Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre will host a pair of country shows this week.

Lee Brice returns to the Mahoning Valley for a show tonight at the outdoor venue, and Cody Jinks brings his Hippies and Cowboys tour there on Saturday.

Brice is a South Carolina native, but he’s referred to the Mahoning Valley as “another hometown” because he is married to Poland native Sara Reeveley. He’s also played plenty of area shows over the years, from past headlining dates at the amphitheater, Covelli Centre and Packard Music Hall and opening for Kid Rock for the 2023 YLIVE concert.

He’s had number one country hits with “A Woman Like You,” “Hard to Love,” “I Drive Your Truck,” “I Don’t Dance,” “Rumor,” “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” “One of Them Girls” and “Memory I Don’t Mess With.”

Five of his albums have been certified Gold or Platinum. He’s won three ACM Awards for song / single of the year and a CMA Award for musical event of the year.

Ashton Kutcher advised him to figure out how much money he needed to live the lifestyle he wanted and then find investments and other ways to reach those goals besides touring nonstop.

“You don’t have to play a million shows if you don’t want to,” Brice said to the newspaper in 2023. “I like to be home with the kids, especially at this age. I don’t like being out on the road for three weeks at a time.”

Opening the 7 p.m. show will be Jackson Dean and Brice’s brother, Lewis. Tickets start at $47.45 (including fees).

While radio exposure is integral in breaking most country artists, Jinks has built a growing audience without those country hits.

Instead, his songs have been streamed more than 3.5 billion times and single songs such as “Loud and Heavy” have more than 250 million streams on Spotify.

Except for a short-lived deal with Rounder Records, most of Jinks’ music has been self-released on own label, now called Late August Records.

He’s frequently described as “outlaw country,” but that’s not a label he embraces.

Jinks told the website The Bluegrass Situation earlier this year, “I’ve never called myself an outlaw. That was something the media called me, and I just agreed. I’ve kind of gone with it. It’s OK. It’s easy to call me that. I’m not an outlaw, dude. I’m a punk.”

That outsider mentality is exemplified by the song “The Others,” a single from his July release “In My Blood.”

“It’s a song about all of us,” he told American Songwriter magazine. “People often ask me about what the attraction was to metal, punk, and all that stuff when I was younger. I tell them it’s because it’s for all the disenfranchised people who don’t belong anywhere. That’s what it is. That’s what the sentiment is behind this song. There’s a place for everyone.

“Punks don’t care if you show up to a punk concert and don’t look like a punk. They’re gonna buy you a beer or a Coke or whatever. Metalheads don’t care if you show up and you don’t have tattoos and piercings. Nobody (cares) because it’s pure and real.”

Pure and real are characteristics he finds lacking in most of the music released by the major country labels.

Jinks is leading a cleaner lifestyle these days, which he sings about “Better Than the Bottle,” the first track on “In My Blood.” It was co-written with friend and frequent collaborator Tom McElvain, but under very different, teary eyed circumstances.

“We both quit smoking cigarettes. We quit doing recreational drugs,” Jinks told The Bluegrass Situation. “He came over one morning, and in 20-plus years of friendship, it was the first time we had ever been around each other stone cold sober. We were talking about how we used to live versus how we’re trying to do things now and who we’re trying to be now for ourselves and for the people that we love, the friends that we lost along the way that didn’t pull out of it … .At this point, we’re trying to atone for a lot of things.”

Tanner Usrey will open the 7 p.m. Saturday show. Only single seats and secondary market tickets are available for the reserved seating. General admission on the lawn is $43.20 (including fees). Tickets for both shows are available at the Covelli Centre’s Southwoods Health box office and through Ticketmaster.

Staff file photo / Andy Gray
Lee Brice, shown here opening for Kid Rock at the 2023 YLIVE concert, will headline a country triple bill tonight at the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre.