by Julian Spivey
Bruce Springsteen’s sophomore release The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle was released 50 years ago today on November 5, 1973. It was his second release of 1973 with his debut Greetings from Asbury Park debuting on January 5. Much like the first release, the second album gained critical acclaim but was released to average to poor sales and many wouldn’t find their way to it until the success of Springsteen’s third album Born to Run two years later when going back to see what else was in his discography. The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle contains the kind of wordy, storytelling of Springsteen’s debut but in more of a rock and roll flavor and sound than the folky debut. It includes some of Springsteen’s most epic songs both in storytelling and in the minds of his legion of fans and classics he performs often in concert to this day. Here’s my track-by-track look at The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle … The E Street Shuffle If “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” which would come out a couple of years later on Born to Run, is the origin story of the E Street Band then “The E Street Shuffle,” the opener on The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, has to be the band’s theme song. Springsteen himself never lived on E Street in Belmar, N.J., but early key extraordinaire in the E Street Band David Sancious did and as Jim Beviglia said in his 2014 book Counting Down Bruce Springsteen: His 100 Finest Songs, it would become “the figurative and spiritual home of all things Springsteen.” In his own book, Bruce Springsteen: Songs, Springsteen said: “’The E Street Shuffle’ is a reflection of a community that was partly imagined and partly real. The cast of characters came vaguely from Asbury Park at the turn of [the ‘70s]. I wanted to describe a neighborhood, a way of life, and I wanted to invent a dance with no exact steps. It was just the dance you did every day and every night to get by.” There may be no specific steps but the song sure makes you want to dance with every member of the early version of the E Street Band in unison on something so funky Stevie Wonder of the same era may have recorded it. When the E Street Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, Springsteen joined members of every era of the band for a performance of this song. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy,” the second track off the album, has always been one of my favorite Springsteen story songs and one of the most vivid of his career, as you can see the entire thing play out like a movie in your mind’s eye. It’s a love song – but what is Springsteen really in love with: Sandy or the Asbury Park boardwalk scene? The nostalgia and romanticism of it all, complete with real-life characters of the time like the fortune teller Madame Marie, makes me feel I need to see Asbury Park in my lifetime, though I’m not sure if it could ever compare or even look the same a half-century later - or if it ever really felt that way in general: E Street Band drummer at the time Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez told Rolling Stone: “No one would ever go under the boardwalk. There were rats under the boardwalk!” Springsteen has called the song a “love note and a goodbye song” to his adopted home of Asbury Park and the song hits both of those feelings perfectly. Kitty’s Back This will likely be controversial but “Kitty’s Back,” the seven-minute epic that makes for the third track on the album, isn’t one that would crack my top 50 favorite Springsteen songs, even though the band sounds tight as hell with the jazzy-rock sound of the music behind Springsteen’s lyrics and the “oo-ooh, what can I do?” part is an earworm. I’ve just never really gotten into the story, which was inspired by Springsteen seeing a sign outside either a strip club or go-go dancing club welcoming a dancer back after some time away. It feels like the type of song that must’ve come out of the improvisation of a band learning to play together at a small bar scene. It sounds fantastic, and you’ll want to see it live, but as a lyrics guy first it doesn’t hit me the way a ‘Rosalita’ or ‘Sandy’ does. Wild Billy’s Circus Story The first side of The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle vinyl comes to an end with “Wild Billy’s Circus Story,” which truly has the old circus feel to it with the opening tuba part coming from bassist Garry W. Tallent melding with Danny Federici’s accordion. Springsteen told Elvis Costello on Costello’s Channel 4 U.K. show “Spectacle” that he was always enthralled with the circus as a young lad. “I was both thrilled and frightened by the sideshow. It all felt frightening, uneasy and secretly sexual.” It’s the experience of a boy sneaking off to see the behind-the-scenes of the carnival “freaks.” It’s probably the weakest track on the album, but just as cinematic as the rest of these short stories set to music. Incident on 57th Street “Incident on 57th Street” is essentially Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s Romeo & Juliet, except better because it’s set to kickass music, like David Sancious’ piano and Danny Federici’s organ. In “Incident on 57th Street,” Romeo is Spanish Johnny and Juliet is Jane. Springsteen doesn’t even attempt to hide the inspiration for the characters referring to them as “cool Romeo” and “a late Juliet.” But instead of battles between rival families, Johnny is trying to make it on the streets of New York doing whatever he can to make ends meet and survive. Unlike the tragic ending of Shakespeare’s classic though, Springsteen leaves his version open-ended to let the listener decide if they think it ended in tragedy or if the lovers actually get away from this life. