The Detroit Lions got a victory on Thanksgiving Day – and so did Shaboozey, who played halftime in the first of three National Football League games on Thursday.

The seven-minute performance included a medley of three tracks from the six-time Grammy Award-nominated country singer and rapper’s latest album. Where I was is not where I’m going – “Last of My Kind,” “Highway,” and of course “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” currently the longest-running No. 1 song on the Billboard 100 at 19 weeks.

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Shaboozey, who wore a Lions varsity jacket for the occasion, was accompanied by his touring band as well as ten local stage dancers choreographed by Fatima Robinson. The Lions cheerleaders were on the field in front of the stage and a crowd of 500 volunteer fans behind it.

“Our goal is to offer artists and music that we believe will resonate with a broad audience and families, and we also try to be as culturally relevant as possible – I don’t know if that applies to other artists “Right now than Shaboozey,” said Seth Dudowsky, the NFL’s music director billboard after the performance on Thursday.

He said the league began considering artists for its Thanksgiving halftime at the start of the current season and chose Shaboozey around mid-September. “With the NFL, we obviously want to work with the biggest artists and … artists that are on the rise. So it was really the perfect timing and the perfect artist.”

Shaboozey was followed by Lainey Wilson at halftime of the Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game in Arlington, Texas on Thursday – with a surprise duet with Jelly Roll – while Lindsey Stirling did the honors at the Green Bay Packers’ home game against the Miami Dolphins that night. Of course, millions of people saw Shaboozey’s segment on CBS – which was well received by the crowd, despite the echo in parts of the stadium – and watched the NFC Conference-leading Lions post a 23-20 victory over the Chicago Bears achieved. But there was a lot that viewers didn’t get to see – but billboard thanks to the presence on site at Ford Field in Detroit…

Not over for good

The show didn’t stop when the music stopped on Thursday. Instead, Shaboozey left the stage and headed straight to the Lions’ sideline, where he clapped his hands and posed for selfies with fans in the front row. He spent a few minutes with the crowd and then moved on as he walked through the team tunnel, greeted a group of U.S. Marines who served as color guards and stagehands before the game, and posed for more selfies with fans sitting in the hall. Stadium Tunnel Club.

Bruce Rodgers, the halftime show’s production designer, wasn’t surprised by the unscripted “encore.” “After meeting him, I’m not surprised at all,” said Rodgers, whose Salem, Connecticut-based company Tribe, Inc. is preparing for its 19th Super Bowl in February billboard. “He’s just a really cool guy. When you get an artist like this who is rising so quickly in his musical career, he still remembers how to be a normal person and wants to socialize.”

Rodgers added that Shaboozey was “so excited” about the half-time signing and also “so nervous”. You could tell he was just overly excited but also super nervous, but he kept working and working, and of course when you get into a room of 60,000 people (64,275, according to the Lions) and you’re such an artist, it activates just what you need.”

Raise the bar

Rodgers and Tribe were hired by the Lions to improve the halftime show, a performance that was in some ways even more challenging than the Super Bowl.

“I learned how to put on a show on the field in under seven minutes and off the field in under six minutes – that’s what we need to do for the Super Bowl,” Rodgers said. “Here I have to put it on in five and a half and take it off in four so it’s even more intense. And we have a tunnel here, and this is the same tunnel that the athletes have to use. So there’s a lot of coordination.”

Rodgers and company headed to Detroit in early November to check out the venue and presented Shaboozey and his team with a selection of designs to choose from. The Tribe gang — Rodgers and eight production managers who regularly work with him at the Super Bowl — then trained a team of 400 local stagehands and 15 local supervisors for the operation. “You start and do it in 20 minutes, and by the second day of rehearsals it’s only five minutes,” Rodgers says of the stage, which was divided into ten sections and discreetly housed on the edge of the stadium hidden by large square pads. “There’s a certain way to set up things like this in front of crowds like this. We just learned techniques and learned how to train people.”

Thursday’s performance was preceded by two days of rehearsals, which also included the presence of 500 fans the previous afternoon. Everything went smoothly on match day, the individual sections were rolled into the tunnel and packed up at the end of the game.

It’s fun

While Shaboozey was on stage, the Lions and Bears placekickers and punters came onto the field for their usual second-half preparations. The Lions’ Jack Fox even did his warm-up routine to the beat of “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”

…And all the trimmings

Shaboozey wasn’t the only big star at Ford Field on Thursday.

Detroit native and Lions starter Eminem was in the house and was shown on the video screens in the second quarter as his “Lose Yourself” played over the public address system. James Hetfield of Metallica – one of Lions head coach Dan Campbell’s favorite bands – wasn’t there in person but delivered a recorded message in the second half to get the crowd pumped up.

Longtime Detroiter and “old school Lions fan” Tim Allen was also at the game and visited the field before the game with his wife Jane Hajduk – a huge Shaboozey fan. “We were in Leland (Michigan) all summer and every time ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’ came on, they were all dancing. She loves it.” However, Hajduk quickly realized that “we are big soccer fans and Shaboozey is a bonus.”

Allen is gearing up for the Jan. 8 premiere of his new ABC sitcom “Shifting Gears,” about a widower who suddenly finds himself living with his estranged daughter and her teenage children. “At my age, I know exactly what I like to do,” says Allen. “I can’t believe they found a topic I liked. I always wonder what Tom Brady said in Tampa Bay when they say, “This is the offense we’re seeing”…and he says, “What I need is two slot receivers that are intermittent”…At some point the jockey has to ride the horse. But I’m happy about it.”

Fellow actor and singer-songwriter Jeff Daniels was also there before the game and sang a song about the Lions – “The Curse of Bobby Layne” during the pre-game show. Daniels, who previously wrote a song called “Silver and Honolulu Blue” about the Lions’ “decades of darkness,” hopes to record the new track for release in the near future.

“If I do the song right, maybe one day they’ll ask me” to perform at Thanksgiving halftime, quipped Daniels, whose new independent film “Reykjavik” is about the 1986 nuclear summit in Iceland between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the leader of the Soviet Union , Mikhail Gorbachev, is scheduled to be released next year. Daniels traveled to his home in Chelsea, Michigan, to watch Thursday’s game, but explained that the Thanksgiving game “is as traditional as turkey for Lions fans.” It’s just been since the beginning of time – or the NFL – in our lives. It’s a great day – especially if we win, which we haven’t managed for a long time even with this team. So we hope that today will be different.

The Lions’ win actually marked the first time the team won the annual holiday game since 2016.

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