Inside the record-breaking American concert attendance night for George Strait at Kyle Field at Texas A&M

Early in his Saturday night performance at the home of A&M football, George Strait—a native Texan whose son attended Texas A&M—made quite the discovery.
“Are there any Aggies out there? Former Texas State player Strait addressed the boisterous audience that filled three decks on four sides and eight floors up into the brazos County clear night, saying, “I’m ashamed to say this, but this is my first time ever to be in Kyle Field.” “Oh no! Just ask me to return, and I’ll be there.

The 72-year-old Strait made a record-breaking and unforgettable debut on Kyle. The crowd of 110,905 eclipsed the previous record of 107,019 during a Grateful Dead performance in Englishtown, New Jersey, in 1977—a record for a ticketed event in the United States—under a crescent moon.
“I’m afraid!” Midway through his act, Strait revealed the record-setting number and made fun of the audience. That is incredible. One hundred ninety-nine?
At around 9:15 p.m., Strait hit the stage after an opening act that included Catie Offerman and Parker McCollum from Conroe. He kicked off the setlist with “Stars on the Water” and also performed a few new songs from his forthcoming album “Cowboys and Dreamers.”
“Dude, I really want to “whoop,” but you can’t do that if you don’t attend this school, isn’t that right?” Strait questioned the assembly. “I want to whoop. .. Cheers! It was something I had to do. As my son, Bubba, graduated from this school, he stated it was okay if I did that.
That song almost brought the house down, something Strait would later do with “Amarillo By Morning,” to the accompaniment of roughly 111,000 fans in a moment that immediately became legendary for both Aggies and non-Aggies.
Remember, this is all brand-new for A&M. In an effort to find new methods to generate money, the university staged two events this summer: the Strait concert one week later and an international football match between Brazil and Mexico on 8 June at Kyle Field, which was a huge success by all accounts.
In its more than 100 years of hosting A&M football, the opulent Kyle Field, which underwent a half-billion dollar reconstruction ten years ago, has solely been utilised for A&M football-related activities.
Trev Alberts, the athletic director at A&M, said this spring that “in all of college athletics, especially in college football, most of the time you’ve got an incredible asset sitting there, empty other than seven Saturdays a fall.” “We’re all trying to figure out how to activate these spaces in athletics.” You need to change your perspective from just holding sports department activities in really famous locations.
In 1981, my late father-in-law Roy Galny, who was a former detective and police officer in Bryan and co-owner of Tip-Top Records in Bryan from 1971 to 1982 with his wife Michele, assisted in setting up one of Strait’s first performances in Bryan-College Station. A long distance from the now-gone Texas Hall of Fame dance hall out on FM 2818, I could only wonder what Mr. Galny, who passed away from cancer in 2003, would have made of that historic scene in 2024 as I took in Strait’s big Kyle performance in astonishment.
Thanks to an impromptu Father’s Day present from my wife Crystal and mother-in-law Michele, my two eldest children, Will, 14, and Zoe, 13, and I ended up to the Strait performance as a last-minute deal (I reside in Bryan as the B-CS bureau of the Houston Chronicle). I finally got to watch a winner in Kyle Field, my non-Aggie buddy joked (for the record, I’ve seen enough of winners at A&M).
We were perched on the third deck on the north side, enjoying a pleasant breeze on this perfectly beautiful Saturday night in the Brazos Valley. We eventually decided to purchase our tickets when they became available for as little as $18 on the evening of Offerman and McCollum’s performance.
Bobby, who had driven in from Cypress for the event, sat next to me, and we quickly became fast friends. We sang Strait songs and exchanged tales like we were old friends, demonstrating the bonding power of a great concert. As we entered Kyle Field, one of those microphone-wielding sidewalk ‘preachers’ inquired as to whether we thought a concert alone would satisfy us. My response? Sure, for that one night at least — and Strait did not disappoint.
It’s not the same as a Strait performance at Gruene Hall in the 1980s, but nonetheless, what a show when about 111,000 of those wonderful LED wristbands that synchronise changing colours with the songs are given out at the door. Amazing.
We had a similar experience on our way down the Kyle Field ramp late in the concert, and we were by ourselves at the time because so many fans wanted to heart Strait all the way through. Former A&M football coach R.C. Slocum once joked that he could hear the strains of ‘Phantom of the Opera’ deep in the bowels of Kyle Field.
As we down that ramp, Strait began to play ‘Troubadour’. Then, in the ancient Kyle Field, the echo and reverberations of one of his best-known songs, ‘I was a young troubadour when I rode in on a song, and I’ll be an old troubadour when I’m gone’, appeared almost ghostlike.
As Strait finished up an incredible two hours, a guy attempted to entice us with T-shirts as we left the stadium and crossed Pickard Pass beneath Wellborn Road.
Calling A&M’s football stadium by the incorrect name, the cheerful guy said, “George Strait on the front, Kyle Stadium on the back!”
My children, who were born in Bryan, grinned broadly and said that the guy must not be from this area. He probably wasn’t; this is just one more instance of how A&M’s scheme to generate some more funds on a great night for a record-breaking performance at Kyle Field was executed with George Strait-like accuracy during an otherwise quiet period for the university.

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