Best Music Festival: RodeoHouston
According to the internet, the late Steve Jobs once said “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” We’d never question the mogul’s business acumen, but his baseball take seems a bit short-sighted. Two doubles, especially in the same inning, offer your team more chances to score. And, the best rally boasts both quality and quantity. That’s what RodeoHouston has mastered as a music festival.
Jaded frowny-faces out there would suggest RodeoHouston is today’s best Houston music fest simply by default. Doing so, they’d be overlooking lots of intriguing independent music fests surfacing in the city. Moving past that, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s annual wintertime gathering of diverse entertainers has long been a model for the ACLs and South-Bys which followed the trail HLSR started blazing 80 years ago with superstar cowboy crooner Gene Autry. Year after year, the Rodeo has booked music’s biggest and best acts, bringing to bat Hall of Famers like Elvis, George Strait, Reba and Selena. Each season brings in mashers like Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Ramon Ayala, Brooks & Dunn, Becky G and Bun B. Speaking of the latter, RodeoHouston got a huge boost this year when the “Unofficial Mayor of Houston” curated and played the H-Town Takeover, the Rodeo’s debut of Houston’s legendary rap scene. Add in performances by local artists at The Hideout, RodeoHouston’s own nightly honky tonk, and the formidable lineup is complete.
We’re all for more doubles and triples, any accumulation that’ll tally up on Houston’s music festival scoreboard. But, RodeoHouston annually delivers weeks’ worth of music homeruns to music fest fans. It belongs in the Cooperstown of American music festivals.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2022.
