Montgomery Gentry Hit the Stage for First Shows Without Troy Gentry [Watch]
Montgomery Gentry are back onstage for their first shows since the death of Troy Gentry, and new fan-shot footage shows how Eddie Montgomery and his band are getting around his absence onstage.
Gentry died in a helicopter crash before a scheduled Montgomery Gentry show in October of 2017, and Montgomery took the rest of the year off before returning to the stage on Jan. 19 for the first date of Montgomery Gentry's 2018 Here's to You Tour. A fan captured the video above during the second night of the tour on Jan. 20 at the Family Arena in St. Charles, Mo., offering fans who weren't at the show their first glimpse at how the band is moving on without Gentry.
The nearly 23-minute video features highlights from some of Montgomery Gentry's biggest hits, including "Where I Come From," "Something to Be Proud Of," "Hell Yeah," "Lucky Man," "My Town" and "Gone." Montgomery still serves in the same role he's always played onstage, singing his familiar parts and riling up the crowd, while the other musicians who have played in Montgomery Gentry for years take turns splitting Gentry's parts.
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"At first I was gonna sing everything, and then I'm like, 'You know what, I don't think I should do that,'" Montgomery tells Taste of Country. "All of our guys [in the band] are great singers, too, and of course, they've been our family, also. All of us guys together have been on that bus for 20 years ... we got to talking about it, and the band was like, 'Man, we would really like to sing a verse here or sing a verse there.'"
He admits it gave him "a lot of sleepless nights" to decide whether to move forward with Montgomery Gentry without his partner of more than two decades, but he remembered a conversation they'd had in which they agreed that if one of them died, the other should continue on with the music they'd made.
"I called the band up, too ... I was like 'You know what, T-Roy would kick my ass if we didn't keep it rocking right now," Montgomery says.
Montgomery Gentry's ninth studio album, Here's to You, is set for release on Feb. 2. The duo finished the recording just two days prior to Gentry's death. The Here's to You Tour runs through Sept. 15.
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