PBR’s second half had already gotten off to a blistering start.

Jess Lockwood was on fire. Chase Outlaw was writing the best story in sports while flip-flopping with the young champion for World No. 1. Jose Vitor Leme appeared to be Krazy Glued to his bulls. College boys Dalton Kasel and Daylon Swearingen had burst onto the scene with veteran-like poise and huge rides. Months ahead of World Finals, the sport’s very best were hanging onto every bull as if the gold buckle were on the line then and there.

In Nashville, the highly anticipated Jack Daniel’s Music City Knockout – and a ton of points on the line – was 24 hours away from bucking off.

Inside Bridgestone Arena, adjacent to the strip known for country twang streaming from open-window honky tonk saloons and gaggles of bachelorettes pedaling away alcohol calories on mobile bars wheeling down the boisterous avenue, final preparations were being made for the year’s final PBR Major.

The crew was assembling bucking chutes and spreading truckloads of dirt above the ice surface where the Nashville Predators play, though the onset of preseason hockey was still weeks away.

For now, another sport would thrill the locals and tourists, the Wranglers-and-Ariat faithful traveling in to see their favorite athletes, and the prowling party groups seeking action, adventure and revelry.

On a steamy Saturday night in late August, it would be professional bull riding filling the arena and drawing the largest crowd the sport had seen in 21 years in this booming place fast becoming known as Funtown, USA – as suitable a location as could be imagined to host the Greatest Show in Sports.

That PBR road crew had been working double-time. That week, they’d actually been enlisted to build two dirt rings inside the arena.

A full day ahead of one of the season’s most meaningful events, they put down the first dirt field in the arena’s back loading dock, where serious commotion was breaking out. The undisputed top party that Friday night in a city that bashes with the best of them was in full force, complete with cheering fans, blaring live rock music, and gung-ho strutting cowboys climbing aboard furiously bucking bulls.

It was a made-for-TV event, invitation only, unspoken and unknown to the fan base outside of those with solid connections or a keen ear to the ground leading them to an old-school hootenanny in the bowels of Bridgestone where a cold, nondescript concrete space had been transformed into a smoky, good-time barn reeking of Tennessee red cedar.

This was the scene of the filming of the new PBR on CBS broadcast opening and pre-event video to debut at World Finals and live on the scoreboard screens at every elite series event in 2020, bringing the sport’s “Be Cowboy” theme to life, the culmination of planning finally bringing PBR’s TV look completely in line with its brand marketing.

The loading dock had been turned into a movie set with authentic touches like a hayloft overlooking the dirt, antique lanterns, steer horns and vintage gas station signs surrounding that real rodeo arena. The bands that were playing while the bulls bucked for the cameras performed in front of a giant illuminated BE COWBOY sign.

It may have looked like a Hollywood production, but in the bucking chutes, the cowboys were no stunt men. Grave business was at hand.

Patrolling the dirt were the US Border Patrol bull fighters Jesse Byrne, Shorty Gorham and Frank Newsom.

At front of house, Dr. Tandy Freeman stood on call in the event of a bad fall or vicious stomping.

As the party raged, the crowd scenes had been great. The music performance footage from Eddie Montgomery, Chevel Shepherd and Black Stone Cherry, each belting out the new song “Be Cowboy,” written by country music legend Wynn Varble and David Frasier on commission from PBR, looked spectacular as director Cory Kelley, PBR on CBS’s video storyteller and mastermind of the opening, watched it go down.

“I can definitely say I’ve never had a bull stare me in the face at any other shows,” said Black Stone Cherry vocalist and lead guitarist Chris Robertson. “Something primal kicked in when the bulls and riders were that close that made us go that much harder.”

Yet, the key ingredient – the bull riding – was thoroughly lacking.

As the chutes opened, the bulls bucked and cameras rolled to capture footage that would position the sport the next few years, two young bull riders were getting thrashed and thrown.

In front of klieg lights and unfamiliar expectations, the lower-level riders were being schooled.

In six outs, the bulls thoroughly dominated.

Among nearly 40 PBR cowboys on hand for the barn party, one watching the evolving exercise in futility was growing itchier by the second.

Sitting in front of the band with his pals Keyshawn Whitehorse and Taylor Toves, Texas cowboy Ezekiel Mitchell saw exasperation in Kelley’s eyes.

“With due respect to these guys, the job isn’t getting done,” Mitchell said.

So during the sport’s principle Be Cowboy shoot, what can a cowboy do but let behavioral instinct run wild?