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” is my favorite jam on The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, in its tale of a young rock and roller ready to set the world on fire but needing to steal away his girl from his hometown to truly have it all. In his book, Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs, Brian Hiatt called it: “his first great rock song.” It’s a fever dream of a seven-minute rocker with rapid-fire lyrics that Springsteen wrote in his early 20s and having seen him perform it in Kansas City this past February in his early 70s one he still knocks out of the park. I, shockingly, haven’t mentioned the name Clarence Clemons yet in talking about this album, but his saxophone work from beginning to end in ‘Rosalita’ is among the best of his career. ‘Rosalita’ will have you wanting to dance your ass off with the biggest smile on your face every time you hear it. New York City Serenade “New York City Serenade,” the longest non-live track of Springsteen’s career, begins with a mesmerizing piano piece by Sancious, once again proving the early iteration of the E Street Band to be a jazz-rock outfit, before moving on to the story of New York City characters and their lives. It’s not one of the more interesting stories on the album, but the music – like “Kitty’s Back” – is enough to keep you moving along and vibing with the track. “New York City Serenade” actually came from Springsteen and the band melding two unused, potentially unfinished songs – “Vibes Man” and “New York City Song” – together. Overall, the musicality of “New York City Serenade” makes for a nice, easy listen to come down off the epic high of ‘Rosalita’ and play out the album to its end. What's your favorite track on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle?
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by Julian Spivey It was a homecoming for Ashley McBryde on Sunday, October 15 at the Robinson Center Music Hall in Little Rock, Ark. as the native from the unincorporated community of Saddle, Ark. brought the house down in front of a packed house of adoring fans, that included family and long-time friends. McBryde just released her third solo studio album, The Devil I Know, on September 8 and her set on Sunday night was very heavy on tracks from the album, which seemed just fine with the audience – much of which already knew all the lyrics by heart and sang along. The Devil I Know is probably McBryde strongest effort from top to bottom thus far of her ACM, CMA and Grammy-award-winning career that still feels like it could skyrocket at any moment. McBryde began her set around 9 p.m. with one of the more raucous numbers off the new album, “Blackout Betty.” She was in complete control of the stage from the very beginning of the show oozing an effortless cool about her the entire way through. Amazingly, McBryde was able to fit the entire 11-song album into her 20-song set on Sunday night, something you rarely get from an artist. Among my favorite performances from the new release were “Whiskey and Country Music,” “Made for This,” “6th of October” and “Cool Little Bars.” McBryde basically made the almost always in my opinion stuffy venue and crowd at Robinson Center feel like a cool little bar crowd on Sunday night for the first time making me able to focus on the terrific music on the stage completely and not some dumb nuisance that can come with a crowd forgetting concerts are supposed to be about the music. Kudos to McBryde’s fan base in her home state for that. While fitting the entirety of The Devil I Know into her set, McBryde also found time for some fan favorites from her previous albums like the raunchy “Brenda Put Your Bra On,” off last year’s collaborative album Lindeville that she kind of over-sought. Never have I seen so many bras tossed on a stage in my life and McBryde was sure having a helluva time with it, picking one rather large one up and hanging it on the neck of guitar player Matt Helmkamp’s guitar. I was thrilled she performed what’s still my favorite song of hers, “Girl Goin’ Nowhere,” from her 2018 slightly different titled Girl Going Nowhere debut. I had been perusing through previous recent sets of hers and hadn’t seen it on any of them, so I was worried she might not play it on Sunday night, but if you’re going to break that particular song out anywhere it’ll be at your home state show. The massive reaction from the crowd still seems to choke her up after all this time, which is incredibly moving and you can tell isn’t just a put-on for us. It was probably around the quarter-to-halfway mark of her set when McBryde let us into a little bit of a secret that my wife and I in attendance hadn’t noticed at all – she was a bit under the weather and losing her voice. This was quite shocking as her performances up to that point had sounded about as close to the albums they are on. As the show went on, you could tell she was indeed losing her voice as her speaking voice in between songs got coarser and coarser as the night went on but miraculously, at least to my untrained ears, it