Lynyrd Skynyrd brought its “retirement” tour to Jacksonville in 2018 and pledged that it would be their last hometown show, yet there they were on stage at Daily’s Place Saturday night. No one seemed to mind one bit.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame act, which formed on Jacksonville’s Westside in the ’60s, played 15 songs on Saturday, just one of which was originally released after 1978. Nobody held it against them.
Some call Skynyrd’s current lineup, which features nobody who originally played on the band’s classic hits, a tribute act. Did Saturday night’s crowd care? Not even a little bit.
The show, a benefit for Middleburg veterans organization St. Michael’s Soldiers, was classic Skynyrd, from the opening growl of “Workin’ for MCA” to the final strains of “Free Bird.” The players have changed, but it sure still sounds like Skynyrd.
Johnny Van Zant, who has been Skynyrd’s lead singer since 1987, and Rickey Medlocke, who played drums in an early version of the band and rejoined on guitar in ’97, lead the current Lynyrd Skynyrd. On this tour, the band is breaking in a new bass player, Robbie Harrington, who has done time in Keith Urban and Dierks Bentley’s bands. Saturday was also the first Jacksonville show for guitarist Damon Johnson, who joined in 2023 following the death of founding guitar player Gary Rossington, and backup singer Stacy Michelle, Medlocke’s wife and a former member of Kid Rock’s band. For those keeping score at home, Harrington is the eighth bass player in Lynyrd Skynyrd history, and Johnson is the band’s ninth guitar player. The grand total of people who have been in Lynyrd Skynyrd, going back to the band’s founding, is somewhere around 38, if you count backup singers.
Medlocke, Johnson and Mark Matejka make up a formidable three-guitar attack. Skynyrd’s songs don’t really have guitar “solos,” since there’s almost always at least two guys playing lead at once, and when someone gets a spotlight, it doesn’t last for long before a bandmate steps up.
Lynyrd Skynyrd performs during the fifth day of the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 11, 2025, in Des Moines.
Playing at Daily’s Place on a night when the nearby VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena was holding a hockey game and the final fair at the current Jacksonville Fairgrounds was blinking and twirling a block away, Skynyrd delivered a show that had deep Jacksonville roots. Van Zant name-dropped Jacksonville into just about every song, but the city was already there in the oak tree from “That Smell,” Mama’s advice in “Simple Man” and the girl named Linda Lou from “Gimme Three Steps.” “Down South Jukin'” was dedicated to the band’s hometown, and fake Spanish moss decorated the stage.
There were no real surprises on the night’s setlist, which was pretty much the same they’ve played all year. The band didn’t play a song all night that everyone in the house didn’t know by heart. A few old favorites were missing, but you’d be hard-pressed to find something to cut from what they played on Saturday.
The crowd sang and danced all night, of course, but for a Skynyrd show in Jacksonville, Saturday night’s concert was fairly tame.
Concert flashback: 1975 Lynyrd Skynyrd show in Jacksonville ended in rain of bottles
The last time Lynyrd Skynyrd played a concert in Jacksonville, in 2018, they made a very big deal of it, with Kid Rock, the Charlie Daniels Band, Jason Aldean, Blackberry Smoke and the Marshall Tucker Band opening the show. That concert was recorded and later released as “Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour Lyve” on CD and DVD. A pair of 2015 shows at the Florida Theatre were captured on the “Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd & Second Helping Live from Jacksonville at the Florida Theatre” DVD.
The show, at least the 20th time the band has headlined a show in Jacksonville, was the second-to-last on the band’s 2025.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Lynyrd Skynyrd delivers familiar hits to hometown Jacksonville crowd