The Music of Leon Bridges finds itself particularly at home Live at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail, Colorado
Evan Dale | June 1, 2025
The music of Leon Bridges has connected with a lot of people in a lot of places since he first started releasing it a decade ago. The Atlanta born, Texas rooted songwriter, vocalist, and instrumentalist has slowly but surely developed his own timeless coalescence of Soul, Gospel, R&B, Folk, and Southern Rock that feels as nostalgically tinted as it does reinventive for a new era of post-genre exploration somewhere always in the orbit of modern Neo-Soul. It’s a sliding scale of nuance that on certain tracks or throughout entire projects stylistically expands and contracts without ever losing grip on the wide-ranging yet tethered-akin signature that has made him such a force for so long.
Naturally, he finds an audience wherever he goes, even if his oft-mellow, emotionally centered flavor feels especially at home in particular environments. Play everything from the Southern Gospel leanings of 2015 debut Coming Home or the acoustically inclined Good Thing (2018) to the vintage Soul nuance of 2021 Gold-Diggers Sound or his self-titled and most recent album, Leon from last year. Then, find your mind flooded with memories and transported to sunny Southern fields, arid Texas deserts, or cool, wooded mountains.
The latter is where – across a four-day stretch from May 22-25 – three outdoor shows felt at home in Colorado. First in Colorado Springs and then at the fabled Red Rocks, Leon Bridges played back-to-back nights at massive-capacity venues nestled into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, before heading up to Vail for a far more intimate performance. There, at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, the music of Leon Bridges bridges a lot of gaps. Mountain town taste is hard to pin down. Everything from Bluegrass to Bass and back again finds an audience in any season. And yet all mountain fanbases in all four seasons can connect with the auditory aesthetic of Leon Bridges. Or perhaps, his music feels so seamlessly tied to the dreamy outdoors, that it feels form-fit to a town like Vail or a venue like The Amp.
The Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater is a short walk from the heart of Vail Village. Up the rushing snowmelt of Gore Creek and through the Betty Ford Alpine Garden where late Spring flowers begin blooming into June before being frosted out again in September, a concertgoer is immersed in the grandeur of Vail’s intimate ties to nature before even getting to the venue. Once there – especially in the Spring and Summer – that connection is only further reinforced. Encircled by green-leaved Aspens, the venue’s back-end rolls uphill away from the creek, its lawn bathed in sunshine at the beginning of dusk before adoring fans roll out blankets and stamp bottles of prosecco into ice buckets for the show.
The sun slowly begins to settle behind the framing of the The Amp’s roofline, glittering through from time to time before finally setting behind Golden Peak. Bathed in cool alpenglow, the mountains of Vail Valley envelope the venue’s audience in a dream state of sunsetting warmth and purple light before it finally fades out. When it does, the music fades in.
First up is Kashus Culpepper. The Alabama-born songwriter, vocalist, and instrumentalist takes his Country roots into heavy consideration. With a gravely register and a particularly powerful pluck, he immerses the audience – as they continue to filter in – into his warm, soulful take on Country Music and Southern Rock, tinged with irrevocable Soul. Before long, the sold-out show packs the house. From the seated concrete steps back to the green lawn, the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater fills up to its 2,600 person capacity, swaying all along to the crooning of Kashus Culpepper.
Leon Bridges casually strolls onto the stage with the understated confidence of a live music veteran. A perennial performer, his tour stretched out between the end of last year and well into this Summer makes it seem like he never gets off the road. And yet, he and his incredibly talented band bring the same warm nature and energetic stage presence to Vail that they do to every stop along the way. For an hour-and-a-half, he effortlessly navigates the immense breadth of his canon, playing the hits that his audience expect, and more than a few deeper cuts that his true fans especially appreciate. A decade of music that traverses era, epoch, and stylistic definition, boiled down to a 90-minute stretch of high-energy performances interspersed with downtempo moments of acoustic solitude, Leon Bridges and his band have their performance down to a science. And yet, the whole show still feels so custom built for the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater and for its audience. Bringing Kashus Culpepper back on stage for a collaborative rendition of Leon Bridges’s acclaimed River is a particularly special moment.
Beyond the lower Appalachia from where he hails or the rolling landscape of the Texas Hill Country he calls home, perhaps the music of Leon Bridges was always meant for the higher heights of the Rockies and the intimate setting of the Gerald R. Ford Ampitheater.
