“Selling out every seat at Dickies Arena, my hometown arena – that’s something that feels bigger than anything I could’ve imagined,” he wrote, in part. “It’s not just about me; it’s about all of us, every corner of this city that raised me and shaped me. It’s the Southside and Sundance Square, the little pockets of the city where music seeps through the walls and dreams grow wild.”
The 35-year-old Grammy winner meant every word — he is, as he has been from the earliest days toting his guitar to open mics around Fort Worth, congenitally incapable of being anything other than authentic. (Not for nothing was there a brief pre-show video, apparently created specifically for this concert, that cut together visual elements from across his career with footage of Bridges driving around Fort Worth before pulling up to a stop at Dickies Arena.)
Bridges' seven-member touring band included two North Texas talents, Emily Elbert and Brandon Marcel.
Andrew Sherman
Here stood one of our own, the star who still lives next door.
Bridges was making his first Fort Worth appearance in five years, having last performed in the city as a 2019 headliner for the now-idled Fortress Festival at the Will Rogers Memorial Center. This was his first North Texas appearance in two years, following a turn at Irving’s Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory.
Friday’s performance was always going to be emotionally charged — the concert served as the finale to this year’s touring behind Bridges’ fourth studio album, Leon. For nearly two hours, there was an intense ebb and flow, as Bridges worked through much of the new record, but also infused the setlist with a number of moving surprises.
The first of those came early. “Fort Worth, Texas, we back home, baby,” Bridges said as “Better Man” started up. “We’re gonna bring it back to the days when it was just me and a guitar walking down Magnolia.”
As he spoke, saxophonist Jeff Dazey and guitarist Kenny Wayne Hollingsworth appeared on stage to join his seven-member touring band and perform “Man,” which Bridges cut with Dazey and Hollingsworth for his major label debut almost a decade ago, four miles from where they now stood.
Bridges was honored by the mayor of Fort Worth, who proclaimed Nov. 15 "Leon Bridges Day" in the city.
Andrew Sherman
It was a deeply affecting gesture — Dazey and Hollingsworth slipped in behind Bridges as if no time had passed — and one underscoring the singer-songwriter’s fierce devotion to his friends and his home. (Dazey and Hollingsworth stayed to contribute to “Flowers” and “Coming Home,” and returned at the conclusion of the main set for a spirited cameo on “Smooth Sailin’,” which climaxed with Hollingsworth tearing off a spectacular solo.)
Bridges’ touring band — multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalists Emily Elbert and Brandon Marcel, guitarist Davin Givhan, bassist Corbin Jones, pianist Dave Mackay, pedal steel guitarist Will Van Horn and drummer Brandon Combs — was razor sharp throughout, the pair of North Texans (Elbert, from Dallas, and Marcel, who hails from Fort Worth) giving Bridges another creative connection to home.
As the night unfolded, Bridges moved easily between the various styles and moods he’s embraced as his career has grown and evolved.
The disco-kissed grooves found on Good Thing (“Bad Bad News,” “If It Feels Good (It Must Be)”) blended with the earthier R&B feel of tracks from Gold-Diggers Sound (“Steam”) and the more pared back, folk-flavored atmosphere of Leon (“Panther City,” “Peaceful Place,” “Laredo”), nearly all of which was showcased Friday.
Bridges also took care to fold in his popular collaborations with Houston’s Khruangbin, which find him in a more psychedelic, woozy space — “Mariella” got a gorgeous boost from opening act Hermanos Gutierrez, and “Texas Sun” brought the entire room to its feet, phones outstretched.
Saxophonist Jeff Dazey, who performed on Bridges' first two studio albums, made a cameo Friday.
Andrew Sherman
That was followed by another incredible moment, as Bridges, now at the far end of a thrust that jutted out from the stage into the audience, was joined by Marcel and special guest Abraham Alexander for tripartite harmonies on Leon’s “Ivy.”
The intoxicating blend of their voices made the ballad soar even higher: “All I really need is you.”
Elbert then took Alexander’s place for what was arguably the most potent moment in a night full of them: “River,” Bridges’ masterpiece from Coming Home, filling an arena that teemed with swaying, singing bodies, pinpricks of light from phones scattered like stars as Bridges, Marcel and Elbert harmonized on a gospel-folk shuffle.
Through it all, the audience was vocal in its appreciation and ardor for Bridges — “We love you, Leon!” and “Get it, LB!” were heard multiple times in the darkness — and they sang along with gusto to the songs that have knit themselves into Fort Worth’s identity, such as “Coming Home” or “Texas Sun.”
The encore contained yet more surprises. After a poignant, solo rendition of “Lisa Sawyer,” the sweet song about his mother, Bridges was joined on stage by Mayor Mattie Parker, who proclaimed Nov. 15 as Leon Bridges Day in the city of Fort Worth.
“The reason I’m up here,” she said, as she handed a visibly moved Bridges a plaque, “is you can feel the city’s love and appreciation. You can feel it in his music; you know he loves his city. This is your city, Leon. We love Leon Bridges — we’re so proud of him. We can’t wait to see what he does next.”
Bridges — who told Parker, “It’s so dope to end the tour in Fort Worth” — then took a run at a classic country tune, George Strait’s “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind,” with an assist from opener Charley Crockett, before closing out the night with the sweet, chiming “Beyond” and a blizzard of confetti.
Crockett’s 50-minute opening set, his first in North Texas since a May stop at the Longhorn Ballroom, was pure country, the fringe on his jacket swaying as he strummed his high-slung guitars. Fresh from his first Grammy nomination, announced last week in the category of Best Americana Album for $10 Cowboy, Crockett was backed by his five-member band the Blue Drifters. He punched out more than a dozen songs, as he interspersed his own memories of Bridges: “I met Leon Bridges on a Deep Ellum street corner better than 10 years ago now.”
All of it felt overwhelming from the seats, so I cannot imagine how it felt for Bridges — who, before anyone ever knew his name, played under the name Lost Child to a handful of people at restaurants and bars across the city, punching the clock as a dishwasher at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse — to stand on that stage and perform for a room so full of love and gratification and satisfaction, a space so large that a decade ago, he probably could not have fully conceived it.
But he stepped into the moment and met it with the same humility, talent and grace he’s shown at every step of his still-growing career. Friday felt like a summit, an arrival at a point Bridges has been working toward over the last decade. Given all he’s accomplished in that span, thinking about what could come next is dizzying.
What was particularly striking was the city acknowledging the debt it owes Bridges — for as profoundly as he cherishes Fort Worth, Fort Worth has seized upon the momentum of his rise to help subtly remake its image at home and abroad. (The Hear Fort Worth organization was launched in earnest not long after the 2015 release of Coming Home.)
Bridges is an engine of tourism, a face now synonymous with Fort Worth and an advocate for a city that has grown and changed and recast itself as a calibrated blend of country and culture.
In that way, Friday’s concert was as much a civic celebration as a creative one. Leon Bridges was home, and the sheer joy it brought to the biggest stage in the city was palpable, the full flowering of a dream grown wild and taken root in Fort Worth, Texas.
