HARDY’s big Mississippi homecoming

• At his first headlining stadium concert — the first-ever rock show on Starkville’s Dudy Noble Field — the Philadelphia native entertained a crowd of 20,000.

Amid a chorus of loud, crunching guitars, crashing cymbals and blasts of pyrotechnics, Philadelphia, Miss., native and country and hard-rock superstar HARDY brought the fire — literally and sonically — to Dudy Noble Field in Starkville on Sept.13 for his first headlining stadium concert.

“Nashville’s nu-metal king,” as the Los Angeles Times once crowned him, stepped onstage wearing cutoff jean shorts and a t-shirt emblazoned with “Dawgs Win Again,” holding a cowbell aloft to cheers from the crowd of 20,000 spectators on the campus of Mississippi State University. 

HARDY, who found his break in music writing songs for country artists like Florida Georgia Line and collaborating with Morgan Wallen, kept the energy up during the 20-song set, which followed opening performances from Travis Denning and Lake native Randy Houser. 

The headliner’s performance leaned heavily on his hard-rock firepower, including bombastic cuts from his defiant latest album, Quit!!, and his acclaimed, half-country, half-rock 2023 double-album the mockingbird & THE CROW. Highlights included the hits “Wait in the Truck,” “Give Heaven Some Hell” and “Rockstar,” showing his full-circle evolution from mainstream country back to the heavier music of his youth.

“HARDY has probably the best energy when it comes to the crowd that I have seen in Mississippi,” said Phoebe Harris, 48, of Madison, who came to the show with a friend and their teenage daughters. “Mississippi is more of a laid-back type of crowd, but the vibe at this one for HARDY, I mean, the entire crowd was full of energy. Everybody was singing along, everybody was hollering.”

During the encore, in the leadup to a nu-metal-makeover of Blake Shelton’s song “God’s Country,” HARDY told the crowd about spending time on Dudy Noble Field at Polk–DeMent Stadium with his father while growing up.  

“I sat right over there chasing foul balls through baseball games — I’ve got a bucket full of foul balls,” he said. “Every time we’d cross from Winston County to Oktibbeha County, my dad would look at me and he would say, ‘Son, we’re in God’s country!’”

Between songs, the audience treated him to a round of “Happy Birthday” followed by chants of “HARDY!” in celebration of his 34th birthday. The concert fell on the artist’s birthday after inclement weather forced him to postpone from the original Sept. 12 date.

Although he now lives and makes music in Nashville, the artist born Michael Wilson Hardy keeps close ties to his home turf. In fact, several of HARDY’s biggest songs originated here — to be more exact, in particular deer stand deep in the woods near the Neshoba/Kemper county line. 

“I can tell you that the song ‘I Don’t Miss’ (from Quit!!), I wrote half of that — even the guitar riff — I wrote in my head in the deer stand,” he said. “I wrote the chorus for ‘Unapologetically Country As Hell’ (from 2020’s A Rock) in the deer stand. ‘Jim Bob’ (also from Quit!!), I wrote like three-quarters of that chorus in the deer stand.

“It’s the best way to pass the time, just sitting there and kind of going over and over in your head, trying to piece it together — I mean tons and tons of songs and song ideas have been sparked from just sitting there.”

While HARDY’s tour in support of Quit!! picks back up with a pair of shows at Colorado’s famed Red Rocks Amphitheater in October, what’s next is likely what got him here in the first place — more songwriting, both for himself and the country stars he befriended on his way up.

“I still write so much for other people that I feel like it’s just two different days,” he said. “I still get to write these songs that are right down the gut, and then turn around and write a song like ‘Jim Bob,’ so, I guess it doesn’t really feel like moving on as much as just compartmentalizing, but still being able to do both.

“But,” he added, “I will say it is so much more fun to write the rock stuff for me, because there’s way less pressure to follow any rules. There are rules to writing a hit country song, and you can’t really waver too far off of that. My rock and roll stuff is so much more fun and more freeing and just easier. But I’m happy to still get to do both.”