Dwight Yoakam Gives Heroic Performance Struggling from Food Poisoning, Ashley McBryde Gives Emotional Set at Alma Mater

by Julian Spivey

Julian Spivey Photo

Dwight Yoakam’s set at the First National Bank Arena in Jonesboro, Ark., on Friday, September 5, certainly wasn’t a typical show for the country music icon but wound up being a heroic effort by the singer.

Yoakam’s set was delayed by around 45 minutes from the point it was supposed to begin due to him being ill, according to a public address announcement made between Ashley McBryde’s opening set and what was supposed to be his headlining set.

When Yoakam and his fantastic band took the stage, they began with a cover of the old Carter Family standard “Keep on the Sunny Side,” which Yoakam cut on his most recent album, Brighter Days. He then performed his 1987 top-10 hit “Please, Please Baby,” and his excellent cover of Elvis Presley’s “Little Sister.” Things looked like they were going well, but following the performance of “Little Sister,” Yoakam announced to the crowd that he’d been suffering all day from food poisoning but was going to do his best to make it through the show, and then all of a sudden, he gingerly walked off the stage.

Given the news of food poisoning and his slow descent from the stage, I honestly thought that was going to be the end of the show for the night. But the nearly 69-year-old singer came back to the stage after about a 15-minute delay, with a chair to perform from for the remainder of the night.

If you’ve ever been to a Dwight Yoakam show, it could be hard to imagine Yoakam performing seated. He’s a true showman who’s known almost as much for his onstage leg wiggle and spins as he is for his legendary body of work. So, we didn’t get the typical Yoakam show due to his illness, but the fact that he performed a 20-song set despite having food poisoning is the kind of concert heroism I won't forget anytime soon. I had food poisoning in my mid-30s and didn’t want to get out of bed. I simply do not know how he managed to perform, sound pretty damn good, and even occasionally leave his chair to give us some of the usual Yoakam moves, though at a lesser level.

When he returned to the stage, he performed one of my all-time favorite Yoakam gems, “Streets of Bakersfield,” his 1988 No. 1 hit he did with Buck Owens, which was sort of a tribute to Owens and the Bakersfield Sound that Yoakam patterned his career after.

One of the surprises, pleasantly so, of the evening was how many Yoakam deep cuts he performed that I hadn’t previously seen live despite seeing him three times prior – among these were songs that went all the way back to his beginning nearly 40 years ago, like “I’ll Be Gone,” to stuff like “This Time,” the title track of his 1993 album, and “Blame the Vain,” the title track of his 2005 album.

It was nice to see these lesser-known tracks performed amidst his career’s biggest hits, like “Honky Tonk Man,” “Little Ways,” “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere,” “Guitars, Cadillacs,” and “Fast as You,” which all came in rapid succession toward the end of his set.

One of the show’s highlights was “I Sang Dixie,” Yoakam’s No. 1 hit from 1989, in which he recounted the story of its inspiration coming from an evening out at a L.A. restaurant with his visiting brother in which they saw two homeless men, a younger one and an older one, and how the older gentleman kept falling and badly injured himself on the sidewalk. He was placed into an ambulance, and Yoakam never saw him again, but the incident inspired him to fill in the pieces with fiction. Having seen Yoakam previously, he has never been one to speak much between songs, so it was a nice moment to hear him recount the story behind one of his most iconic and beloved songs. Maybe it was just a moment for him to catch his breath a bit and settle his stomach.

After rip-roaring performances of “Guitars, Cadillacs” and “Fast as You,” Yoakam left the stage, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when minutes later, he and his band returned for a fantastic cover of Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds.” This is usually the way Yoakam finishes his shows, but I absolutely didn’t expect an encore this night. 
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Julian Spivey Photo

​Ashley McBryde’s opening set for Yoakam was quite an emotional one for the singer-songwriter from Waldron, Ark., as the venue sits on the campus of Arkansas State University, which is McBryde’s alma mater. The venue also serves as ASU’s basketball arena, and she had performed throughout her college tenure there as part of the ASU band.

McBryde always puts on a raucously good show with her mixture of country-rock music, which began on Friday night with a new track, “Rattlesnake Preacher,” one of her most rocking tunes to date. It was one of a few new songs she performed during the show, including “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs,” one of my favorite new releases of 2025. I hope this new stuff means a new album is close to being released.

McBryde performed many of her finest works over her 15-song set, including singles like “One Night Standards,” her first career single, “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega,” and “Light On in the Kitchen,” which is my favorite song of her most recent album, 2023’s The Devil I Know. That album’s title track also got one of the biggest responses of the night.

McBryde had a lot of friends and family in the audience and told the story of spending time at a local bridge during her college days before performing a new song, "Creosote, " which is currently unreleased.”

One surprise from McBryde’s set, especially given the location, was that she didn’t perform “Girl Goin’ Nowhere,” which might be her best song and is one she became known to a larger crowd with after an emotional Grand Ole Opry performance. Looking at some recent setlists, I see it hasn’t appeared a lot lately. Maybe it’s one she’s tired of performing?

Walker Montgomery, an up-and-coming singer with country music in his blood, opened the show with great covers of ‘90s country hits and some originals that truly showed he’s a name to pay attention to going forward, especially if you like traditional-sounding country music.

Montgomery is the son of ‘90s country hitmaker John Michael Montgomery, the nephew of Eddie Montgomery from the hitmaking duo Montgomery Gentry, and the cousin of country singer Dillon Carmichael, who interestingly opened for Yoakam the last time I saw him live in Little Rock.

Montgomery got the crowd hyped early in the evening with a nice cover of Toby Keith’s classic “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.” He would do the same a little later with a performance of Travis Tritt’s “T-R-O-U-B-L-E.”

But what truly knocked me off my feet were his originals, which showcased that he wasn’t just a covers act. Songs like “Strangers Like Us,” “It’s What I Am,” and “Never Had You Anyway” show Montgomery has a great knack for recording songs that could’ve been hits in his father’s time on the charts.

He had already won me over by the time he superbly performed two of his dad’s biggest songs in “I Love the Way You Love Me” and “Sold (The Grundy County Auction).”

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