Tritt bucked off in rodeo performance
On the second day of the rodeo, Travis Tritt rode to the stage in a convertible and opened with "Put Some Drive in Your Country." For the first line or two, his microphone wasn't turned on, but after that, his vocals were turned up far too loud. In fact, throughout the concert, everything was too loud. It's difficult to enjoy a concert when the electric guitar is loud enough to elicit feedback and the fiddle sounds screechy.
Some of Tritt's old work, such as the second song of his performance, "I'm Gonna Be Somebody," is still outstanding. That story of the singer's rise to "number one on the stage and radio" touched a chord with all of the aspiring country singers in the crowd and, more generally, anyone with a dream to rise above his surroundings. Tritt closed the song with a little smile, perhaps thinking how far he's come in the past few years.
Unfortunately, the rest of the show was pretty much downhill from there. Recently, Tritt has worked hard to live up to his outlaw image, and perhaps as a result, he has never been able to duplicate the quality of his first two albums. Instead of singing a power ballad like "Tell Me I Was Dreaming" at the top of his lungs with an electric guitar blaring in the background, why can't he sit down on a stool and perform an acoustic version of "Anymore?" Instead of the pointless drinking song "Ten Feet Tall and Bulletproof," why doesn't he perform his Marty Stuart duet, "The Whiskey Ain't Workin?"
Most of the audience recognized Tritt's classic kiss-off song, "Here's a Quarter," right from the first chord, and in fact that song produced the biggest crowd response. Soon afterward, however, many in the crowd were leaving, preferring the livestock show and carnival to Tritt's concert. And who could blame them? The concert was barely half an hour long, yet by the end of the final song, "T-R-O-U-B-L-E," which was just as loud and irritating as the opener, the crowd was reduced to perhaps 10,000.
Maybe the problem was that it was too early in the day, or maybe it was that Tritt's backup band didn't perform very well. Either way, though, Tritt would do much better to live on his past and include such gorgeous classics as "Drift off to Dream" and "Help Me Hold On," rather than trying to win audiences with his sub-par present.
On the second day of the rodeo, 45,000 fans packed the Astrodome to see the morning's events, which were closed by a double dose of country music that included a local-boy-done-good, Rick Trevino, whose star is on the rise, in addition to an established country superstar whose popularity has hit a plateau in the past year.
And on this afternoon, at least, the local boy outshone the superstar.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the February 23, 1996 issue.
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