Worth the Drive Down I-40: Wilson County Was There for Nissan Stadium’s Last Show
For most of Mt. Juliet, a night at Nissan Stadium has always been a simple proposition: get on I-40 west, be downtown in about half an hour, and you are standing in the biggest room Middle Tennessee has.
On Saturday night, a lot of Wilson County made that drive for the last time. Foo Fighters played the stadium as part of the TAKE COVER TOUR 2026 — the final concert scheduled in the building's history — with Queens of the Stone Age and Mannequin Pussy opening. Doors at 5:30, headliners at 7, and a set that ran past the three-hour mark.
The weather held, and the place was full
Mid-August in Middle Tennessee can make a stadium floor an endurance sport. Saturday was the good version: clear and mild, with the sort of evening air that lets a crowd stay on its feet all night. And it did. The house was packed, and the energy on the floor climbed rather than faded across a set most bands this size would have wrapped up ninety minutes in.
Running three-plus hours on the last night a venue will ever open its gates is not an accident of scheduling. It is a band choosing to give a building a real ending.
Thirty-two years of songs
Foo Fighters have been playing since 1994, which puts more than three decades of material on the table before you count anything else. The TAKE COVER tour reaches past their own catalog as well, which is what makes a night like this one feel less like a concert stop and more like a survey of everything that got a band to a stadium in the first place.
It is also the first tour with Ilan Rubin on drums, after Josh Freese's departure — no small chair to fill in this particular band.
Why this one goes in the books
Nissan Stadium opened in 1999. For twenty-seven years it has been where this region went when the crowd was too big for anywhere else — Titans Sundays, stadium tours, the shows people still bring up at cookouts. It comes down in phases right after the 2026 NFL season, replaced by the new stadium going up next door.
Saturday was actually the second goodbye the building hosted this summer. On June 27, Alan Jackson closed out his touring career there with Last Call: One More for the Road — The Finale, more than 50,000 people on hand and a stage full of friends. Country's long farewell in June, rock's in August, same concrete bowl, seven weeks apart.
For a county that has spent the last decade watching things get built — new districts, wider roads, new schools — there is something worth noticing about a night spent watching something end well instead.
The next time Wilson County drives down I-40 for a stadium show, it will be to a different stadium. Saturday was the last of the old one, and it went out loud.
Photos by J3 Media, shot from the stands at Nissan Stadium on August 15, 2026.