never showed once in any performance. McBryde’s few selections from her sophomore studio release Never Will from 2020 were impeccable, as if she asked me, “Hey, Julian, what do you want to hear from that album?” Those songs included “First Thing I Reach For,” likely my favorite from the album, “Sparrow” and “One Night Standards.” Toward the end of the set, she performed “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega,” which was the first song I’d ever heard from here toward the end of 2017 and immediately piqued my attention as both a voice and songwriter to pay attention to and six years later she’s stood out as one of the best (really one of the few) from country music who can be among the mainstream acts (though radio still doesn’t quite do her justice – “One Night Standards” is her only solo top 20 charter) and still perform by-God country music. The final two selections on Sunday night came from the new album, including her current single (and my favorite track on the album) “Light on in the Kitchen,” which she told the Robinson Center audience was the highest trajectory of any of her singles to date – it’s currently No. 22 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart and based on what she said is hopefully still climbing. McBryde and her supremely talented band – which incredibly includes two musicians from my hometown of Mountain Home, Ark., shout out to Quinn Hill on drums and Wes Dorethy, who mostly was on keys but also played guitar, harmonica and fiddle during the show (no, I don’t know either personally) – finished the night up with the title track “The Devil I Know,” capping off a night of truly terrific music from a home state girl who made her dreams come true. McBryde mentioned during the show that she and her band handpicked their opening acts when they had the opportunity to play headlining shows like on Sunday night and her choice for the Little Rock show was another amazingly talented Arkansas artist – J.D. Clayton from Fort Smith. Clayton put out his debut album, Long Way from Home, in January and it's been a highlight in my country music of 2023 playlist for sure. Clayton performed many of the standout tracks from the album during his eight-song opening set on Sunday evening, including the title track, “Gold Mine” and “Heartaches After Heartbreak,” which has been my favorite from the album. He also performed a couple of beautiful songs written for his wife, whom he told us he met as a senior in high school in Fort Smith, “Beauty Queen,” which opened his show, and “Brown Haired Blue Eyed Baby,” which he had released on an E.P. in 2018 and of which he and his talented bandmates mixed with Steve Miller Band’s hit “The Joker.” While “The Joker” certainly got the crowd singing along, it was actually Clayton’s amazing cover of Tracy Chapman’s 1995 top-five hit “Give Me One Reason,” which truly showed off his voice and range. Between this cover and Luke Combs taking “Fast Car” to the top of the country airplay chart, it’s damn nice to see country dudes giving a black, queer songwriter in Chapman some love. Clayton finished off his opening set with a performance of “Arkansas Kid,” which is a slightly reworked version of Ronnie Van Zant/Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Mississippi Kid,” which was the perfect way to send him off. by Julian Spivey I had been wanting to check out the Arkansas Goat Festival in Perryville, Ark., held annually on the first Saturday of October, for some years now but my work schedule never seemed to align with it. This year I got lucky it fell on an off-Saturday and it was off to see some goats in lingerie (seriously, they have a goat lingerie show!). I just so happened to see on the festival’s website that a band called Posey Hill, which I’d just recently become acquainted with thanks to its single “Keeping Tyler” popping up on my Spotify via the Saving Country Music Top 25 Current Playlist curated by that website’s maintainer Kyle Coroneos, would be headlining the concert stage at the event, so after seeing livestock parade around in frilly undergarments, my wife, Aprille, and I decided to stick around for some country music. Posey Hill is a regional touring band from central Arkansas that kept it all in the family featuring sisters Kristian, Erin and Megan on vocals, while their dad Doug Burnett picks guitar and helps the harmony flow. They also had two fine instrumentalists with them on fiddle and banjo whose names I wish I had remembered to write down. Posey Hill had a bit of a train theme going on early in its set, opening with a nice cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freight Liner Blues,” before transitioning into Alan Jackson’s “Freight Train” and then into the group’s first original song of the set, “First Train,” the opening track off the debut album No Clear Place to Fall. Being a festival where there are a lot of comers and goers and the general population of the event might not know you from Adam it was easy to see why Posey Hill performed mostly covers on the sunny, finally feeling-like autumn Saturday afternoon, but when the originals are as good as the ones the group performed it’d be just fine by me if they’d toss a few more in the set. The other two originals the group performed were “I’m Too Old for This,” and the aforementioned “Keeping Tyler,” a tale of a broken relationship in which the narrator only wants to keep her Tyler Childers records. If you’re