Lee Brice: Sunriser Tour at Foxwoods
Lee Brice: Sunriser Tour at Foxwoods brings one of country music’s most successful singer-songwriters to the Premier Theater on Friday, September 18, for an 8 p.m. show built around a catalog that has produced nine No. 1 country singles and more than 10 billion career streams.
Brice has spent the better part of two decades moving between two sides of Nashville. He’s the rough-edged baritone behind hits including I Drive Your Truck, I Don’t Dance, Rumor, One of Them Girls and A Woman Like You. But before much of the country knew his voice, other stars were already singing his songs.
Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, Jason Aldean and Tim McGraw are among the artists who have recorded Brice’s work. That songwriting background remains central to a career that has earned him CMA and ACM awards, a Grammy nomination and a collection of multi-Platinum records.
Nine Trips to No. 1
There isn’t one particular kind of Lee Brice hit.
Drinking Class is a working-week anthem. Rumor rides a considerably more soulful groove. A Woman Like You and I Don’t Dance move toward romance, while I Hope You’re Happy Now, his duet with Carly Pearce, is about two people discovering that moving on isn’t nearly as clean as it sounds.
Then there’s I Drive Your Truck.
The 2012 recording became one of the defining songs of Brice’s career, telling the story of someone coping with a loved one’s death by climbing into his truck and driving.
The song was inspired by the real story of Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2006 while attempting to rescue a fellow soldier and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Monti’s father, Paul, kept his son’s Dodge Ram and drove it as a way of remaining connected to him.
Brice didn’t write I Drive Your Truck — Jessi Alexander, Connie Harrington and Jimmy Yeary did — but his performance helped turn it into a major country hit. The song won Song of the Year at both the CMA and ACM awards.
It’s also a useful example of what Brice does particularly well. His biggest recordings often depend less on vocal gymnastics than on making a story sound believable.
He Was a Hit Songwriter Before He Was a Country Star
Brice understands the relationship between a songwriter and the artist who eventually makes a song his own because he’s been on both sides of it.
One of his biggest early breaks came without his name on the front of the record.
Brice co-wrote Garth Brooks’ More Than a Memory with Billy Montana and Kyle Jacobs. When Brooks released the song in 2007, it did something no single had previously accomplished in the history of Billboard’s country chart: it debuted at No. 1.
By then, Brice had begun landing songs with other performers as well.
Jason Aldean recorded his material. So did Tim McGraw. Kenny Chesney would eventually join the list.
Brice was simultaneously trying to establish himself as a recording artist, but that side of his career took longer to catch.
His breakthrough finally arrived with Love Like Crazy. The song spent 56 weeks on Billboard’s country chart, establishing Brice as more than the songwriter whose work other singers were recording.
Then the hits began stacking up.
His nine country-radio No. 1 singles now include A Woman Like You, Hard to Love, I Drive Your Truck, I Don’t Dance, Drinking Class, Rumor, I Hope You’re Happy Now, One of Them Girls and Memory I Don’t Mess With.
From Clemson Football to Nashville
There was a point when music wasn’t Brice’s only possible future.
Born in Sumter, South Carolina, he grew up singing in church, started playing piano at 7 and moved on to guitar. By 10, he was already writing songs.
But he was also an athlete.
Brice played football at Clemson University before an arm injury helped redirect his attention toward music. Nashville eventually became the destination, and songwriting became his way into the industry.
That history helps explain the mix that still runs through his records.
There’s traditional Nashville songcraft underneath music that freely borrows from rock and pop. Brice can make a large room work with a song like Parking Lot Party and then turn around and build a performance around something as restrained as I Don’t Dance.
The latter is particularly personal.
Brice wrote I Don’t Dance for his wife, Sara, and performed it at their wedding before eventually recording and releasing it. It became another No. 1 and one of his signature love songs.
“One of Them Girls” Had a Historic Awards Run
By 2020, Brice was more than a decade removed from his first album, but some of the biggest successes of his career were still ahead.
One of Them Girls became his longest-running No. 1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart and eventually earned an unusual sweep of songwriting honors.
The track was named Song of the Year by the Academy of Country Music and also received song-of-the-year recognition from ASCAP and BMI.
Around the same period, Brice joined Carly Pearce for I Hope You’re Happy Now.
The duet won Musical Event of the Year at the CMA Awards and both Single of the Year and Music Event of the Year at the ACM Awards.
Those songs appeared on Brice’s 2020 album Hey World, which has since been certified Platinum.
Rather than settling into the role of a country nostalgia act built around 2010s hits, Brice had managed to add another group of career-defining songs a decade after his breakthrough.
The Next Chapter Includes “Cry,” Country Friends and Colbie Caillat
Brice’s recent recordings continue moving between solo material and collaboration.
In 2025, he released Cry, followed by Said No Country Boy Ever, which brought him together with longtime Nashville friends Jamey Johnson, Randy Houser, Jerrod Niemann, Dallas Davidson and Rob Hatch.
He’s also teamed with Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat for the duet Kinda Single.
The collaborations make sense for an artist whose career has always been intertwined with Nashville’s songwriting community. Brice isn’t simply handed songs after the writing is finished. He’s a songwriter himself, with 11 co-writing credits on his 2020 Hey World album alone and decades of experience writing both for himself and other artists.
The Sunriser Tour gives him a catalog broad enough to move between those newer releases and songs that have been country-radio fixtures for years.
The Premier Theater Keeps the Show Short of Arena Scale
Foxwoods is putting Brice in the Premier Theater, its primary room for major touring concerts and comedians.
The theater sits inside The Fox Tower and offers something different from seeing the same performer in an arena. It’s large enough for a full touring production but considerably more contained, with reserved seating and relatively close sightlines throughout much of the room.
Foxwoods recommends The Fox Tower for the most convenient parking.
Anyone attending should also pay attention to the theater’s bag rules. Shopping bags and backpacks aren’t permitted, and all bags are subject to search. Ticketmaster also specifies that guests must use their assigned seats and that smoking is prohibited in and around the theater.
Food and drinks can be purchased inside the venue, while the surrounding resort offers considerably more options for anyone making dinner part of the night.
One Night, a Lot of Country Radio History
A Lee Brice concert presents an interesting problem when it comes time to build a setlist.
Leave out A Woman Like You and you’re skipping a No. 1. The same is true of Hard to Love. And I Drive Your Truck. And I Don’t Dance. And Drinking Class.
Then come Rumor, I Hope You’re Happy Now, One of Them Girls and Memory I Don’t Mess With.
That’s before getting to Love Like Crazy, Parking Lot Party or the newer music.
The result is a Friday night at Foxwoods that can function as both a current tour stop and something approaching a survey of mainstream country music from the past 15 years.
And underneath much of it is the part of Lee Brice’s career that started before the fame: a songwriter who figured out how to make the stories he wrote for other people work just as well when he stepped behind the microphone himself.
Details
Event: Lee Brice: Sunriser Tour
Date: Friday, September 18, 2026
Time: 8 p.m.
Performer: Lee Brice
Tour: Sunriser Tour
Music: Country
Venue: Premier Theater at Foxwoods Resort Casino
Address: 39 Norwich-Westerly Road, Mashantucket, CT 06339
Seating: Reserved seating; guests must sit in their assigned seats
Best Parking: The Fox Tower
Bag Policy: No shopping bags or backpacks; all bags are subject to search
Smoking: No smoking in or around the Premier Theater
More information is available at the Event Website link below.
To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.
Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.