Among the trucker hats, cowboy hats and boots, fans were dressed in pink felt hats, their sparkliest rhinestone-heavy garb and knee-high fashion boots as they strutted to the venue's Cambridge Room.
Gavin Adcock headlined a show in the main room. Upstairs in the Cambridge Room, country’s rising female powerhouse Tanner Adell was headlining her own show. It was the first stop of her very first tour — "The Buckle Bunny Tour." And it sold out.
Mark our words: This will be the last time you see Adell in a 250-capacity room. An hour and a half before she was set to take the stage, her fans packed the room, staking their claim to prime viewpoints. The songstress could have easily filled a venue twice the size.
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Tanner Adell can’t be put into a box. As a 28-year-old adopted biracial bombshell donning purple eyeshadow and beach-blonde hair, she's a Malibu Barbie at the rodeo, and she proclaims it proudly in her 2023 release “Country Girl Commandments.”
The singer-songwriter was raised in both Manhattan Beach, California, and in Star Valley, Wyoming, giving her a glamorous twang that's disrupting the country genre. The Nashville-based artist is riding the new wave of country music, the kind that wears long acrylic nails, competition ribbon-covered bras and long-tailed satin ribbon bows — and turns every insult thrown her way into a hit.
Adell released her debut mixtape “Buckle Bunny” in July 2023. A buckle bunny is a “country bumpkin hoe essentially,” Adell told Pop Culture last July. The songstress had this slur hurled at her for the first time at just 16 or 17 years old, she recalled.
“Buckle Bunny,” the song, is an anti-slut shaming anthem.
“I'm at the mini-mart in a miniskirt / 'Bout to steal your man in a torn-up T-shirt / This ain't the Hamptons / We all got tramp stamps,” Adell sang, reclaiming the term. The mixtape made some waves on social media in 2023, but it was a tap from Beyoncé that shattered walls for Adell.
“As one of the only Black girls in country music scene, I hope Bey decides to sprinkle me with a dash of her magic for a collab,” she wrote on X on Feb. 11.
On March 29, 2024, five country queens broke When Cowboy Carter dropped: Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts and Brittney Spencer were featured on Beyonce’s “Blackbird” cover.
“Cowboy Carter” reached 1 billion streams within two months of its release on Spotify. Adell’s enviable assertiveness paid off big, paving the way for her 10-date debut headlining tour.
One thing about women: They get the job done right, usually punctually. At 8 p.m. sharp, DJ Honey took the stage. She commanded the audience behind the deck, building momentum. The mixed-age crowd sang loudly to Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and George Strait, never missing a beat. Right on schedule, Adell swaggered onto the stage at 9 p.m. wearing a pink corset and a dainty pink-bow-laden Victorian pannier petticoat.
Every concert has its hiccups and House of Blues surely had its own. Sound issues caused Adell to halt the show within minutes of starting. She apologized and bantered with the crowd as house staff rallied to correct the issue. This would happen twice more during the night.
As soon as the initial issues were resolved, Adell blazed “F U 150” into a rhinestone-embellished microphone. The audience met Adell word for word as they sang the sultry song about a cheating partner. She followed the one-hour set with the moody “Silverado.” “I Hate Texas” resonated with the crowd. Concert attendees vibed with the Texas-boy bashing song. No offense was taken.
Throughout the night, Adell connected with the audience, giving insight into the emotions behind her songwriting. Holding a guitar, Adell sprang into a monologue singing Luke Combs' praises. She almost quit country, she said. It was Luke Comb’s “Beautiful Crazy” that restored her commitment to the genre, but also to love.
Under the purple beaming spotlights, Adell sang “Luke Combs” acoustically. Vulnerably, she took the audience into her heart. The ballad chronicles a longing for the type of love that feels unreachable, yet hope prevails.
Eyes closed, strumming the guitar, she sang, “Sometimes better together ain't always how the story's gonna go / But every time he's singing / My country heart still wants to be the girl in a Luke Combs song.”
Coming off a string of festival appearances, you’d think Adell fans would have heard it all. On Thursday, she spontaneously veered away from her setlist to sing an unreleased song tentatively titled “Do Angels Drink Whiskey?”
As the show progressed, Adell transformed into country’s reckoning. Prancing around the stage displaying full-blown feminine whimsy, Adell playfully sang “Trailer Park Barbie.” Trailer park, as an adjective, never looked so good.
The night ended right on time with the tour’s namesake, “Buckle Bunny.” The feminist song had the entire crowd reaching for their phones to capture a moment of the rising star’s wit and allure, a keepsake of the night where it all began, the first Tanner Adell headline concert.
Adell doesn’t need to reclaim country, and she isn’t reimagining a genre. She’s paving her own lane and opening country’s eyes to an audience that has always been there.
