The old saw about live albums remains true The Cowboy Rides Away: Live From The AT&T Stadium, you had to be there. But as old saws go it doesn’t always include the whole story: this is George Strait’s final show ever, the Cowboy retired after this and if you didn’t catch him on the tour (I did: here) and you couldn’t make it to Arlington, Texas last June 7th, 2014, this is as close to being there as you’re gonna get till the DVD is released November 11th.
Strait has always been too stoic a cowboy to be easy to warm up, his face like granite it often felt if he cracked a smile it would crack his face in two and his hit machine making country hits (60 of the suckers) keeping him in rifles and farmland, and with his compassion, he has given away 37 houses through the “wounded warriors” association. Also, the Jenifer Lynn Strait Foundation, named for his daughter who died in a car accident at the age of 13, donates money to children’s charities in the San Antonio area.
It all builds to a real interesting character yet as a character Strait is too taciturn a conservative to ever breakthrough in the Blue States. and any way, he is retired now and The Cowboy Rides Away fails to make a case if you wanted to join in late. The usual mix of morose rockers and country swing pus guest stars, the guest stars add little and all these songs are available elsewhere. I mean all of them. Sheryl Crow’s vocal on “Here For A Good Time” is so weak you can’t help wondering if she is under micd and Vince Gill, who should have been all over “The Love Bug”, giving Gill the chance to honor both Strait and his beloved late George Jones, but yet again there are no sparks/ There are no sparks between martina McBride and Strait on the Cash-Carter classic “Jackson” and the hootenanny superstar packed “All My Exes Live In Texas” well, I guess you had to be there. he didn’t included his excellent “You Wreck Me” Tom Petty cover and more’s the pity.
So while if you love Strait you had to be effected by the late “Troubadour” and closing “The Cowboy Rides Away”. What the album has going for it is it is a literal, all of a piece, live document, of one of the great Red Staters, a country giant saying goodbye. Is it enough? Sure, if your exes live in Texas.
Grade: B-