To the delight of the more than 250 fans invited to the broadcast shoot-slash-barn party, Mitchell, who’d been laughing and clapping along with the bands, put on his serious face.

He would next be seen in excuse-me-pardon-me mode, rushing to the chutes in his chaps, helmet in one hand, rope in the other, dragging his cowbell through the set’s tight confines toward the night’s final waiting bull.

All Kelley and his crew needed was one good take. Ezekiel Mitchell – with more than $100,000 at stake, along with enough points to rocket into the Top 10 – was going to risk injury and give them what they wanted.

He mounted a bull named Colt .45, got settled, wrapped in, and then hung on for dear life. There was no whistle or buzzer, only cheering fans drowned out by Black Stone Cherry rocking out to “Be Brave! Be Bolder! Be Cowboy!”

Had this been a real bull riding, Zeke probably wouldn’t have made the 8.

But that didn’t matter. It was a good ride. Kelley and his cameras got what was needed.

As Woody Allen once said, 90 percent of success in life is just showing up. And, boy, on this night did the 22-year-old cowboy from Houston ever show up.

And now he’s going to be the face of the PBR on the CBS opener.

“I love riding bulls. At the end of the day, I’m a bull rider,” Mitchell said. “Doesn’t make a difference to me if there are cameras or money on the line. They said they needed someone to get on that last one, so I did it.

“Do you put Michael Jordan on the court with a basketball and tell him not to shoot?”

No one was happier than the director who had his bull ride in front of an explosive rock show.

“Zeke’s passion and love for the sport really impressed me,” Kelley said. “He’s never been to a big shoot before. You could see he was intrigued by it. It really helped to have one of our top riders get out there and pretty cool having that ride right in front of a band whose energy was off the charts.”

The secret barn party was Kelley’s brainchild, conceived as he sat on his porch right outside Liepers Fork, Tennessee, sipping morning coffee and pondering the encore to the popular Steven Tyler opener for the sport the past two years.

The Tyler segment, shot on a parched desert floor outside Las Vegas, also used a song PBR expressly commissioned for the campaign. “Hold On (Won’t Let Go)” was a perfect soundtrack for the man vs. beast desert showdown. Tyler liked the tune so much, it wound up on his rootsy solo record, “We’re All Somebody from Somewhere.”

With Be Cowboy, the theme is everyday values and inclusion. The hat and the boots don’t define a person; live a certain way, and you’re a cowboy.

Feet up and mental gears spinning, Kelley got to thinking about his surroundings.

Liepers Fork is home to a number of country and pop music megastars such as Justin Timberlake, Chris Stapleton, Miley Cyrus and Carrie Underwood. It’s the kind of place where secret barn parties happen all the time.

Kelley, who has also shot openings for the SEC on CBS and NASCAR, pictured a drone flying above the rich rural pastures and fields, swooping toward Kenny Chesney’s big old barn. Inside would be the raging PBR party.

“The vision considered PBR as a metaphor for society,” Kelley said. “You’d have the familiar riders and cast of characters mixed with everyday people from different walks of life who are living PBR values and therefore embody the whole ‘be cowboy’ concept.”

Kelley pitched the idea to PBR CEO Sean Gleason outside of STAPLES Center when the sport was making its Hollywood debut.

Gleason loved the idea, and added that the spot should cast everyday “cowboys.”

The duo decided on a firefighter, schoolteacher, mechanic, businessman, painter, barista, surgeon, even a skateboard punk to be featured in the long-form area video and added in two faces familiar to PBR fans from the initial Be Cowboy creative: Zoel Zohnnie (the mechanic) and RaSandra Daniels (the painter).

Daniels, who has started a film production company, paints, and is also a substitute teacher in New Mexico, finds it uplifting to be part of PBR’s campaign theme.

“I try to inspire my students, and this is such a great message of being strong, loving one another and lifting people up,” she said. “’Be Cowboy’ is everything I’m about and live for.”

Like Daniels, Chevel Shepherd, who at 16 won “The Voice,” sung the National Anthem for PBR in Albuquerque and will be performing on Toshiba Plaza at World Finals, is an eager cowboy ambassador who has quickly come to love the sport.

“I really appreciate the fans and the culture, and guys like Chase Outlaw who are super tough and overcome so much,” she said. “PBR is a place where everyone comes together.”

For one night in Nashville, down at a loading dock turned into a rollicking barn party, different folks came together around PBR. The secret party will now be shared with the world, and the magic will be seen for quite some time.

Until Kelley sits on his porch and dreams up the next PBR opener.

Click here for the new PBR on CBS opener sung by Black Stone Cherry