a fan of Childers, I assure you that you need to check this song out. I guarantee you’ll love it, even if you might be like me and my wife and think Eric Church shouldn’t catch a stray. Posey Hill showed it was capable of doing just about anything singer-songwriter-ish on Saturday afternoon going from bluegrass to country to folk to rock to even harmonizing pop on a stunning cover of the Bee Gee’s “To Love Somebody.” The cover choices from the group were impeccable with some great ones I’d never been familiar with like Kasey Chambers’ “Last Hard Bible” to all-time favorites of mine in John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery” and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.” The girls even let pops shine for a bit when Doug took the vocals on a nice performance of Vince Gill’s “Liza Jane.” One of the many highlights of the set was the finisher “Mule Skinner Blues,” which allowed the sisters to show off their vocals on the bluegrass staple revitalized by Dolly Parton in 1971. As I mentioned, Posey Hill bills itself on its website as a “regional touring band,” but if they keep writing and recording songs like they have on their album and showcased on Saturday afternoon to a bunch of goats and their humans they might drop that “regional” part real soon. Y’all be sure to see them locally while you can. They’ll be at the Arkadelphia Festival of the Arts on Saturday, Oct. 14 at 3:30 p.m. James McMurtry Performs Some of the Greatest Story Songs You'll Ever Hear at White Water Tavern10/7/2023 by Julian Spivey Singer-songwriter James McMurtry brought his brand of literary Americana folk-rock music to the White Water Tavern in Little Rock, Ark. for a two-night stand on Wednesday, October 4 and Thursday, October 5. I attended the Thursday night show and, as always seems to be the case at the White Water, it was a magical evening of terrific music in a nice communal atmosphere. I feel like I was pretty late to the McMurtry game. He’s been recording music since the late ‘80s but I’ve come to know him over his last two albums: 2015’s Complicated Game and 2021’s The Horses and the Hounds. He’s an extraordinary storyteller, something that no doubt runs in the family as his father was famed novelist Larry McMurtry of Lonesome Dove fame, and his mother was an English professor. Prose is in his blood. I might be a simpleton, but music has always been my favorite form of literature, so McMurtry’s brand of storytelling set to music is just perfect for me. From the very moment I heard “Copper Canteen” and “You Got to Me,” off Complicated Game, they immediately became my favorite McMurtry songs, as I have a feeling that’s never going to change. They are perfect short stories set to music that I can see in my mind’s eye every time I listen and sing along, mentally putting myself in the shoes of the narrator. “Copper Canteen” actually has lines that remind me of my own life and relationship, though I’m younger than the narrator telling the story and I have no desire “to kill one more doe” before the end of deer season. But it’s almost as if: “Hold on to your rosary beads/leave me to my mischievous deeds like we always do” was written directly for me and my wife. “You Go to Me” is the story of a gentleman who ends up as a guest at a wedding in a once-familiar location that instantly brings back the memory of a long-lost love. This is not a scenario I’ve ever found myself in personally, but damn if I don’t feel it in my bones as if somewhere and sometime in this universe I was again in the narrator’s shoes. That’s the kind of lived-in, true-to-life storytelling McMurtry is capable of. Thursday night wasn’t the first time I’d heard him perform these wonderful songs. A few years ago, he opened a show for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at the Robinson Center in Little Rock and performed both – but on Thursday night it was like hearing them again live for the first time. I’ll never tire of hearing “Copper Canteen” and “You Got to Me.” What made me the most excited to see McMurtry on Thursday night, other than the hope he’d perform those two songs again and the White Water Tavern becoming my favorite live music haunt, was the fact that I hadn’t seen him live since he released The Horses and the Hounds, which was my favorite album period of 2021. And McMurtry certainly did not disappoint when it came to performing his latest album getting to seven of the 10 tracks on it and, by God, if they weren’t probably my seven favorites on the thing. The first one he performed on the evening was “Canola Fields,” which is one of my two favorites on the album (it’s so hard to decide between it and “Blackberry Winter”). “Canola Fields” is similar to “You Got to Me” in recalling a lost love, but unlike in the previous songs, this love eventually finds its way back to him. Speaking of “Blackberry Winter,” it was potentially the most magical performance of his entire set with his three The Heartless Bastards bandmates – Tim Holt on guitar and accordion, Darren Hess on drums and his bassist who simply went by “Cornbread – stepping away for a bit and McMurtry even walking away from the microphone to perform to a stunned, hushed crowd. He’s not the first artist I’ve seen do this at the White Water and it’s always a spine-tingly moment no matter who does it. For him to do it on one of my favorite songs of his just added to the beauty of the entire evening. The other songs from