No One – And I Mean No One – Throws A Southern Fried New Year’s Eve Bash Like Lynyrd Skynyrd

No One – And I Mean No One – Throws A Southern Fried New Year’s Eve Bash Like Lynyrd Skynyrd | I Love Classic Rock Videos

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When you’re Lynyrd Skynyrd, you don’t just throw a New Year’s Eve bash – you roll out the red carpet, crank up your amps, and dish up a warm, Southern fried welcome to the year ahead and all of the wonderful things it’s got in store for you!

That’s precisely what happened in 2011 when these Jacksonville natives converged on the beautiful, bustling city of Nashville, Tennessee for the city’s famed New Year’s Eve Bash On Broadway and brought along with them a trunk full of their biggest hits and most loved tunes for a night no one would ever forge. Fans danced in the streets of downtown Nashville to “Gimme Three Steps, boogied to “That Smell,” and air-guitared to “Free Bird,” but it’s when “Sweet Home Alabama” kicked off that the party really got started.

LAS VEGAS, NV – SEPTEMBER 22: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY; NO COMMERCIAL USE) (L-R) Mark Matejka, Rickey Medlocke and Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd perform onstage during the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Festival at T-Mobile Arena on September 22, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Denise Truscello/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)

Fun Fact: That ‘Southern man’ you hear faintly in “Sweet Home Alabama”? That’s producer Al Kooper doing a Neil Young impression and was just another incident of the band members amusing themselves in the studio while being recorded.

Maybe it’s because there’s nothing like blowing off some steam with some good old fashioned Southern rock or maybe it’s just the inherent magic of the song that’s been called our unofficial national anthem, but “Sweet Home Alabama” as performed by Skynyrd that New Year’s Eve held a celebratory note to it and lifted spirits even higher as fans prepared to face a brand new year full of new challenges, new opportunities, and new adventures.

LAS VEGAS, NV – SEPTEMBER 22: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY; NO COMMERCIAL USE) Johnny Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd performs onstage during the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Festival at T-Mobile Arena on September 22, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)

As we prepare to ring in 2019, we hope that this performance does that very thing for all of you at home.

Happy New Year, Skynyrd Nation!

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd & Second Helping Live’ is available now on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats – it’s the perfect gift for the Lynyrd Skynyrd fan in your life. Buy it here on Amazon!