When country star Tyler Rich gets a break from the grind of touring, the NorCal native finds time to keep tabs on his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers. Rich says he’s made it a bucket list goal to attend a Niners game—preferably at a different NFL stadium each time. “I’ve been a 49ers fan as long as I can remember,” he says. “There’s just something about that team that fires me up.”
One city already checked off his list is Buffalo, where Rich got to experience the mystique of Bills Mafia when the 49ers schedule brought them to New York last December. Rich knew he couldn’t miss it. “When I saw they were playing Buffalo, I got some friends that are from Buffalo and whatnot. It was in December. It was gonna be an awesome experience,” Rich recalls in a recent episode of the Country Muscle Podcast. The “Leave Her Wild” singer braced for the cold, but nothing could have prepared him for the wild tailgate tradition his friends threw him into: table slamming.
“[My friend] said, ‘You know, you’re jumping through the table, right?'” he says during the interview. “And I was like, ‘Yeah. I mean, let’s get the whole Buffalo experience, Bills Mafia! Let’s earn some respect while we’re out there.’”
After his friends spent $50 on a tailgater’s folding table, Rich made the plunge. The next morning, when the adrenaline had faded, Rich says the remnants of ramming his body through the table were painfully evident. “My neck was actually really sore. I posted it and people were saying that I looked like I got whiplash. The next four days were actually pretty brutal on my neck.”
Now, fully hhe country singer, who recently began his 22-city Leaving California tour Sept. 11 in San Diego, the high-intensity movements have the ” that keep the in-shape indie artist feeling both jacked and energized both on and off the stage.
You can check out all of Tyler Rich’s interview—as well as every other episode of the Country Muscle Podcast—on the Country Muscle YouTube Channel.