Ted Nugent kicked off his Adios Mofo farewell tour on Wednesday with a mix of fan favorites and deeper cuts during a 16-song set at the Seminole Casino Hotel in Immokalee, Florida.

"Last night was awesome, we played 4% of my favorite songs," Nugent laughs during a conversation with UCR the next morning. "I could be up there for 11 days and never run out of killer Ted Nugent songs to play. My feet just don’t touch the ground. The audiences are so intense. They hang on every note and every word, every musical passage. [Drummer] Jason Hartless, [bassist] Johnny [Schoen] and I, like all of my musicians, we always really, really focus maniacally on the groove, the dynamics, the musical movement and the adventure element. We played for two hours, and it was a dream."

The set list included a selection from Nugent's catalog, but there were also several teases tucked deep inside the songs. During "Stormtroopin'," for example, the band riffed a bit of ZZ Top's "Francine," a first for Nugent, even though he's worked in bits of the band's other songs before.

"It’s the groove," he explains. "I mean, Billy [Gibbons] is a groove dog. He comes from the same school of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins that I do. We did gigs with ZZ Top going all of the way back to 1970 or 1971."

You can see the opening night set list below.

 

What to Expect on Ted Nugent's 2023 Tour

Fans can expect some of Nugent's friends and former bandmates to show up onstage as Adios Mofo's run continues. Amboy Dukes members K.J. Knight and Bob Leonard - "The first lead singer of the Amboy Dukes in 1965," Nugent adds - are among the expected. Nugent notes that drummer Tom Noel, from his earliest days with the Lourds, will join him in Detroit.

The Adios Mofo tour continues Thursday in Orlando and will wrap up on Aug. 21 in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Ted Nugent, Seminole Casino Hotel, Immokalee, Florida, 7/12/23
1. "The Star-Spangled Banner"
2. "Gonzo"
3. "Stormtroopin'"
4. "Paralyzed"
5. "Free-For-All
6. "Snakeskin Cowboy"
7. "Johnny B. Goode"
8. "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang"
9. "Come and Take It"
10. "American Campfire"
11. "Hey Baby"
12. "Good Friends and a Bottle of Wine"
13. "Fred Bear"
14. "Cat Scratch Fever"
15. "Stranglehold"
16. "Great White Buffalo"

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