logo
The Tailgate: Bringing top-tier live entertainment to the Basin

The Tailgate: Bringing top-tier live entertainment to the Basin

Yahoo21-03-2025

MIDLAND, Texas (KMID/KPEJ)- Opening in 2021, The Tailgate has quickly become Midland's go-to concert venue.
When co-owners Ariel Herrera, Sean Elphick, and J.D. Granato first came up with the idea, it was originally going to be a food truck park. But after collective thinking, they launched a business that's hosted some of music's biggest names and up-and-comers.
The already-announced lineup for this concert season includes some big names such as Robert Earl Keen, Randy Rogers, and Shane Smith and the Saints. Currently, The Tailgate has announced their lineup through late June, but the season will continue until November with new acts being announced periodically.
Of the already announced lineup, over half the artists are based in the Lone Star State.
'All three of us, me, Shawn, and J.D. are all from Texas,' said Ariel. 'We love Texas and definitely want to support artists from Texas. That means a lot to us and so I think it's amazing seeing artists like Treaty Oak Revival, you know, start here and get so much bigger.'
Announced 2025 Lineup
Robert Earl Keen: Saturday, March 22nd
Randy Rogers: Wednesday, March 26th
Shane Smith and the Saints: Friday, March 28th
Priscilla Block: Friday, April 4th
The Spazmatics: Saturday, April 5th
Kolby Cooper: Thursday, May 1st
Sommer Ray + the Montana Boyz: Saturday, May 17th
Aaron Watson: Friday, June 6th
Ty Myers: Thursday, June 26th
Owner Q&A
What's your favorite song out of all the artists that have performed here?
'The one I was the most excited to do is Heaven by Los Lonely Boys. I was so excited to see them. I grew up listening to that song with my family and belting it out with my siblings in the car and so that show is just the most meaningful to me.'
Past or present, who is your favorite artist to play here?
'I love William Beckman. He has an amazing voice and I think he was most surprising. I had never heard him live before and he just really took it away.'
What's a dream act that you would like to get here someday?
'I would love to have T-Pain. We're working on it. I think that one would be such a fun one. If I had to rank them I'd do T-Pain, Megan Maroney, Parker McCollum. Red Clay Strays is another one, I mean they would be really great out here, I love them.'
The Tailgate Details
The Tailgate is open Friday from 4:00 pm to 12:00 am and on Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am to 12:00 am. You can contact them at (512) 507-5018 or visit them at 4401 N Big Spring St, Midland, TX 79705.
For more information on tickets visit https://www.tixr.com/groups/thetailgatemidland
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Photos: Thunderbirds fill sky at Beale AFB as base holds first airshow in years
Photos: Thunderbirds fill sky at Beale AFB as base holds first airshow in years

Yahoo

time3 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Photos: Thunderbirds fill sky at Beale AFB as base holds first airshow in years

The roar of the Thunderbirds filled the sky Saturday over Beale Air Force Base, long known for the more clandestine surveillance and recon missions of the U.S. Air Force. The Air & Space Expo is Beale's first air show in seven years. It concludes Sunday. In addition to the Air Force's premier demonstration team, the show also features the U-2 Dragon Lady and the T-38 Talon — planes based at Beale — along with aerial exhibitions that include the MV-22 Osprey, the U.S. Navy F-18 Rhino Demo Team, and a KC-135 Stratotanker. On the ground, the show features displays of the new collaborative combat aircraft that were recently assigned to the base. Admission to the event is free The final day of the show opens Sunday at 9 a.m., with aerial performances beginning around noon and concluding at 4 p.m. Attendees must be in line to park by 1:30 p.m., when the gates close.

What The Streaming Wars Reveal about Bad Strategy
What The Streaming Wars Reveal about Bad Strategy