The Horses and the Hounds performed on Thursday night were “Operation Never Mind,” “If It Don’t Bleed,” “Vaquero,” the hilarious “Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call,” with the crowd singing the refrain “I keep losing my glasses” and the tragic “Jackie.” Among the many other fantastic performances of the evening was the band rocking through a “medley of their hit” as McMurtry wryly stated – don’t worry though folks he didn’t smile! – of “Choctaw Bingo” which just about burned the place down, as well as “Childish Things,” the title track off his 2005 album, and “No More Buffalo,” from 1997’s It Had to Happen. McMurtry and The Heartless Bastards ended their set with a rip-roaring performance of “Too Long in the Wasteland,” the title track off his debut album in 1989. McMurtry was coaxed back onto the stage for an encore, something I honestly haven’t seen much at the White Water Tavern, for a performance of a new song he’s been working on called “Pinocchio in Vegas,” which was both humorous and touching as hell and I can’t wait to see on a future album. Amazingly, McMurtry left the stage again and took the stairs to the second story of the small barroom venue before once again being begged back downstairs for a second encore, this time performing the beautiful “These Things I’ve Come to Know,” off Complicated Game, before finally calling it a night. BettySoo, a singer-songwriter out of Austin, opened both nights at the White Water for McMurtry with her terrific songwriting and beautiful voice. I had never heard of BettySoo prior to Thursday night’s show but I’ll definitely be following her now. Always pay attention to the openers when you go to concerts. I promise you will find new favorites. She began her set solo with quiet, contemplative tunes before being joined on stage by Hess and Cornbread for a thoroughly rocking second half of the set. Will Hoge, William Elliott Whitmore Bring Different Kinds of Americana to White Water Tavern9/25/2023 by Julian Spivey Singer-songwriters Will Hoge and William Elliott Whitmore brought their fall co-headlining tour to The White Water Tavern in Little Rock, Ark. for a wonderful night of stories and songs on Thursday, September 21. It’s interesting how some of these pairings take place. Hoge mentioned on the stage the two artists had never even met each other until the day before and their music while both falling within I’d considered to be the genre catch-all known as Americana music wasn’t all that similar. Hoge’s music is more alt-country, whereas Whitmore’s was more bluesy-folk. Whitmore’s performance is more guttural, while Hoge’s is more thoughtful. Both musicians were friendly and talkative on the stage with Hoge being more storyteller-ish and Whitmore having a “I’m just happy to be here” type vibe with the crowd. The crowd was a bit of a surprise to me too even though I’d been to many White Water Tavern shows before – it’s truly become my favorite concert venue in my surrounding area – I was surprised that the majority of those in attendance on Thursday night seemed to know Whitmore better than Hoge, whereas I was the other way around. I’ve been a fan of Hoge’s songwriting for many years and had seen him previously across town at Stickyz Chicken Shack and had never heard of Whitmore before. By the end of the evening, I would be thrilled with Hoge’s set and have found a new artist in Whitmore from whom I’d be looking for upcoming music. Hopefully, those in attendance for Whitmore felt the same about Hoge. Hoge peppered his set on Thursday with a handful of songs from his most recent album – 2022’s Wings On My Shoes. He opened the show with “Birmingham” off the album and later included the lovely “The Last One to Go,” the hilariously biting “Whose God is This,” taking on a particularly insidious brand of religion you’ll see from many within this country, and he’d finish the show off with a fantastic performance of “John Prine’s Cadillac.” Among my favorite performances from Hoge’s 12-song set on Thursday night was “Still a Southern Man,” about how it’s past time to tear down the hate-filled Confederate battle flag and how one can be a Southerner without believing in such a hateful symbol of the region’s past. It’s likely my favorite Hoge song period and it’s a message I love that Hoge has enough bravery to perform for a crowd in the Deep South, in a city that has certainly had its share of racist moments in its past. I also loved Hoge’s performance of “Even the River Runs Out of This Town,” which was my favorite track from his 2020 album Tiny Little Movies. It’s such a beautifully solemn take on running one’s course in a particular place. The biggest surprise from Hoge’s set for me was the performance of “Can I Be Country Too?,” which had just been released as a single to streaming platforms a couple of weeks prior and I figured might be too new and unknown to play in a short set in a small room, especially as the recorded track is a collaboration with numerous artists from the Black Opry, Shoes Off Nashville and more. It’s a song that Hoge was inspired to write after the recent controversies within the country music community surrounding such vitriolic views like Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” and its accompanying music video. With lines like: “What if I believe that black lives matter” and “What if I think gays gettin’ married’s OK” the song speaks to me as someone who believes both