In concert: Brooks & Dunn at Jiffy Lube Live

Brooks & Dunn's farewell tour packed Jiffy Lube live on Sunday. (All photos by Kyle Gustafson/FTWP)

By Scott Galupo

Breaking up shouldn’t be so much fun.

Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn, having amicably called it quits after nearly 20 years as pillars of mainstream country music, brought their “Last Rodeo” tour to Jiffy Lube Live Sunday night, with a requisite provision of hit songs (“My Maria,” “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” “Ain’t Nothing ’Bout You,” among a truck-bed-full of others).

Also along for the sunset ride: a set of mechanically-bobbing longhorns and a giant new tattoo. Dunn revealed the latter (“COWBOY” in black block letters) on his forearm — a sorrowful compensation, he amusingly explained, for a decades-long lack of hat.

Who’s to say whether the ink was real; the audience’s affection for the bestselling duo sure was. There was no sign of concert-industry ticket woes at a jam-packed Lube, indicating no hard feelings over a postponement in June that gave Dunn’s pipes a doctor-ordered spell.

Brooks and Dunn led with a cluster of rowdy honky-tonk rock (“Play Something Country,” “You Can’t Take the Honky Tonk Out of the Girl,” “Mama Don’t Get Dressed Up for Nothing”) before settling into the Eagles-like balladry of “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone” and “Neon Moon.”

Dunn channeled his best Solomon Burke for the stirring country-gospel of “Believe,” which was followed, in the quintessentially American fashion of intermingling spirituality and sexuality, by “She Likes to Get Out of Town” and its accompanying video of a dancing girl with red lipstick and exposed midriff.

Received as enthusiastically as the headlining duo itself were four U.S. servicemen, representing each major branch of the military, standing at attention during “Only in America.”