Forbes

timea day ago

  • Forbes

What The Streaming Wars Reveal about Bad Strategy

Rooftop party and viewing in Los Angeles. Created By Michelle Loret de Mola using Midjourney Max just pulled a classic Hollywood move: the reboot. Two years after Warner Bros. Discovery stripped away the iconic 'HBO' from its name, they've decided to bring it back. Max will now be called HBO Max…again. This will be the streaming service's fifth name change. They were HBO Go in 2008, then HBO Now in 2015, then HBO Max in 2020, then just Max in 2023, and now (hopefully, finally) back to HBO Max. On the face of it, this just seems like bad brand management. But there's a bigger lesson to be learned here. These changes were more than just rebrands: each new name came along with a fundamentally different business strategy. HBO succeeded when it relied on its own creativity. And then stumbled when it tried to copy competitors. For decades, HBO had a unique playbook. It focused on a combination of recently released movies, exclusive live events, and original series. While broadcast television depended on advertising, HBO used a subscription model. HBO played a leading role in what has been called 'television's second golden age.' It greenlit shows that shaped the culture, like The Sopranos, Sex and The City, The Wire, and Game of Thrones. At its core, HBO's playbook was all about the curation and production of prestige content. Of course, that was before the consultants came in. In June 2018, Time Warner, HBO's parent company, was acquired by AT&T for $85 billion. Shortly after completing the acquisition, John Stankey, the new CEO of WarnerMedia decided to change the playbook. To Stankey, HBO's tightly curated, time and resource-intensive model didn't seem scalable. He wanted a broader, more mass market platform with more content, more engagement, and more subscriber growth. In a town hall to HBO employees, Stankey emphasized, "We need hours a day. It's not hours a week, and it's not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people's hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes. I want more hours of engagement." Stankey believed substantially more content would increase viewer engagement, and that would provide more data, in turn enabling monetization through advertising and subscriptions. In short, HBO's new strategy would be to stop being HBO and start trying to be Netflix. And who wouldn't want to be Netflix? Netflix was the company that slayed Blockbuster, reinvented TV distribution, disrupted Hollywood, and rewrote the rules of what it meant to be a media company. Today, Netflix enjoys a half trillion dollar market cap that is double that of Disney and 22 times that of Warner Bros. Discovery. There was just one problem with that playbook: HBO isn't Netflix. What followed was seven years of wandering in the wilderness, as HBO struggled to emulate the Netflix model. Frustrated with the new strategy, HBO CEO Richard Plepler walked away in 2019. HBO's original content was folded into Warner Bros.' extensive library of content and relaunched as HBO Max. And while global subscriptions for HBO Max reached 69.4 million by October 2021, much of that growth came because we were all locked up at home during a pandemic. Unable to drive further growth from its acquisition, AT&T spun off WarnerMedia to create Warner Bros. Discovery in 2022. And things got even worse. Warner CEO David Zaslav doubled down on the Netflix playbook by dropping the HBO name altogether and flooding the platform with content from Discovery and Food Network. Suddenly, the platform that brought you The Wire was pumping out shows like Dr. Pimple Popper and My 600-lb Life. The end result of this copycat strategy was external confusion, internal demoralization, and financial underperformance. In recent months, Warner Bros. Discovery execs have begun to concede that they simply can't compete head-to-head with Netflix. As JB Perrette, the president of streaming, said in an interview, 'We started listening to consumers saying, 'Hey, we don't really want more content, we want something that is different, we want to end the death scroll with something that is better.'' It turns out no one wants a second-rate Netflix when they can already subscribe to the real thing. They want an alternative. They want HBO. Over the past year, Max has regained momentum by focusing more on quality, adult shows like The White Lotus and The Pitt instead of trying to provide a firehose of entertainment for everyone. The return to being called HBO Max is a long-overdue recognition that this is where its future lies. WarnerMedia made the same mistake with other properties, too. The company hired McKinsey to develop a growth playbook for CNN. Trying to emulate Disney+, they decided to launch CNN+. But guess what? Anderson Cooper isn't Iron Man. Wolf Blitzer isn't Obi Wan Kenobi. The service was dead in a month. According to Nielsen, Warner Bros. Discovery drew 1.5% of viewing time in March. This was less than Disney, Amazon, Paramount, Roku, and Tubi. Netflix dominated, with 8% of total viewership. The lessons from the streaming world apply to every industry: the minute you stop asking what makes you special and start copying others, you've already lost. You have to be creative. You have to come up with your own playbook for growth. It's a mistake to think you can succeed by copying the strategies of successful competitors. Trying to win by benchmarking high-performing peers feels safe. It has persuasive appeal when presented in a PowerPoint deck. A huge industry of consultants has grown up around it, adding to the illusion of safety. And it's an easy way to win short-term praise from the business press and investors. In reality, though, benchmarking is a fast track to mediocrity. Copying others only tells you what worked yesterday for someone else, when what leaders need to focus on is what will work for them tomorrow. Great companies aren't built on copycat playbooks — they succeed by doing something original based on their unique strengths. Even while others were trying to copy it, Netflix stayed true to its own unique playbook based on global content, viewer data, and rapid iteration. When the company took out $2 billion in debt in 2018 to help finance a surge in original content, skeptics questioned whether its strategy was sustainable. But it wasn't a gamble — it was an investment based on data. Unlike traditional studios, Netflix knew exactly what its viewers were watching, where, for how long, and when they dropped off. It used those insights to launch hit shows like Bridgerton, Squid Game, and Stranger Things. Netflix also localized content early, producing Korean hits for South Korea and Indian dramas for South Asia and the Middle East. By the end of 2024, the skeptics had been silenced — Netflix's subscriber numbers topped 300 million, more than double the total at the end of 2018. Netflix operates on the premise that it will win by doing things its own way. For its part, Disney could have fallen into the trap of trying to chase Netflix when it launched its Disney+ streaming service in 2019. But rather than flooding the zone with content, Disney realized that its winning playbook depended on developing content around signature franchises like Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar. These worlds are ultimately more than content — they're emotional ecosystems. And Disney knows how to turn emotions into revenue streams — through a flywheel of fan engagement, merchandise, theatrical releases, and theme park rides. For that reason, Disney doesn't define success solely through streaming metrics. It also pays close attention to loyalty, lifetime customer value, park attendance, and toy sales. Netflix and Disney+ succeeded by developing their own unique playbooks. HBO lost its way by trying to be something it wasn't. Influenced by consultants and consensus thinking, it was led into the sea of sameness, where companies go to die…or at least spend years treading water. To be sure, that doesn't mean you shouldn't watch and learn from competitors. But there's a big difference between stealing a page from someone else and trying to copy their whole playbook. The risk of doing that is threefold. First, it means you're playing to someone else's strengths, not your own. Second, it means you're focusing on what worked yesterday, not tomorrow. And third, you end up the same as everyone else, and sink into mediocrity. So if benchmarking isn't the answer, what is? The path to success lies in writing your own playbook, starting by answering five fundamental questions that define who you are and your vision for the future. HBO's latest reboot has been greeted with its fair share of sniggers and eye-rolls. But it shows that the company is waking up to what made it great in the first place. That's a good thing, giving it a shot at renewed success. The path forward for HBO isn't about going bigger or trying to please everyone. It's about going bolder, with fewer, better stories that shape the culture. In the end, the companies that come out on top aren't the ones chasing the crowd. They're the ones bold enough to say: This is who we are. This is what we believe. And this is how we win. No benchmarking required.

