As summer is starting to come to a close, the people of Jacksonville got a free concert from 99.9 Gator Country at the Landing. This time, we got to see one of the legendary bands in country music, Lonestar. This band has been together for 30 years and has released a new album called “Life As We Know It”. But before they came on, Natalie Nicole Green and the Steve Flowers Band took the stage to open up for Lonestar. They did a lot of cover songs and some original songs. Both of them made a good impression on the audience.

Another thing to point out was the return of the lead singer, Richie McDonald. He is the mainstay of Lonestar and with his return in 2012, brought Lonestar back and better than ever. Some people may not know that Lonestar came here in 2007 but with a different lead singer. I actually listened to him perform one of the songs Richie originally performed, and it was not the same. But the band is back with the lineup of Richie McDonald, Michael Britt, Keech Rainwater, and Dean Sams.  

After the openers performed, Lonestar took the stage and opened up with their classic hit “No News” and continued on with “My Front Porch Looking In”. This band has a lot of good songs, most of them are memorable such as “I’m Already There”, “You Walked In”, “Everything’s Changed”, “Mountains”, “You’re Like Coming Home”, “Mr. Mom”, “What About Now” and “Amazed”. However, with the amount of people there (a good crowd) and the heat index way too hot, people were leaving and trying to get cooled off. The people that stayed, I give props to; dedicated fans are the best. Lonestar actually played songs from their new album such as “Just The Rain”, and “How Can She Be Everywhere”, They closed out their show with a cover song of “Get Back” by The Beatles and went into the reprise of “No News” the first song they started with.  They actually came back for an encore and played “Amazed” and believe it or not, everybody slow danced to this song. To end the show the band did a rock mashup from a lot of classic rock artists and it was a good ending to the concert. 

Overall, Lonestar was a great concert from start to finish. They played memorable songs, had great stage presence, and was a fun concert to have at the landing.  Hope they come back again soon!