Music

The Detroit Lions got a win on Thanksgiving Day – and so did Shaboozey, who was the halftime act for the first of the National Football League’s three games on Thursday. 

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The seven-minute performance featured a medley of three tracks from the six-time Grammy Award nominated country singer-rapper’s latest album, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going – “Last of My Kind,” “Highway” and, of course, “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” currently tied for the longest-running No. 1 song on the Billboard 100 at 19 weeks.

Shaboozey, sporting a Lions varsity jacket for the occasion, was accompanied by his touring band as well as a 10 local onstage dancers choreographed by Fatima Robinson, with the Lions cheerleaders on the field in front of the stage and a crowd of 500 fan volunteers behind it. 

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“Our goal is to be able to bring artists and music that we feel are going to resonate with a broad audience, with families, and also try to be as culturally relevant as possible – I don’t know if that applies to any artist more right now than Shaboozey,” Seth Dudowsky, the NFL’s head of music, told Billboard after the performance on Thursday.

He said the league began considering at its Thanksgiving halftime artists near the start of the current season and chose Shaboozey around mid-September. “With the NFL of course we want to work with the biggest artists and…artists who are on the rise. So, really, this was just the perfect timing and the perfect artist.”

Shaboozey was followed on Thursday by Lainey Wilson during halftime of the Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game in Arlington, Texas – with a surprise duet with Jelly Roll – while Lindsey Stirling did the honors for the Green Bay Packers’ home game against the Miami Dolphins at night. Millions, of course, saw Shaboozey’s segment – well-received by the crowd despite echoey sound in portions of the stadium – on CBS as they were watching the NFC conference-leading Lions hang on for a 23-20 victory over the Chicago Bears. But there was plenty viewers didn’t get to see – but Billboard did thanks to being on the spot on Detroit’s Ford Field…

Not Finally Over

The show didn’t stop when the music did on Thursday. Instead Shaboozey came off the stage and beelined for the Lions’ sideline, where he slapped hands and posed for selfies with fans along the front row – at one point hoisting himself up to get even more up close and personal. He spent a fair few minutes with the crowd and continued as he went through the team tunnel, greeting a group of U.S. Marines who served as the pre-game color guard, as well as stagehands, and posing for more selfies with fans seated in the stadium’s premium Tunnel Club. 

Bruce Rodgers, the halftime show’s production designer, was not surprised by the unscripted “encore.” “Having met him, I’m not surprised at all,” Rodgers, whose Salem, Conn.-based Tribe, Inc. is preparing for its 19th Super Bowl in February, told Billboard. “He’s just a really cool dude. When you get an artist like this who’s so quickly elevated in their musical career, they still remember how to be regular folks and they want to connect.”

Rodgers added that Shaboozey was “so excited” about the halftime engagement, and also “so nervous. You could tell he was just overly excited but also super nervous, but he just kept working and working, and of course when you get in a room with 60,000 people (64,275, according to the Lions) and you’re an artist like that, it just turns on what you need.”

Raising The Bar

Rodgers and Tribe were brought in by the Lions to elevate the halftime show – a gig that was even more challenging, in some ways, than the Super Bowl.

“I’ve learned how to get a show on the field in under seven minutes and off the field in under six – that’s what we have to do for Super Bowl,” Rodgers said. “Here I have to get it on in five and a half and off in four, so it’s even more intense. And we have one tunnel here, and that’s the same tunnel the athletes have to use. So there’s a lot of coordination.”

Rodgers and company made a trek to Detroit in early November to scope out the venue and presented a selection of designs for Shaboozey and his team to choose from. The Tribe gang – Rodgers and eight production supervisors who regularly work with him on the Super Bowl – then trained a crew of 400 local stagehands and 15 local supervisors on the operation. “You start and you’re doing it in 20 minutes, and by the second day of rehearsal you’re down to five minutes,” Rodgers says of the stage, which was broken up into 10 sections and stored on the stadium’s sidelines, discreetly hidden by large square pads. “There’s a certain way to build these things in front of crowds like this. We’ve just learned techniques, and how to train folks.”

Thursday’s performance was preceded by two days of rehearsals, including having the 500 fans come in the previous afternoon. On game day things went without a hitch, with the separate sections rolled into the tunnel and packed up by the time the game finished.

Getting a Kick Out of It

While Shaboozey was on stage the Lions and Bears’ placekickers and punters came onto the field for their usual second half preparations. The Lions’ Jack Fox even did his warm-up shimmy in time to “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”

…And All The Trimmings

Shaboozey wasn’t the only big star inside Ford Field on Thursday.

Detroit resident and Lions regular Eminem was in the house, shown on the video screens during the second quarter while his “Lose Yourself” was playing over the PA. James Hetfield of Metallica – one of Lions head coach Dan Campbell’s favorite bands – was not there in person but delivered a taped prompt to fire up the crowd during the second half. 

Longtime Detroiter and “old school Lions fan” Tim Allen was also at the game, visiting the sideline pre-game with his wife Jane Hajduk – a big Shaboozey fan. “We were up in Leland (Michigan) all summer, and every time ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’ came on they’re all dancing. She loves it.” Hajduk quickly noted, however, that “we’re huge football fans, and Shaboozey is a bonus.”

Allen is preparing for the Jan. 8 premiere of his new ABC sitcom, “Shifting Gears,” about a widower suddenly living with his estranged daughter and her teenaged children. “At my age, I know exactly what I like to do,” Allen says. “I can’t believe they found a subject I liked. I always wonder what Tom Brady said in Tampa Bay when they go, ‘Here’s the offense we’re looking at’…and he says, ‘What I need is two slot receivers that are intermittent’…At some point the jockey’s gonna have to ride the horse. But I’m excited about it.”

Fellow actor and singer-songwriter Jeff Daniels was around pre-game as well, performing a song about the Lions – “The Curse of Bobby Layne” – during the pre-game show. Daniels, who previously wrote a song called “Silver and Honolulu Blue” about the Lions’ “decades of darkness,” is hoping to record the new track for release in the near future. 

“If I do the song right, maybe they’ll ask me some day” to perform for Thanksgiving halftime, quipped Daniels, whose new independent film “Reykjavik,” about U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1986 nuclear summit in Iceland, is due out next year. Daniels headed to his home in Chelsea, Mich., to watch Thursday’s game but explained that the Thanksgiving game “is as traditional as turkey for Lions fans. It’s just been in our lives since the beginning of time – or the NFL. It’s a great day – especially if we win, which we haven’t done for a long time now, even with this team. So we’re hoping today’s different.

The Lions’ victory was, in fact, the first time since 2016 that the team won the annual holiday matchup.