Luke Bryan’s Sunset Repeat Tour stopped in Long Island this past weekend to play two shows at Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater. Night one he brought along two Georgia natives, Jon Langston, and Cole Swindell and last night Dylan Scott took the direct support spot. Not only did NYCountry Swag offer an exclusive ticket presale to our followers, but we also organized a huge tailgate and bus to the venue for the Sunday Night show. Bringing over 100 New York country fans together to enjoy music, food, and drinking games before heading inside to experience the Sunset Repeat Tour from the best seats in the house, right in the pit.
Jon Langston opened his half-hour set with his newest release “Now You Know”; a country song with a rock and roll feel. He performed nine songs for the audience including “Right Girl, Wrong Time”, “Dance Tonight”, “Prob’ly at a Bar”, “Forever Girl”, even a cover of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ hit “Won’t Back Down”. He closed with another country-rock song “All Eyes On Us”. Before exiting the stage, the former college football player shot-gunned a beer in about three seconds, signed t-shirts and took selfies with fans. Langston opened up Sunday’s show as well.
Next up was the 2015 ACM New Artist of the Year, Cole Swindell. He began the show with two songs from his latest album All Of It, “Love You Too Late” and “Sounded Good Last Night” then went back to his self-titled first album with songs “Lonely Tonight” and “Hey Y’all”. Right as the fans were getting energized, Swindell changed the mood of the show with slower songs such as “Middle of a Memory” and “Break Up in the End”. The fans didn’t seem to mind it as they were singing along the whole way through.
If you recall, a few months ago a third-grade teacher, Courtney wrote on social media about a hilarious moment she shared with her students about Cole Swindell and NYCountry Swag arranged for her to finally meet her favorite country artist and tickets to the show on Saturday. Read more about that here.
“Nothing helps me get over a break up better than a party, drinking song”, Swindell admitted before performing a combination of three of his drinking songs, “Brought to You by Beer” from the first album, “No Can Left Behind” from his second album You Should Be Here and “Reason to Drink” from All Of It. These songs provided a good segway into his next and newest song “Drinkin’ Hours”, which he just released on June 21st.
“Make sure y’all appreciate who you still have here tonight,” Swindell said after performing his second number-one single “You Should Be Here”. The track was written in honor of his father, who unexpectedly passed away back in 2013. The crowd grew even louder when Swindell rattled off three of his biggest hits, “Ain’t Worth the Whiskey”, “Let Me See Ya Girl” and his first number one single “Chillin’ It”.
This was not the first time Swindell played Jones Beach Theater. He opened for Florida Georgia Line on their Dig Your Roots Tour in 2016 and Dierks Bentley on his What The Hell Tour. “You guys have had my back since the first time I played this venue so thank y’all”, Swindell praised the boisterous crowd.
Swindell covered shortened versions of “Old Town Road” and “This Is How We Roll”, a song he co-wrote with Florida Georgia Line. He then exited the stage for a few minutes before the fans heard sounds of a heart monitor getting faster and faster; we knew what song was coming next. Swindell closed his set with “Flatliner”, leaving the crowd with the right energy as they await the headliner, Luke Bryan.
Swindell and Bryan have a long history together. They met when Bryan performed a show at Swindell’s Sigma Chi fraternity house at Georgia Southern University, the same school and same frat Bryan was in back in his college days. They stayed in touch and when Swindell graduated college, he went on tour with Bryan, not performing but selling merchandise and writing songs for him. Swindell wrote or co-wrote songs such as “The Sand I Brought to the Beach”, “Beer in the Headlights”, “Roller Coaster” and many more. He opened for Bryan back in 2014 on his That’s My Kind of Night Tour. Swindell, however, did not perform Sunday night as he was in Chicago playing the Windy City Smokeout with Chris Young, LANCO, Eli Young Band, Ashley McBryde, Jordan Davis, Devin Dawson, and Old Dominion.
It was finally time for Luke Bryan, who came out driving an ATV and performed “What Makes You Country” and “Huntin’, Fishin’, Lovin’ Everyday” standing on top of it. He kept the party going with two singles from Kill The Lights “Kick the Dust Up” and “Move”. Bryan then grabbed an electric guitar and shredded “I See You” from his 2013 album Crash My Party.
“These next two songs are for you, Jones Beach”, Bryan shouted before performing two beach songs in “Roller Coaster” and “Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset, Repeat”. Bryan then took a break to give shout-outs to DJ Rock, Jon Langston and Cole Swindell for keeping everyone entertained. “We got two nights in a row here so that means we can party tonight, get about three hours of sleep, wake up and then do this s**t all over again.” Bryan also mentioned that it is his birthday week so he took another shot of tequila. “Here’s to the coolest, one of the most unique venues in all of North America, right here!” he yelled before doing the shot. “Thank you so much for making two nights happen!”
Before playing “Most People Are Good” he joked about how much he loves drunk mothers but then got serious and said, “mothers are the true saints in this world and if they all qualify for sainthood then they aren’t good people they’re the best people”.
Sandwiched between his first single “Do I” and his newest single “Knockin’ Boots” was “Rain is a Good Thing”. This was a good representation of how Bryan’s career progressed. After “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” and “Crash My Party” the crew wheeled out the piano which caused an uproar of the fans; “Drink a Beer”, a fan favorite, and “Strip it Down” were next. Fans took out their phones and held up their flashlight as Bryan performed a beautiful rendition of his sad ballad on the piano. Giving the fans a quick insight into next Saturday’s Jones Beach concert, Morgan Wallen surprised the audience on Sunday night when he came out to perform his most recent number one hit, “Whiskey Glasses”. Wallen will perform alongside Dan + Shay, HARDY and headliners Florida Georgia Line on their ‘Can’t Say I Ain’t Country Tour’ hitting the beach July 20th. Bryan also invited the openers back to the stage later on in the night to sing a group version of David Lee Murphy’s “Dust On The Bottle”.
The superstar performed “Drunk On You”, “I Don’t Want This Night To End”, “Play It Again” and “That’s My Kind of Night” before walking off the stage. However, fans knew an encore was coming as the 2016 Billboard Top Country Artist was yet to play his smash hit “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)”. When he came back out, he gave the fans what they wanted; singing and moving his hips to the catchy, country track. To the surprise of the fans, Bryan came back and performed a song that was not his. He ended his set with a cover of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”. An unexpected but brilliant ending to an incredible night at Jones Beach.
Bryan will take Swindell, Langston and the Sunset Repeat Tour to Alabama next weekend but will be back in the New York area on September 7th at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey and Bethel Woods Center for the Arts September 12th.
We want to send a big thank you to everybody who purchased tickets during our presale and joined us for our tailgate party! We’ll see ya at the next show.
Keep up with Bryan and the ‘Sunset Repeat Tour’ by following him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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