David Lee Murphy steals show as Brooks & Dunn visit London, Ontario

On Saturday night Brooks and Dunn brought their Reboot 2024 tour to London, Ontario to a sold-out Budweiser Gardens. The openers were Ernest and David Lee Murphy.

Ernest started the night with about a 25 minute set and stopped about halfway through to address the crowd in London, he looked around left and right, high and low and thanked everyone for coming early to see his set and filling the arena up. He said this was easily his biggest crowd of 2024 and from what I could tell the arena looked about 90 percent full when Ernest took to the stage. It was actually quite impressive when most of the time half the crowd is only there to see the headliner. Ernest promised he’d be back and said he couldn’t wait before he closed his set with “Flower Shops”

After just a short 10 minute changeover David Lee Murphy took to the stage and opened with a couple of his songs before stopping and asking the crowd if they wanted to hear some songs that he had wrote for other artists that we may know and what followed were plenty of songs that the crowd knew and turned into about a 20 minute sing a long with Blake Shelton’s “The More I Drink” Jason Aldean’s “Big Green Tractor” Thompson Squares “Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not” Kenny Chesney’s “Pirate Flag” Jake Owen’s “Anywhere With You” and closed out the portion of covers with Jason Aldean’s “The Only Way I Know” as the set went on the crowd got louder and louder just knowing what song was getting closer on the setlist and when the first few notes of “Dust on the Bottle” rang through Bud Gardens the damn roof almost blew off the place with the sold-out crowd singing word for word with David Lee Murphy even pointing the mic to the crowd for a verse. As the song ended an he walked off the stage he received a big ovation and his set was definitely the highlight of my night.

BUT there was still the legendary Brooks and Dunn to perform. And I knew what all the people in attendance had in store because this was my 4th time seeing Brooks and Dunn live with my 1st time actually being way back in 2010 when I thought it would be the only time I’d see them live when they were on their “Last Rodeo” tour where the duo was supposedly not going to be performing anymore. That was a memorable show but not because it was the only time (or so I thought) I’d see Brooks and Dunn but it was the openers they had on that tour I went to Darien Lake and they had Merle Haggard opening for them and I’d never seen him at the time so that was great to see live and unfortunately he passed away a few years after that so it made it more special I was able to see the “Hag” take the stage 1 time. Brooks and Dunn took to the stage in London opening with “Brand New Man” and when Kix Brooks talked to the crowd after the first few songs he thanked everyone for coming and said early on they realized that Canada was a good country crowd and supported them and treated them very well during their career where he joked thanks for paying our mortgages for the last 30 years. They went on to play other fan favorites like “Red Dirt Road” “Play Something Country” “Cowgirls Don’t Cry” and “Neon Moon” which was basically 90 minutes of the crowd belting out the words to every song. When the left and then returned for the encore it was “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” and “Only In America” but the 69 year old Kix Brooks and 71 year old Ronnie Dunn did a great job putting a Canadian twist on the song bringing out members of the Canadian military before a few cannons on stage shot streamers of red and white up into the air to slowly fall down on the people who were on the floor and put an end to a great Saturday night.