Country icons McEntire, Brooks & Dunn still going strong

Was doubling up two veteran country acts the only logical play, like not splitting your face cards? Or more like the missed opportunity of not splitting aces or eights?

The way Nashville, Tenn., treats most stars over 40, you can’t blame concert promoters AEG Live for teaming up Reba McEntire with her reunited buddies, Brooks & Dunn, instead of taking a chance on each selling 4,300-plus seats in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

And yet, three of the first shows put on sale (June 24, 26 and 27) were declared sold out and more dates added. Wednesday now brings the first show for fans who really need to brag on Facebook about seeing the first of what could be 48 or more Colosseum dates in the next two years.

(And last week, some of those allegedly sold-out nights did show ticket availability on AXS.com, so always check.)

The reunion of longtime friends and touring partners was announced in December. Since then, McEntire surprised the industry when her 27th album, “Love Somebody,” debuted at No. 1 in April on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart, selling more than 62,000 copies in its first week.

But then, the album did have Nashville clout behind it.

It was the first release on Nash Icon Records, a partnership between the Big Machine label (home to Taylor Swift) and Cumulus Media, which operates a whole mess of radio stations — 28 of them under the Nash Icon name.

The format (not yet in Las Vegas) blends current stars with veterans from the ’90s and 2000s.

“The idea is now being proved in a grand way,” Kix Brooks said in December when the shows were announced, long before he had the strength of McEntire’s strong debut to back him up.

“They’re playing not just songs from an era that’s not that far behind us, but also starting to introduce some new music from those artists,” Brooks said of the label that will probably release a Brooks & Dunn reunion disc as well. “It’s taking off like gangbusters, and it’s obvious those fans are there and they want to hear that music some more.”

At 60, McEntire is one of the few country singers who need use only her first name. She’s on the short list of Nashville stars who transcend ageism with a multigenerational appeal.

“That’s what’s so good about country music in my opinion, is you can play forever,” she said in December. She remembers seeing Kitty Wells — who made it to age 92 — and thinking, “This is a great business we’re in. You can go as long as you want to.”

Younger listeners may say “Kitty who?” But they know Reba. It doesn’t hurt to be Kelly Clarkson’s mother-in-law and be given a “Milestone” award by Clarkson at the Academy of Country Music Awards, before debuting the single “Going Out Like That” to a packed football stadium:

“What I’m saying here, people, is that I have the coolest mother-in-law, and you all can suck it!” Clarkson declared.

McEntire also was in inspiration to Lady Antebellum’s Hillary Scott, whose mother Linda Davis toured with McEntire as a background singer. “Linda and I were singing ‘Does He Love You’ night after night … and Hillary would be sitting on the road cases watching us,” McEntire recalled in December.

McEntire was a Las Vegas opening act for Roy Clark in the 1980s before becoming the rare country star to be booked as a Caesars Palace headliner from 1988 through 1994. Even rarer was that some of her dates fell in times of the year outside the National Finals Rodeo each December.

Brooks & Dunn split the two Caesars Palace rodeo weekends with McEntire in 1994. By then, they were three hit albums into a run that rode the “new country” movement led by Garth Brooks. By September 1996, Brooks & Dunn were packing the Thomas & Mack Center with locals.

McEntire hadn’t put out an album in five years before the new one but stayed in the public eye thanks to gigs such as hosting the ACM awards in Las Vegas and perpetual deep-cable reruns of the “Reba” sitcom.

The Brooks & Dunn reunion is more of an “event,” bringing the two back from the break they took in 2009.

“Ronnie and I probably considered ourselves brothers even more than friends,” Brooks said at December’s announcement of the Caesars deal. “I think it’s the reason we’ve made it for 20 years. We’ve never been afraid to express our differences of opinions to each other.”

However, he added of some past friction, “Facebook probably isn’t the best place to express those opinions sometimes.”

Regardless of whether the double bill “underplays” the Colosseum from a promoter’s view, it will be an organic pairing for the stars who have toured together and even released a duet single, “If You See Him/If You See Her,” stemming from album releases with those titles in 1998.

Dunn predicted the Colosseum shows would be more spontaneous and less production-driven than the venue’s usual diva showcases.

“We have the freedom here to take it anywhere we want to on any given night,” he said.

Read more from Mike Weatherford at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.