'Lightning in a bottle': Demand for The Boys From Oklahoma tickets exceeded expectations

Kyle Waters will see some familiar faces among the 180,000 people who will attend a concert event at Boone Pickens Stadium this week.

Some of those faces will be on stage.

The back story: While attending Oklahoma State University, Waters was employed at the Wormy Dog Saloon.

I worked the floor, picking up bottles and taking up trash, he said.

And then I started bartending.

Thats how I got to kind of know all the Red Dirt bands.

Cody Canada of Cross Canadian Ragweed played at the Wormy Dog then.

So did Jason Boland and Stoney LaRue, a classmate of Waters at Stillwater High School.

The Great Divide had a presence at the Wormy Dog before Waters started working there.

A reunion is on the horizon.

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Their four sold-out shows at Boone Pickens Stadium will benefit OSUs NIL efforts (supporting rights of college athletes to control and profit from their name, image and likeness).

The OSU athletic department staffer who is executing the event is Waters.

The former Wormy Dog bartender now is a senior associate athletic director with experience in the sports and entertainment worlds.

Waters, before returning to campus, spent more than a decade working at the multi-use sports complex StubHub Center (now known as Dignity Health Sports Park) in the Los Angeles area.

Waters rose to the position of assistant general manager at StubHub Center, which served as the home of a Major League Soccer team, the L.A.

Galaxy.

I was doing what I am doing here, facilities and ops, but we had a lot more concerts out there than we do here, Waters said.

The Boys From Oklahoma series of shows will be the first concerts at Boone Pickens Stadium since the OSUs football home was rededicated in 2009.

The celebration of Red Dirt music came about because of green: OSU wanted to create revenue.

Thats the kind of world that I came from, Waters said.

Thats what we did in L.A.

We would have soccer matches.

We would have X Games, CrossFit Games.

I had bull riding, concerts, music festivals.

Anything to create revenue at the building I was working at, that was our job, and I learned how to do it from the operations side and then I was able to be a part of booking the events.

Now music is coming to Boone Pickens Stadium.

A former first cowboy is part of the origin story.

Darren Shrum, husband of former OSU President Kayse Shrum, was an eager proponent of staging a campus concert to assist athletics and was active in discussions as the venture evolved.

He said the former president was in favor of the endeavor, if it made sense and if it would help OSU.

He said he loves OSU and will return for one of the shows.

Its going to be awesome, Darren Shrum said, indicating Waters has worked hard to make the concerts happen.

A concert on OSUs campus has been a long time in the making.

Pre-pandemic, there were plans to stage a Koe Wetzel-Cody Johnson concert at Gallagher-Iba Arena.

And then COVID happened, and everything kind of went sideways, Waters said.

The quest for a revenue-generating concert event began anew when touring normalcy resumed.

A breakthrough occurred when OSU connected with Russell Doussan of Louisiana-based Doussan Music Group, also known as DMG Presents.

If you navigate to dmgpresents.com , you can find stories about the company bringing artists like Miranda Lambert, Thomas Rhett and Kane Brown to sports venues for concert events.

Waters said it was probably 18 months ago or longer when they first started trying to put something together.

They tried to arrange a concert at Boone Pickens Stadium when the OSU football team had an open date last October.

At that time, everybody was kind of doing it, Waters said, citing stadium show examples at Tennessee (Neyland Stadium hosted two Morgan Wallen concerts in 2024) and Texas A&M (110,000-plus people attended a George Strait concert at Kyle Field in June 2024).

But enlisting an artist who can sell 50,000 tickets in a town the size of Stillwater, with the finances making sense for all parties, proved to be complicated.

So the goal of staging an in-season concert was set aside in hopes of doing an event a few calendar pages later.

But who could be booked for a stadium show? Maybe someone with Stillwater roots? Jon Folk, the agents for both Cross Canadian Ragweed and Turnpike Troubadours, discussed with me the reunion of Ragweed after 15 years of separation, Doussan said.

I mentioned this opportunity with the university and the potential of launching their reunion Tour in Stillwater at Boone Pickens Stadium.

Jon and his team put together a fantastic show and brand, The Boys From Oklahoma.

This became a true partnership with the artists, Oklahoma State University and DMG.

Author Josh Crutchmer, an authority on Red Dirt music who is tight with artists in the genre, wrote a story for Rolling Stone in early 2024 that quoted Canada saying Ragweed will never reunite.

Never Say Never is the title of Crutchmers next book.

