Dudy Noble Field has held 24 of the top 25 highest-attended college baseball games of all time, but last Friday’s HARDY concert topped all of those with 20,000 people in attendance.
Making a trip back to Starkville for the first time since Bulldog Bash in October 2021, HARDY made his return with the first major music production ever seen inside Dudy Noble. Fans flooded in starting at 4 p.m. as they listened to Travis Denning and Randy Houser open the show.
Denning played as the sun began to go down and with a high-energy set, he got the crowd excited and antsy for everything to come for the night. Denning returned to the stage to join HARDY in playing their song together, “Southern Rock.”
Following Denning was Randy Houser. Originally from Lake, Mississippi, Houser warmed the hearts of the crowd with notable hits “Note to Self,” “How Country Feels” and “Runnin’ Outta Moonlight.”
Houser told a story of the end of his first tour, expecting to return home and rest, instead getting asked to play for American troops in Iraq. He recalled going along with Jamey Johnson to Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) in Iraq to play for the limited number of troops stationed there.
Houser mentioned going to 30 bases in 11 days, and never quite feeling safe doing it, and dedicated his next song to troops that always felt what he did when he was with them.
Those in the crowd who did not witness Houser’s heartwarming performance were then warmed by the pyrotechnics of HARDY’s entrance to the stage. Cowbell in hand, the silhouette of the Philadelphia, Mississippi native was met with cheers and screams, shaking Dudy Noble harder than even the final play of an Ole Miss series victory.
His grand entrance included a snippet from “No Place Like Hometown,” a song that played every home game of the 2021 national championship season as Luke Hancock’s walk-up song. While it has been played hundreds of times within the stadium, it is possible not once was it ever met with the crowd reaction it was Friday.
Past that, “Quit!!” is not only the name of HARDY’s tour but his opening song for the show. Taking in the moment, HARDY mentioned the show’s emotion, stating his need to fight off tears. With the show on his birthday in the stadium he had so many memories enshrined in, emotion was the theme of the night.
HARDY brought his sister on stage to sing along with him for a song, and the fans in the pit sang happy birthday for him, as well as belting Creed’s “One Last Breath” when HARDY called for Starkville karaoke.
HARDY recalled memories of Starkville for the crowd. He spoke of his night before at The Klaasroom, his rides up to Starkville with his father as a kid and how he has a bucket of foul balls he grabbed chasing them down the first base line in his youth.
The emotion HARDY felt throughout his performance ultimately resonated with the crowd enough to compliment his heartfelt performance. “A Rock” was met with a very loud reaction, but the emotion hit its peak with the performance of “Give Heaven Some Hell.”
A song about losing someone you care about, HARDY spoke of his care for the troops and first responders, but he in the end said to the crowd, “If you have somebody in your life that you have lost I want you to know that for the next three and a half minutes I’m thinking about you, I wrote this song for you, look up to heaven and sing.” The Jumbotron showed teary-eyed fans hugging those around them and singing out to those loved and lost.
Throughout the night, HARDY classics were met with loud cheers all around. “BOOTS” had pyrotechnics and carbon dioxide fog floating around the stage, “Psycho” had the video wall showing an asylum and “Happy Hour” had the pit shaking. The production rivaled the biggest Starkville has ever seen.
As the encore came to a close to “Unapologetically Country,” the sentiment that remained to the crowd was the uniqueness of what they had just witnessed — the biggest performance ever put on in a Mississippi State stadium, put on by a lifelong fan and extremely successful artist from just up the road.
