{"id":455738,"date":"2025-09-27T16:20:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T16:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/455738\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T16:20:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T16:20:13","slug":"mumford-and-sons-sing-i-will-wait-at-grand-ole-opry-london-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/455738\/","title":{"rendered":"Mumford and Sons Sing ‘I Will Wait’ at Grand Ole Opry London Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere are few stages the world over more iconic than the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville\u2019s \u201cMother Church of Country Music.\u201d London\u2019s Royal Albert Hall is one of them. And with a capacity of 5,272, it\u2019s more than twice the size. British fans of country music filled every one of those seats Friday night when, just 100 years into its existence, the Grand Ole Opry<\/a> made its international debut, with a revue taped for an Oct. 4 broadcast on BBC 2, featuring Opry members Marty Stuart, Luke Combs<\/a>, Ashley McBryde<\/a>, Carley Pearce, and Darius Rucker<\/a>, and kindred spirits from across the pond Breabach and Mumford & Sons.<\/p>\n

\n\tEach section of the famed hall had its handful of guys wearing snappy button Western shirts and gals wearing loud cowboy hats, like goths sporting black mascara at a My Chemical Romance Halloween gig. In Nashville they\u2019d be tourists. At home they were tired of waiting for this slice of Americana to reach their shores \u2014 10 minutes before showtime the packed house was already singing along to a recording of \u201cTake Me Home, Country Roads\u201d blaring through the P.A. Moments later, Rucker rocketed out of the gate with a \u201cWagon Wheel\u201d rendition worthy of a thousand Music City bachelorette parties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe event was a double first for Mumford & Sons. It was the indie-folk trio\u2019s first time appearing on the Opry, which isn\u2019t so surprising. It was also their first time playing Royal Albert Hall, which is astounding, considering they\u2019re London locals. The inclusion of the Mumfords and Scottish step-dancing trad folkies Breabach kept the bill from being a full-on Nashville diaspora. With bucket-list humility, frontman Marcus Mumford went acoustic, harmonizing on a single shared microphone at the center of the hallowed Opry circle (imported from Nashville) with bandmates Ted Dwane and Ben Lovett on their own fan-favorite \u201cTimshel,\u201d making it through the\u00a0Sign No More\u00a0deep cut without any country purists in the crowd heckling \u201cJudas!\u201d Instead, they responded to the band\u2019s signature song \u201cI Will Wait\u201d with the fervor of 100,000 Glastonbury punters.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tIn classic Opry reverence, this was a night of signature songs, in many cases played, not by, but in deference to the artists that made them Opry standards. Pearce repped Dolly Parton with a knockout \u201c9 to 5.\u201d Rucker regaled with what even he bantered was an obligatory run through \u201cFolsom Prison Blues.\u201d Joined by English Americana up-and-comers the Wandering Hearts, Marty Stuart bridged the gap between the U.S. and the U.K. with a delicate \u201cWild Horses\u201d rendition that fit the moment like a glove on a hand on a mandolin, after namedropping a friend named Keith and calling the Rolling Stones \u201cone of the best country bands that\u2019s ever been.\u201d That would\u2019ve been the night\u2019s standout, were it not for Ashley McBryde conjuring Patsy Cline with a show-stealing performance of \u201cSweet Dreams\u201d that hit like a shut-eye drift to an eternal paradise.<\/p>\n

\n\tDueting with Luke Combs, Mumford killed with the boomers in attendance, when joking he\u2019d originally wanted to tackle Shania Twain\u2019s \u201cMan! I Feel Like a Woman!\u201d, which would\u2019ve been quiet the vibe shift following Combs\u2019 crooning his chart-topping cover of Tracy Chapman\u2019s \u201cFast Car\u201d like it was his first time instead of his hundredth. The pair instead settled on a tear-in-beer faithful \u201cAlways on My Mind\u201d (in tribute to Willie Nelson).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLuke Combs and Marcus Mumford perform in London, as part of the Grand Ole Opry\u2019s England debut. Photo: David Barry, PA Media<\/p>\n

\n\tTo be sure, the appearing artists got the crowd stomping, clapping, and belting along to modern standards of their own, like Rucker eliciting Nineties nostalgia feels with his Hootie and the Blowfish hit \u201cHold My Hand,\u201d or Pearce tapping Combs for an assist on their co-written \u201cI Hope You\u2019re Happy Now.\u201d McBryde garnered a standing ovation that brought her to tears with a performance of \u201cGirl Goin\u2019 Nowhere\u201d that made the case for why she\u2019s the embodiment of country music past, present, and (God willing) future.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut it was Combs who transformed the Hall from A Night at the Opry Abroad to what felt like a modern American country music concert. It was a raucous (but still proper polite) stadium-sized celebration of trucks, shitty beer, refrigerator doors, and broken hearts \u2014\u00a0\u00a0American pastimes not particularly germane to the Land of Rose \u2014 that highlighted the fine line between Appalachian college dropout and global everyman superstar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sight of the night\u2019s character cast rejoining the stage for the traditional finale of the Carter Family\u2019s \u201cWill the Circle Be Unbroken (By and By)\u201d was without a doubt surreal on a stage that wasn\u2019t Nashville\u2019s Ryman or Grand Ole Opry House, but it felt natural and familial nonetheless. The Grand Ole Opry, an institution steeped in old traditions, may have just found a new one, as the crowd at Albert Hall probably won\u2019t have the patience to wait another year for this to happen again, let alone another 100 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are few stages the world over more iconic than the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville\u2019s \u201cMother Church of Country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[152946,748,152947,393,152948,4884,257,126075,152949,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-455738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-ashley-mcbryde","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-darius-rucker","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-grand-ole-opry","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-luke-combs","16":"tag-mumford-sons","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115277177261528738","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}