Leon Bridges & Charley Crockett Unite For Powerful Sam Cooke Tribute At Forest Hills Stadium

The Crooner & The Cowboy Tour featuring Leon Bridges and Charley Crockett rolled into Queens’ Forest Hills Stadium last night. Bridges and Crockett shared the stage towards the end of the night for a collaborative cover of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

Honky Tonkin’ In Queens spun a DJ set to start the Thursday night concert in the Big Apple before Reyna Tropical performed. Charley Crockett followed with a set focused on material from his 2025 albums Dollar A Day and Lonesome Drifter. Other highlights included performances of “$10 Cowboy” and “Welcome To The Hard Times,” the title tracks from Crockett’s 2024 and 2020 records, respectively.

Leon Bridges closed out the night at the former home of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships. The Crooner went heavy on his 2015 debut LP, Coming Home, with eight tracks from the record making his setlist. Bridges also performed “Mariella” and “Texas Sun,” a pair of songs he recorded with Khruangbin along with four standouts from 2024’s Leon and a smattering of selections off 2018’s Good Thing.

Bridges ushered out Charley Crockett to close out his main set with the aforementioned “A Change Is Gonna Come.” The joint performance of Sam Cooke’s 1964 hit marked a debut for both artists and was the duo’s first collaboration of the five-show-old The Crooner & The Cowboy Tour.

The Texans volleyed verses and then sang the choruses together. Bridges’ band backed the pair with tinges of pedal steel guitar and blasts of brass.

Check out clips of Bridges and Crockett’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”:

Leon Bridges returned for a “Beyond” encore to conclude the concert. The Crooner & The Cowboy Tour hits Philadelphia tonight, September 5. Bridges and Crockett will end their time on the road together on September 23 with a home-state show in Austin, Texas.