in country music and inclusivity among all. There’s no doubt that “Can I Be Country Too?” is going to end up being one of my favorite songs of 2023. Speaking of country music, Hoge had quite the big country hit as a songwriter when Eli Young Band took his “Even If It Breaks Your Heart” to No. 1 on the charts in 2012 and garnered Hoge a couple of Grammy Award nominations for co-writing it. His performance of the song on Thursday was another highlight of his set. Thursday night was Hoge’s debut at the White Water Tavern, which is sort of hard to believe, but I sure hope he’ll be back for more in the future. Despite never having heard Whitmore’s music I hung around for his set – as any music listener should do – and I’m sure glad I did. I was immediately taken by his banjo playing and the bluesy guttural vocals of songs like “Lift My Jug” and “Diggin’ My Grave.” The musician out of Iowa was playing the White Water Tavern for the second time. I believe he said and raved about the small venue he claimed would be his home base if he lived in the area. It’s just a small one-room bar with a tiny stage in the corner but there’s always something magical about the venue and the artists who perform there constantly rave about it. One of Whitmore’s biggest receptions on Thursday came from his cover of punk band Bad Religion’s “Don’t Pray On Me,” which is quite the sight coming from a bluesy folk singer from Iowa. A couple of my favorites of his set were the tale of the C.I.A. LSD tests called “Mk Ultra Blues” and “Old Devils,” about the elder leaders of the country and how they never seem to change. But my favorite performance from his set was “Johnny Law,” a Woody Guthrie-esque jam about a bad cop getting his jollies from being a bad cop. Whitmore seems like an interesting cat, and I’ll be paying more attention to his stuff from now on. It’s always nice when you get to a show to see one artist and come out as a fan of another. by Julian Spivey There’s something so right about country music at a county fair. Like the smell of the livestock and fair food wafting over on the wind, the rings and buzzers from the carnival rides and the rural, blue-collar ambiance of it all enhance the sound. That’s how it felt at the Pope County Fair in Russellville, Ark. on Saturday, Sept. 16 when ‘90s country music hitmakers Shenandoah came to town. The band, hailing from Muscle Shoals, Ala., released six studio albums from 1987-1994 and had 10 top-10 hits, including five No. 1 hits during their run. Vocalist Marty Raybon left the band in 1997 to record as both a solo artist and with his brother Tim as the Raybon Brothers. Neither act had much success. Shenandoah regrouped in 2000 sans Raybon and toured over the years with a revolving door of singers until Raybon rejoined the group in 2014. The band today includes two original members, Raybon and drummer Mike McGuire, with fiddle player and guitarist Donnie Allen having joined the group in 1990 (with a hiatus in between). The rest of the group consists of guitarist Nicky Hines, bassist Paul Sanders and keyboardist Andrew Ishee. Shenandoah excited the Pope County Fair attendees by opening the show on Saturday night with one of its biggest hits, 1990’s No. 1 hit “Next to You, Next to Me,” an up-tempo love song with the narrator confessing “they ain’t no place I’d rather be, next to you, next to me” in the Robert Ellis Orrall and Curtis Wright-penned tune that was nominated for Single of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards (where it would lose to Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places”). The group would continue with its biggest hits over the next 90 minutes or so, including more up-tempo classics like “Darned If I Don’t (Danged If I Do),” their last top-five hit from 1995, and the beautiful “Somewhere in the Vicinity of the Heart,” which they had done as a duet with Alison Krauss in 1994 and won a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. One of the highlights of the show was when the group did its 1994 No. 1 hit “If Bubba Can Dance (I Can Too),” which included a spur-of-the-moment dance routine from crowd members who all looked like their name could easily be Bubba breaking it down county fair style. Another highlight was the back-to-back performances of “Sunday in the South,” a No. 1 from 1989’s The Road Not Taken, a sweet reflection of sacred memories of growing up in the South, and “I Wanna be Loved Like That,” a touching ballad that was No. 3 hit in 1993 which includes a “Rebel without a Cause” movie reference with James Dean and Natalie Wood that I’ve always loved. Hailing from Muscle Shoals, Ala., one of the biggest musical landmarks in this country, the band, of course, paid tribute to some of the legendary music that came out of that region – even if Raybon erroneously said no place had more hits at the time (seemingly forgetting Motown of Detroit and country music’s capitol of Nashville and others). This portion of the show included a medley of Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally,” Hank Williams Jr.’s “Family Tradition,” Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” and culminated with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” which mentions Muscle Shoals and its legendary Swampers session players in its lyrics. My favorite part of the concert was the two-song ender of the show that consisted of my two favorite Shenandoah songs and two of the group’s