Crutchmer recalled sitting next to Shannon Canada, wife of Cody Canada, when she tapped the author on the shoulder and said, Hey, Crutch.

Hes doing it.

I was so not expecting it to be Ragweed reuniting that I honestly thought he was going back to the bus to get a drink or to grab some water for us, Crutchmer said.

My head just didnt compute it.

It took like a full five minutes ...

before it dawned on me what she meant.

I did a sitcom sort of double-take, eyes just super wide.

Once I gathered myself, I just kind of looked at her and said, Well, thats going to going to be my story, right? And she said, Yeah, I know.

It was such a far-flung idea that when I was being handed this super-secret news, I didnt even know what to make of it.

Doussan said the credit goes to getting the band back together for The Boys From Oklahoma.

Knowing what I know now, some-body would have made it worth their while to get in a room and talk (about reuniting), Crutchmer said.

But it was Still- water and it was the chance to play at Boone Pick- ens Stadium that moved Cody Canada to entertain it.

Once they all started thinking about, frankly, how cool that would be, it was worth it to them to sit down and talk about the last two decades and make it work.

Waters was sure a one-night Ragweed reunion show would sell.

That didnt scare me, he said, indicating he knew of many people who were eager for the band to reunite.

For everyone who is close to Waters age, the show would transport them back to college days.

And of course the Turnpike Troubadours, who sold out two shows at BOK Center in 2023, would move tickets, too.

Nobody had any idea that it was going to sell 180,000 tickets, Waters said.

Heres what Waters means by that: The Boys From Oklahoma was supposed to be a one-day show.

But ticket demand was such that one day became two.

When we stopped selling tickets after the second show sold out, we still had, I think, 90,000 to 100,000 people in the queue, Waters said.

So two more shows were added.

I have been in the business for 31 years and have never seen anything like this take shape with fan and consumer fanatic interest, ever, Doussan said.

When we teased the potential of just a reunion of the band with no event, it flooded across all the digital platforms immediately and grew by the hour and days.

We created a registration page to seek interest for tickets to the stadium show and, within three days, it was over 153,000 and grew to over 250,000 by weeks end.

Just massively incredible.

Continuing, Doussan said: I am both grateful and proud to be a part of this project and series of events that will kick off in Stillwater.

Its lightning in a bottle.

Waters indicated it will be good to see the familiar faces again at the Boys From Oklahoma shows.

When living in L.A., he saw Canada two or three times when Canada performed out west.

I dont know if it was fate, Waters said.

But I told Cody and Shannon its kind of weird.

I leave here and one of the few things I was good at was showing people a good time and putting on events, and I went out to L.A.

and learned how to do it.

Asked if the Boone Pickens Stadium shows will be a one-time thing or if there could be additional concert events on campus, Waters said: I would like to think that we will do a good job.

We will make the university proud.

I can tell you that we will not be doing a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday show unless its Garth Brooks.

That would probably be the only reason.

Now, we could probably do (four days) in the summertime.

On paper, we may have bit off a little more than we can chew.

But if youre not doing that, then youre not trying to push the limits.

Thursday, April 10 Doors at 4 p.m.

5:35 p.m.: Stoney LaRue 6:25 p.m.: Jason Boland & The Stragglers 7:15 p.m.: The Great Divide 8:15 p.m.: Turnpike Troubadours 10 p.m.: Cross Canadian Ragweed Friday, April 11 Doors at 3:30 p.m.

5:05 p.m.: Mike McClure Band 5:55 p.m.: Stoney LaRue 6:45 p.m.: Jason Boland & The Stragglers 7:45 p.m.: Turnpike Troubadours 9:30 p.m.: Cross Canadian Ragweed Saturday, April 12 Doors at 3:30 p.m.

5:05 p.m.: The Great Divide 5:55 p.m.: Stoney LaRue 6:45 p.m.: Jason Boland & The Stragglers 7:45 p.m.: Turnpike Troubadours 9:30 p.m.: Cross Canadian Ragweed Sunday, April 13 Doors at 3:30 p.m.

5:05 p.m.: Jason Boland & The Stragglers 5:55 p.m.: The Great Divide 6:45 p.m.: Stoney LaRue 7:45 p.m.: Turnpike Troubadours 9:30 p.m.: Cross Canadian Ragweed Red Dirt revival: Four sold-out stadium shows in Stillwater will be Red Dirt's Super Bowl Red Dirt history: Read the Tulsa World stories about Red Dirt music through the years.

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