Billy Ray Cyrus’ Glitchy Cover of ‘Old Town Road’ at Trump’s Liberty Ball Had Him Asking ‘Is Anyone Awake?’: Watch

After fellow country star Carrie Underwood‘s version of “America the Beautiful” was delivered a cappella after two awkward minutes of silence at Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Monday (Jan. 20), the technical issues appeared to continue later that night during a shambolic set by Billy Ray Cyrus at the Liberty Ball.

In video of the performance, a confused-looking Cyrus, 63, begins strumming his electric guitar after playing the video intro to Lil Nas X’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Old Town Road” on the screen behind him. As the audio from the song cued up, Cyrus attempted to play guitar and sing along, with his instrument and vocals inaudible as he looked around in confusion.

At one point he turned his back to the audience for several seconds, then moved back to the mic to no avail in what turned into a bizarre lip synch ramble that went viral for all the wrong reasons. “I think y’all was just getting warmed up, to be honest. You wanna do a little more of it,” Cyrus croaked, as he strummed the song’s melody on his guitar and whistled the chorus through his teeth to a silent audience just after the video’s credits rolled behind him.

After singing the song’s chorus in a crackly voice and rapidly skipping back and forth across the stage while the crowd finally came to life and sang the lines back to him, Cyrus tried to get the audience to clap along to his a cappella singing, explaining, “they told me to kill as much time as possible,” and wondering if they knew the words to his signature 1992 breakthrough hit, “Achy Breaky Heart.”

“Is my guitar still on?” Cyrus asked. “I think they cut me off. I don’t hear my guitar anymore.” Looking around for help, while saying “check” into his mic, Cyrus said, “is anybody awake? I don’t hear it. Do y’all hear this? Where’s everybody at? Check. Is anyone back there? Can someone turn my guitar back on? We gonna sing a little bit more.”

As the awkward silence continued, Cyrus looked in vain for help, asking the crowd, “Do y’all want me to sing more or do you just want me to get the hell off the stage? I don’t give a damn.” A guitar tech finally came out and tried to remedy the sound problems with the guitar to no avail.

Cyrus then made reference to Underwood’s performance just hours earlier, where she sang without the planned accompaniment from the Armed Forces Chorus and the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club after a long, awkward silence during the swearing-in for Trump.

“I could try it like this… After what Carrie Underwood did today — wasn’t Carrie Underwood fabulous? — Carrie Underwood, you were amazing today,” Cyrus said, taking off his hat and bandana to mild applause. “They had technical difficulties too. And in life, when you have technical difficulties you just gotta keep going. Or as President Trump would say, you gotta fight!”

After another try, Cyrus asked his fans to “just snap your fingers” as he did a raspy a cappella bit of “Achy Breaky Heart” before leaving the stage. At press time it did not appear that Lil Nas X had reacted to Cyrus’ performance and Cyrus had seemingly not reacted to posts dubbing his set an “epic disaster.”

Cyrus did post a pic from his performance on Instagram, writing, “Honored to kick off the Liberty Ball at the request of our 47th President and Commander-in-Chief @realdonaldtrump. When you get knocked down, you get back up. You fight and persevere,” which followed up an earlier image from his sound check at Capitol One Arena.

Watch Cyrus’ performance below.

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