biggest hits – which were both No. 1s in 1989 – “Two Dozen Roses” and “The Church on Cumberland Road.” While Shenandoah released its self-titled debut in 1987, the group truly broke through in 1989 with The Road Not Taken, which included “Two Dozen Roses, “The Church on Cumberland Road” and “Sunday in the South” and is truly a modern classic in what would become known as ‘90s country – a heyday, if not still somewhat underrated era for the genre. by Julian Spivey I was just about to go to bed. I really wish I had. Wish I could’ve put the bad news off for one more night. I just saw that Jimmy Buffett has died. There’s no doubt that his music had a bigger impact on my family overall than any other artist. He is my dad’s favorite. I remember hearing the music non-stop. Family car rides to visit family in Georgia and Florida meant hours upon hours of Jimmy Buffett. For a little while I hated listening to Jimmy Buffett. But as soon as I set out on my own I listened to the music and it all of a sudden not only was my dad’s but became my own. Those feelings in his songs - and it’s his ballads that speak to me the most - are feelings I know down deep. I feel seen in those songs. I also see my dad in those songs. My dad isn’t nearly as emotional as I am - at least not outwardly. I’m not sure I ever really know what’s going in inwardly with him. My emotions come from my mom. I hate that I had to break the news to her via text because it’s after 2 am. It feels too impersonal to break that news about someone who’s like a family member - who’s frankly more important to me and probably my dad than actual family members. I hope the news doesn’t hit him too hard. I'm glad she'll be the one to break it to him. It’s going to hit me for days. I’m sure I’ll have much more to say tomorrow and in those coming days. For now I’ll leave it with a slightly altered line from my all-time favorite Buffett song: “Come Monday, I hope it’ll be alright.” Jason Boland & the Stragglers Thrill Argenta Vibe Music Series Crowd on Sweltering Summer Night8/26/2023 by Julian Spivey Jason Boland & the Stragglers brought their brand of red dirt country music back to Little Rock, Ark. on Friday, August 25 for the group’s debut at the Argenta Vibe Music Series at the Argenta Plaza in the middle of downtown. The Argenta Vibe Music Series brings free live music to the public on the last Friday of every month from April through October (with the exception of July due to heat). Well, heat was certainly still an issue in late August with a temperature of 93 degrees and a “feels like” temperature of 101 degrees at the time of the 8 p.m. show. I’m sure the heat kept some folks from attending, but the plaza was reasonably busy despite the excessive heat warning. Boland and the Stragglers began their set with “The Light Saw Me,” the title track from the group’s most recent album from late 2021, about a fictional UFO spotting. They would segue immediately into “Hank,” a song about the “carbon copy” music of Nashville that’s sure to get a raucous response from any crowd wanting the real thing. Boland is really good at mixing fan favorites with some deeper cuts throughout his sets and I was thankful to hear “Mary Ellen’s Greenhouse” off 2011’s Rancho Alto, which was the first Boland and the Stragglers album I familiarized myself with thanks to a local radio station that would play stuff out of the country music mainstream (and unfortunately didn’t last long). The band would later play “Fences,” off the same album, a tune about America’s not-so-terrific relationship with Native Americans. Another deep cut was the cover of Van Morrison’s “Bulbs,” which the band recorded for its 2018 album Hard Times Are Relative. It’s not one of Morrison’s most well-known songs, so I’ve always wondered what sort of meaning it holds for Boland. Hopefully one day I’ll get the chance to ask him. I was also thrilled to hear “I Don’t Deserve You,” a catchy love song that’s one of my favorite tracks on Hard Times Are Relative. Boland and the band always give their all on stage – and I should know I’ve seen this act more than any other in my lifetime (probably nearing double digits) – but the fact that the sweltering heat didn’t seem to take anything out of them other than the buckets of sweat you could see dripping off them from the front barricade just gave me even more respect for them as a live act. The band, of course, played many of the tunes that they always break out live in concert to the enraptured enjoyment of the long-time fans – many of which made it out to the show and you could kind of tell the difference between those who knew Boland’s music and those just looking for a good time out on a Friday night for free music (the fans were upfront, the newbies in the back in lawn chairs). Among the Boland “classics” were “Pearl Snaps,” “Gallo del Cielo,” “When I’m Stoned” and “Telephone Romeo.” One of my all-time favorite Boland songs is “Somewhere Down in Texas,” which I’d probably have listed in my top 200 country songs of all time despite the fact many outside of the red dirt country world likely wouldn’t even know it. It’s probably the quintessential Stragglers song to see live. Shouting the line about “Valentino in his cut-off pair of jeans” with other fans of the band is always a “this is why we go to live shows” moment for me. Boland and the band performed a couple of new songs that have me greatly anticipating the group’s next album – hopefully