The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo rode back into town March 7 and will continue through next Sunday. The 20-day event at NRG Park includes concerts, carnival rides, animal exhibits and traditional rodeo events. Here are some of our most memorable rodeo stories from recent years.
Your RodeoHouston 2017 Lineup, One Night at a Time
20 concerts, 21 performers, ten RodeoHouston debuts. Let’s do this.
A Few Things All RodeoHouston First-Timers Should Know
Even on a rare “slow” day, RodeoHouston can be a hive of activity on a world-class scale, so the Houston Press asked some of our more experienced rodeo hands what advice they’d give the many folks for whom this will be their first rodeo.
Most Diverse RodeoHouston Lineup Yet Saves Room for Traditional Country
Jason Kane is not the sort of guy who’s easy to rattle. As managing director of Entertainment & Concert Production for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, he sits near the top of an organizational pyramid that last year brought in about 1.3 million fans to the rodeo’s concerts alone. In practical terms, that means he’s in charge of booking entertainers who must be capable of filling a 72,000-capacity football stadium for 20 consecutive nights, or at least come pretty close.
10 Acts We’d Like to See Play RodeoHouston 2018
Caught up somewhere in the swirl of fried food, calf scrambles, carnival rides, volunteers, mutton bustin’, livestock auctions, scholarships, horse shows and tons of shopping is the rodeo’s most diverse concert lineup in years, one that has an excellent chance of shattering its all-time attendance record of 1.377 million people, set just two years ago. Naturally, that lineup was not put together in a vacuum, and in fact the rodeo’s booking team probably has a pretty good idea of who they’ll be inviting to perform at the 2018 edition. However, we figured we’d help them out with a few suggestions anyway, just in case anyone has to drop out; some guesses, of course, are more educated than others.
What to Expect at the Rodeo’s Food Events This Year
You already know the crazy new foods hitting the carnival this year. Now it’s time to talk food events, all of which happen to take place before the show even officially starts.
Bareback Rider Deals With the Risky Realities of the Sport at RodeoHouston
On Sunday night, the audience at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo watched in horror as bareback rider George Gillespie was flung over the side of his horse and dragged all over the arena, his hand caught in the rigging.
RodeoHouston Hops on “Harlem Shake” Bandwagon
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo doesn’t stay so successful by not keeping up with the times. So before each of this year’s evening concerts, you can watch a bunch of people who work at the rodeo gyrating to the latest real-life Internet meme, the “Harlem Shake.”
This article appears in Mar 9-15, 2017.
