After taking a year off from attending, my family and I once again attended the Bayou Country Superfest concert featuring some top notch big time country music superstars in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge in May of 2014. For the first time, the concert was extended to three nights with Reba McIntyre and George Strait playing on the Friday night of the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend. Supposedly, for those people that are really big George Strait fans, he put on an awesome show and it was also said to be one of his final performances ever. We did not go on the Friday night but did go the final to days and nights. On Saturday the performers were Gloriana, Easton Corbin, Lee Brice, Florida-Georgia Line and Luke Bryan. I really enjoyed Lee Brice more than I was expecting to and Florida-Georgia Line is a talented duo that really put on a great show. I can see these two guys could easily be headliners for this big time concert sometime in the future. They were full of energy and did a great job with hits like "Shine On" and "This is how we roll". Luke Bryan, not surprisingly, even ran out on stage to join FGL for his part of "This is how we roll" and the crowd really liked that.
Luke Bryan was the headliner for the night. I was most looking forward to hearing and seeing him perform for this night. I was a bit disappointed to my surprise. Luke came out on stage and seemed to be on a bit of an ego trip of something. He started messing around on the keyboard and playing random songs that his band had no idea what he was trying to do. It was getting late and I was tired and my ten year old daughter was extremely tired and just trying to stay awake by the time Luke was on stage. I was ready for him to play his familiar songs that had made him a star. Finally, he did start to perform his own songs and we lasted through some of them but we decided we would leave a little early to beat the traffic and get our tired selves and kids back home to get some rest so we could return the last day of the concert.
We returned on Sunday to hear Joe Nichols, Big & Rich, Hunter Hayes, Eric Church and Jason Aldean. This was no doubt a star studded line up and promised to be a good day. After tailgating out on the "Old Front Nine" grassy area outside Tiger Stadium with some friends we made our way back into the stadium for another big day of music and fun. Big & Rich are kind of unusual but I liked them and they brought there black cowboy buddy, Cowboy Troy, to spice things up a bit and they were fun. Hunter Hayes was more appealing to some of the younger people at the concert, especially the girls and some of them held up signs that Hunter could see. Hunter Hayes is a talented young man and he is also from nearby Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. It was good to see a talented and seemingly nice young man get to perform in front of his home state fans.
Eric Church began his performance at about 7 PM when it had just gotten dark and the crowd was pumped up and ready to party by the time he took the stage. Eric Church portrays a rather tough guy or "badass" persona and does it quite well. He was really good and the crowd was loving every minute of his show. Eric Church truly seems to enjoy what he's doing and doesn't seem to mind mixing it up with his fans. He got a beer from someone in the crowd and chugged it along with a fan in the crowd. Everybody cheered wildly while he did this. His "These Boots" song was fun too as he got a couple of boots from fans to hold up while he sang and he autographed then before he handed them back. My son who is 14 at the time said that he really liked the performance too.
Jason Aldean was the headliner for Sunday night and the last performer for the entire concert. For whatever reason, Aldean's equipment somehow had not arrived at the stadium. This is hard to believe that his stuff could not have been there on time given the magnitude of this big concert with 50,000 plus fans in attendance. It took about 45 minutes for Aldean to begin playing as the crowd was getting really restless. The crowd even started to do the wave while we were waiting for the roadies to get Aldean's stuff all set up to play. Aldean wasted no time and went strait into singing all his big hits and did a good job. Once again, we left a little early and missed the last few songs but again it was very late and we were all quite tired.
All in all, the Bayou Country Superfest is a great event to attend. Local news reported that the event was a great one for the local hotels and restaurants and it pumped a lot of money into the Baton Rouge economy. If you are a country music fan and can make it to this event next year I think you will have a great time like we did.
