‘Awful’ and ‘gross’: American singer Thomas Rhett doesn’t ‘understand’ the shoey

American country singer Thomas Rhett is back in town and while not a big fan, took part in a classic Aussie tradition.

It is the great Aussie tradition that has international artists scratching their heads and kicking off their boots.

American country star Thomas Rhett is the latest touring muso to have a crack at the “gross” act of the Australian ‘shoey’.

“I don’t understand it either. I’ve never seen it anywhere but here,” Rhett told Confidential after chugging down a beer from his boot at his Enmore Theatre show on Sunday night.

“I put it back on right after and my foot just squished all night. It was awful.”

Many big name artists have succumbed to the pressure of delivering a ‘shoey’ to their devoted audiences, among them Harry Styles, Post Malone, Stormzy, Riley Green and Maisie Peters.

American country singer Thomas Rhett pictured at Jolene's in Sydney. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Kacey Musgraves sort of did one but opted for a glass slipper for hers.

It wasn’t actually Rhett’s first ‘shoey’ moment.

He first tried drinking beer out of his boot at the CMC Rocks Festival in 2019.

Back again this year, playing the festival in Ipswich at the weekend, he thought he’d gotten away with not drinking from his shoe.

“When I came over the first time, I had been kind of warned about the ‘shoey’,” he explained.

American Country singer Thomas Rhett doing a shoey at his Sydney concert.

Thomas Rhett’s shoey moment at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre.

“I didn’t pace myself too well, I think I did my first shoey on song number two and I am pretty sure I did four or five throughout the entirety of that show. I made it through this entire trip … without doing a shoey and then last night we broke down into this acoustic bit and there was this one guy in the back left hand corner that started shouting it.

“It is one of those moments where it is like, ‘how new are these boots, how much sock sweat has been in this boot’, and I did it. I poured that full thing in there and drank it and I think those boots are still thawing out right now in my hotel room.”

Rhett, 34, was thankful he wasn’t wearing the new pair of RM Williams boots he bought on Sunday.

Drinking from a new shoe would be “cheating”, he added.

Harry Styles doing a Shoey at his concert in Perth. Picture: Twitter

Maisie Peters also succumbed to pressure from the crowd.

Father of four Rhett, who has 4.9 million followers on Instagram, flies home to the US today (Tuesday) but is hoping to be back sooner rather than later.

“I am just kind of mind blown that you can be this far away from home with a genre that really over the last 20 years has not been globally popular that now is sort of one of the biggest genres in the world.,” he said.

“That’s (returning) all we’ve been scheming about in the van, like, when do we come back, how do we do it, can we get to the west coast at all. There is just a whole world over here that I have not been a super big part of and can’t wait to make it more of a constant.”

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