Frankie Ballard’s vintage sound blends well with NFR week’s country veterans
If country radio no longer respects its elders, at least Las Vegas and Frankie Ballard still do.
Outside the Thomas & Mack Center, National Finals Rodeo week can look more like country music’s senior rodeo when you see big venues filled by George Strait, 64, or the team of Reba McEntire and Brooks & Dunn (61, 61 and 63, respectively).
But somehow, the 33-year-old Ballard fits in better with those guys than he does with the smattering of younger stars — Lady Antebellum, Chase Rice, Kelsea Ballerini — who join the NFR fun on the Strip through Dec. 10.
“Whenever I’m in Las Vegas I think about the Rat Pack and especially Dean Martin. Back in the old days of when Elvis was playing at the International,” says Ballard, who kick-starts the week at The Foundry inside the SLS Las Vegas on Friday. “I think about all that stuff and daydream about what it would be like walking around Las Vegas back in the ’60s.”
Or he thinks about his dad, and tries to picture him “walking the streets of Detroit in the ’50s with his pants cuffed up, with a leather jacket and a white T-shirt.”
“From fashion to function, I’m always thinking about those times,” he says. “I really pull from that era a lot.”
You can see this borne out in Ballard’s look and hear it in his sound, a bluesy roots rock that traces the path from Bob Seger’s Michigan, where he grew up, to Nashville, where he now lives, to the Texas border, where he recorded his latest album, “El Rio.”
“I’ve got a lot of blues influence, which I think made me become a rock ’n’ roll fan,” he says. “But I’m definitely also a big old-school country fan. Kind of a mixture of all that is where my wheelhouse is.”
Ballard played baseball at Western Michigan University before he won Kenny Chesney’s Next Big Star competition for the state of Michigan in 2008. He went on to open tours for Lady Antebellum and Taylor Swift while still preserving a sound that once would have been considered more alt-country than mainstream Nashville.
“I think American music is a mixture of so many things now in 2016, it’s pretty hard to put it in a box,” he says.
With country’s boundaries expanding to accommodate everyone from Chris Stapleton to Thomas Rhett, Warner Music Nashville was fine with letting Ballard record “El Rio” with his own band in a studio near El Paso, Texas. The label “inspired me that they were into my vision and into my dream of trying to cut something a little old-school, like a live band. Five guys laying down tracks in a place down by the Mexican border. It was a great experience.”
Viewing Ballard’s career through the prism of Las Vegas, it would seem festivals deserve a lot of credit for introducing him and his showmanship to wider audiences. Ballard was part of the Coyote CountryFest in 2014 and sang at Route 91 Harvest in 2015 and the ACM Party for a Cause in April.
If he’s not covering Seger’s “You’ll Accompany Me,” as he does on his album, you might hear Ballard break into “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.”
“That’s part of the deal,” he says. “When you come to see somebody live, at least the school I come from, it’s supposed to be a little bit loose and anything’s possible … that’s part of the magic of live shows. Make sure it’s different every night.”
Other rodeo-week highlights:
Country for old men
If rodeo fans didn’t quite realize Charlie Daniels is 80, they might associate the “Devil Went Down to Georgia” fiddler with the NFR all the way back to 1985, the rodeo’s first year in Las Vegas. He plays the Golden Nugget on Dec. 9 and 10.
Alabama was a big arena draw in 1985, but they were at the Thomas & Mack Center that year for a different rodeo: Helldorado. This time, you’ll find the band in The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas on Friday.
Brooks & Dunn’s Colosseum at Caesars Palace shows with Reba McEntire (Friday, Saturday, Wednesday and Dec. 9-10) take them full circle to when it was their first rodeo, in 1992.
Girls’ night out
It’s rodeo week but also nudging up to Christmas, as Kelsea Ballerini may remind us by including her recent version of “My Favorite Things” with piano prodigy Joey Alexander, in her Orleans shows with Cam on Dec. 9 and 10. Either way, the 23-year-old lowers the age curve as rodeo week’s youngest star.
Tanya Tucker, on the other hand, would not recognize much of Henderson, where she lived in 1973 when “Delta Dawn” came out. She plays the Golden Nugget on Sunday.
Jennifer Nettles also should hit town full of Christmas spirit, fresh from a week that included “CMA Country Christmas,” “The Voice” and an encore of her role as Dolly Parton’s mom in “Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love.” It all reminds people of her new album, “To Celebrate Christmas.” She sings Saturday in The Foundry at the SLS Las Vegas.
When the Judds reunited to play The Venetian in October 2015, Wynonna admitted part of the incentive was a mini-set to preview Wynonna & The Big Noise, her band project with producer-husband Cactus Moser. Their album came out this year and you can see the band Thursday at the Golden Nugget.
Bar Hopping
Your empty wallet may disagree the next morning, but rodeo week brings some of the year’s most creative promotions and “free” live entertainment. Among them:
■ The Mirage has an NFR reputation to defend, turning its sports book into a honky-tonk rocked by the likes of LoCash (Friday) and Joe Diffie (Sunday). LoCash hops next door to Gilley’s at Treasure Island on Sunday and Wednesday.
■ The MGM Grand’s Gold Buckle Zone got so big it moved from the main casino to the convention area. This year it hosts acts such as Lonestar on Sunday and Joe Diffie on Monday.
■ Along with buckets of beer (literally), the Cabo Wabo Cantina at Planet Hollywood offers live performances from The Ryan Whyte Maloney Trio, Shawn Eiferman, Jeremy James and Justin Carder.
■ The South Point showroom offers Las Vegas’ own Sierra Black around midnight Monday and Tuesday.
Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.
