Country singer George Strait hadn’t played a show in California in 11 years. That, plus the fact that his concert at SoFi Stadium was his only one on the West Coast this year, was more than enough to make Saturday night in Inglewood feel like an event.
But then add special guests Miranda Lambert, the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell, and Chris Stapleton, who opened the show along with Little Big Town, and that’s even more appealing.
And then consider how many legendary country stars are still out there making records and playing shows, and once you’ve checked off Dolly and Willie, you get to George as third on the list of the most significant old-school country stars still honky-tonking the nights away.
Strait walked on stage as his 11-piece band played “Deep In the Heart of Texas” and launched right into “Twang,” a sort of mission statement for the neo-traditionalist music scene that Strait helped launch in the early ’80s.
“‘Cause I need a little twang,” he sang on the chorus. “A little hillbilly bending on some guitar strings / Some pedal steel whining like a whistle of an old freight train / To get that foot stompin’ honkey tonkin’ feeling going through my veins. I need a little twang, twang, twang.”
The neo-traditionalist country artists took a step back from the pop country of the ’70s, returning to the roots with fiddles, acoustic and steel guitars of traditional country, while incorporating electric guitars for a touch of the Bakersfield sound. The Ace in the Hole Band that backs Strait has kept that going until today, with some musicians, including steel guitarist Mike Daily and bassist Terry Hale, members since they and Strait were unknowns playing Texas bars in the mid-’70s.
After “Check Yes or No,” a sweet small-town love story, Strait brought out country star Miranda Lambert for a pair of songs, including “Run,” which she sang on a Strait live album a decade ago.
“Wow, it’s gonna be a good night,” Strait said at the finish as he, in a black cowboy hat, and she, in a white one, grinned at each other.
“We’ve been seeing a lot of cowboy hats out there all nights,” he added. About that: Try to picture what you imagine would be a whole lot of cowboy hats on fans at SoFi on Saturday. Now double that, and you might be close. Black hats, white hats, straw hats, so, so many cowboy hats.
Strait and Lambert did “How ‘Bout Them Cowgirls,” and she took her bows and scooted off stage before Strait and the band shifted into a run of songs focused more on the western side of country and western.
“I Can Still Make Cheyenne” was a classic cowboy lament – he’s stuck out on the range or at the rodeo, she’s fixing to leave him – that tugged the heartstrings even more thanks to the fiddle of Jenee Fleener and the acoustic guitar of Rick McRae, Strait’s lead guitarist since 1983.
“Here For a Good Time” gave the crowd their first great drinking-and-the-honky-tonk tune, with many singing along to lines such as, “I ain’t here for a long time, I’m here for a good time / So bring on the sunshine, to hell with the red wine.”
And then: “Pour me some moonshine / When I’m gone, put it in stone, “He left nothing behind.”
After noting that Waylon Jennings had long been a hero, Strait played Jennings’s “Waymore’s Blues.” His tribute to first responders, “The Weight of the Badge,” got a huge response from the crowd as photographs of members of the California Highway Patrol, Los Angeles police and sheriff’s departments, and the Baldwin Park Police Department and more flashed on the huge overhead screens in the stadium.
Chris Stapleton joined Strait for a trio of songs, starting with “Cowboys Like Us” and following that with a pair of tunes that Stapleton cowrote for Strait, “You Don’t Know What You’re Missing” and “Honky Tonk Hall of Fame.”
“I love playing with you, man,” Strait told Stapleton between songs. “You are my hero.”
To which Stapleton, with a laugh and an incredulous look, replied, “Well, you’re mine!”
A few songs later, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s band the Heartbreakers joined Strait for that band’s song “You Wreck Me,” which Strait recorded live for the 2024 tribute album “Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty.” Strait sang it great, but the highlight of the number was a long instrumental break that kicked off with Campbell soloing before McRae, Fleener and acoustic guitarist Joe Manuel took turns, too.
As the show neared the finish, Strait implicitly acknowledged the reason he’d not played in California since 2014.
“I had in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t be doing this too much longer,” he said of his announcement in 2012 that the Cowboy Rides Away Tour in 2013 and 2014 would be his farewell. “I don’t know why, but I changed my mind in a hurry.”
“I’ll Always Remember You,” a song he released around that time, followed with a sweet message of gratitude for the career he thought he was saying goodbye to.
“When I started out, I figured I had five years to get my songs out there,” Strait said at its close. “It’s more than 49 now, and I still love it as much as I ever did.”
The main set wrapped up with the beautiful “Amarillo By Morning,” the song Strait said he always mentions when asked his favorite to sing, and “Troubadour,” an autobiographically inspired song about the long run of a traveling singer.
Strait’s five-song encore pushed the show to about two-and-a-half hours, with sing-along highlights including “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” and the wonderful Townes Van Zandt song “Pancho & Lefty,” before “Cowboy Rides Away” sent Strait, the band, and all those cowboy-hatted fans into the night.
Earlier, Stapleton had played a powerful 90-minute set of his bluesy, roots-based country music. “Bad As I Used to Be” set the mood as the opening number, and the David Allen Coe cover “Tennessee Whisky” wrapped things up for Stapleton as it often does in his shows.
In between, those fans got a sneak peek at Strait’s eventual guests. Campbell joined Stapleton for “Arkansas,” one of several songs they’ve written together, and then the Petty and the Heartbreakers song “I Should Have Known It,” which kicks off the “Petty Country” album, serving as a bookend to Strait’s cover, which closes it.
Lambert also joined Stapleton for their just-released single, “A Song to Sing,” which got its live performance debut at SoFi on Saturday. Other highlights of his set included Stapleton’s own “White Horse” and “Cold,” both of them powerfully performed, and “You Should Probably Leave.”
Little Big Town, alas, drew the short straw and went on at 5:30 p.m. before much of the crowd had arrived. Fans sitting nearby who saw them, however, said they were terrific fun as always.