Ricky Saints Confirms Current NXT Star Is Also Working As A Coach In WWE
Ricky Saints Confirms Current NXT Star Is Also Working As A Coach In WWE

Yahoo

time2 days ago

  • Yahoo

Ricky Saints Confirms Current NXT Star Is Also Working As A Coach In WWE

Ricky Saints is learning quite a bit in NXT. WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard spoke with Saints at WrestleMania Media Day about his journey to NXT. Saints may be new to WWE. However, he has more than a decade of experience in the wrestling business, including stops in the NWA and AEW. When asked if there's a match that gives WWE fans a good idea of who he is as a performer, he had two in mind. Advertisement 'Maybe the one in NXT would be when I won the [NXT North American] title [from Shawn Spears in April 2025]. That'd be a top one,' Saints said. 'Anything beyond that, me versus Bryan Danielson for sure.' Saints, as Ricky Starks, competed in two singles matches against Bryan Danielson in AEW. They first squared off in a No Disqualification Strap Match at All Out 2023, and later had a brutal Texas Death Match on the September 23, 2023, episode of AEW Collision. Ricky Saints confirms Shawn Spears is coaching in NXT Ricky Saints was also asked if there was anyone in WWE that became a positive influence that he perhaps wasn't expecting to learn from. Saints disagreed with the sentiment and said everyone he's worked with has taught him a lot, including Shawn Spears. Advertisement 'No, because I feel like that discredits them,' Saints explained. 'Every person that has come to me and talked to me — Terry Taylor, Fit Finlay, Matt Bloom — have been nothing but a wealth of knowledge. Shawn Spears also is a coach there and is very knowledgeable once you listen. For all his faults, he does have some good knowledge as well.' Saints agreed that Spears might be underappreciated by some. Fans have gotten a better look at what Spears offers in his return to NXT. Spears continues to wrestle in NXT too, as a member of The Culling stable. His last match was a six-man tag team match at WWE Battleground 2025. Watch our full interview with Ricky Saints below: The post Ricky Saints Confirms Current NXT Star Is Also Working As A Coach In WWE appeared first on Wrestlezone.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store