got ready for the show early, marched over to the powers that be, and said “I’ve never seen a rodeo before, may I go see it before the show?” And y’all…a nice man took me to this special stand that was directly above the shoots? Is that what you’d call it? The place where all the bulls are lined up and where the infant baby boys prepare to mount the bulls. Directly above the first millisecond they’re on ‘em. It was WILD. I expected to be like ‘ok cool, now I can say I’ve seen that’, but nope…I was there with all of them. I was feeling all of the feelings of these baby boys (truly, they looked like they were 15 years old) I was feeling for their mothers, I was feeling very hard for the bulls themselves because of the spectacle that seemed very spooky for a creature that doesn’t understand…y’know, the lights and the loud music, and the crowd. It made me sad, but I couldn’t stop. It was just completely blowing my east coast mind.
There was never another rodeo show where I didn’t go to the events-I LOVED the broncos and also the little tiny children rodeo events, oh my goodness. Cheyenne Frontier Days, rodeos in New Mexico, and Montana. Man, that was some fun stuff.
Pretty sure this is from a rodeo in San Antonio
Ok, back to Billy Bob’s.
The last time I got to sing at Billy Bob’s, I had some friends come out who lived in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Their comp tickets included the pre-show small acoustic set and Q&A with Trace. I wasn’t part of those sets, and that’s usually when I was putting my makeup on, so I never saw one, but this time I came along to hang out with my friends. I’m so glad I went because I learned a good lesson from Trace when he answered the question: “What’s your favorite song to sing?”
Having sung with him for a couple of years, I could have guessed the ones that seemed to give him more artistic gratification than others, and I expected him to say one of those. But, instead, he said:
“Whatever the audience likes the most is my favorite.”
He explained how good it feels to connect with the audience, that some nights it’s one song, some nights it’s something else. It made me happy. It kind of kicked my ass, too. We can get so stuck as artists, so consumed in maintaining artistic integrity and whatever that entails that we forget that we’re not in it just for ourselves. Otherwise, we’d just be singing in our cars.
You get on a stage to connect. No artist, not even the most serious artist, wants to get on stage and not hear the applause. And no audience wants to hear only deep cuts from obscure records they haven’t heard. No, they want to hear the hits, in the way that they know them, because it makes them feel something, or transports them to a particular time in life. And it’s this constant loop of human connection that I hadn’t fully considered until I heard Trace answer that question.
In those years, I was along for all kinds of events outside of just the normal fair/theater/casino/festival circuit. We played political events, military bases all over the world, birthday parties of billionaires. I shook hands with people that in no other part of life would I have met. And something I learned is that no matter if you’re the speaker of the house, a senator, a general, a billionaire, no matter WHO you are, you need music.
I found it so challenging during those years, watching some of the most powerful people in our country get completely goofy over us, yet at the same time feel so undervalued by society in this pursuit. Nobody is actually encouraging their kid to go pursue something insane like this. I can’t honestly say I want this for Gloria, even the biggest success is so challenging. Nobody wants to hear what you, the artist, believe, and more, they get angry if you have differing opinions and dare to say them aloud.
If anyone has earned the right to speak on their beliefs, can’t it at least be those who’ve put their own beliefs to the test in the deepest ways that an artist does? People who’ve taken their art around the world, heard stories from, and connected with, people of all stripes? Dared to do the thing that nobody believes you can do?
Now, I was not in a band that shared my views, that’s the truth. And it’s also true that many audiences we played were more forgiving to these views I did not share. But never in my life could I imagine having anything to do with suppressing their very earned rights to express their views and beliefs. Playing an instrument, or singing a song, or writing a script, or acting in a TV show, successful or not. We all, no matter whether we share the same views or even values, we all have been through deep self-reflection, in the particular artist’s brand of self-reflection. Deep battles within, that only people who share their hearts at great risk understand.
The shut up and sing people do not realize that the pursuit of the arts is inherently political because the arts are SO deeply undervalued. And then you get famous and everyone around you gets gooey because, deep down, every single one of us wishes we could be a rock star. The shut up and sing people also only have a problem with the artists who have differing opinions- they don’t ‘shut up and sing’ to the artists who share their views.
Anyway, that took a different turn than what I intended. But what I’m really getting at here is human connection. The fact that nobody can survive a hard time without the arts is such a big deal. How much time did you spend in front of a TV during this pandemic? What would a breakup be like without the music to accompany your heartbreak? What decorates the walls in your home and makes you feel warm and cozy while you’re stuck inside? How did you miss spending summer nights? Outside at a concert connecting with the people around you because of the shared music that impacts you?
This is what Trace was talking about. There is no singer without an audience that appreciates their music. There is no audience without an entertainer. We all need each other.
We played a political event in DC, then two days later I marched in the Women’s March.