coming soon. The songs, possibly titled “Next to Last Hank Williams” and “Truest Colors,” have that classic Stragglers sound. The band didn’t leave the stage and do the whole beg-for-applause thing before coming back to do an encore – no, it was far too hot and sweaty for that on Friday night. Instead, they went right into their three-song encore that began with the ballad “Proud Soul” from the group’s 1999 debut Pearl Snaps. Boland then told the crowd that his mother’s side of the family comes from the Marshall, Ark. area just about two hours up the road and about the tornado around those parts that inspired “Blowing Through the Hills,” one of the band’s most rocking tunes, before burning through a fantastic performance of it. It’s always one of my favorite Boland songs to see live. The group finished the night with what I think has become my all-time favorite concert closer in “Outlaw Band,” a song penned by Bob Childers, one of “their mentor’s past” as Boland says on the 2010 live album High in the Rockies. I love the tale of a group of loners banding together to form a band, but what really makes the song is the fiddle and mandolin playing, which was done live Friday night by the band’s current multi-instrumentalist Nick Gedra, who really showed off all night long. The whole current outfit of the Stragglers is truly talented, but so has every formation of the band I’ve ever seen, and the band seems to change a lot other than Boland at the front and bassist Grant Tracy, the only remaining originals. A.J. Slaughter on pedal steel and electric guitar, Jake Lynn on drums and Andrew Bair on keys have all been really nice additions to the band. I saw the band perform an acoustic show at the Revolution Room in Little Rock early in the year and it was a fantastic treat getting to see them in that aspect having never seen it before, but plugged in and rocking is truly the Stragglers in their natural form. Everything was hot on Friday night from the outrageous temps to the incredible talent of the entire band and it made for no better way to begin a weekend. The Argenta Vibe Music Series has two more shows in 2023. The Pine Leaf Boys, a Grammy-nominated Cajun and Creole band from south Louisiana, will perform on Friday, September 22 and The Cleverlys, a bluegrass and comedy group that has been a big hit in Branson, will end the series for the year on Friday, October 27. by Julian Spivey Have you ever gone to a concert where you completely enjoyed the live performances but left the venue at the end feeling a bit off-put by the whole experience? Maybe I pay a little too much attention to my surroundings at concerts, but this was how I felt when I was walking back to the parking lot at the end of Eric Church’s The Outsiders Revival Tour show at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion in Rogers, Ark. on Thursday, July 27.
Church and his openers – Midland and Ray Wylie Hubbard – all put on terrific sets that I enjoyed quite a bit, but in general I was upset by the audience at the venue from the very beginning of the evening for the sheer reason that they were largely disrespectful as hell toward the openers. Now, normally I’d start my concert review with the headliner of the show and work my way down to the openers, but because my experience on Thursday was so affected by the openers and the audience’s reaction toward them and the fact that I truly bought my ticket for the openers, maybe even more so than Church (I’ve seen him at least four previous times, whereas I’ve never seen Midland and only saw Hubbard for a 25-minute set at Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July festival in Austin, Texas in 2015) that it’s best to start at the beginning of the night. Ray Wylie Hubbard is a Texas songwriting legend and he can do it all. His music knows no bounds and genres. He’s country. He’s folk. He’s rock. He’s blues. He’s Americana. He’s Folkarolla, as he recently said on Twitter (or whatever that twat Elon Musk is calling his social media deal these days). And it seemed the smallest of percentages of the audience, who bothered showing up for the first opener of the Church show in Rogers, knew who the hell Hubbard was. And that immediately pissed me off. Legends not only should be known but they should be treated with at least a modicum of respect. And this crowd has not an ounce of respect for Hubbard, his band, his music and his performance the entire set from the first lick of the opening “Rabbit” to the last echo of the finishing “Desperate Man,” which Hubbard freakin’ co-wrote with Church and Church named an entire goddamn album after. And later in the evening, these same concertgoers would prove they know the song when Church performed it in his own set. Not only that, but Hubbard is one of Church’s songwriting heroes and is even name-dropped in one of his best songs “Mr. Misunderstood.” You would think something like that would lead to fans of Church knowing something about Hubbard! You can’t judge a musician’s set based on the reaction of an audience because Hubbard performed a six-song set of really good songs, including my favorite Hubbard song “Snake Farm,” off his 2006 album of the same name. It’s a song that if he were performing in his home state of Texas would probably be belted by a crowd at the top of their lungs, but in Rogers, it was pretty much me and a few others – I assume one of them the gentleman I saw walk by earlier in a Snake Farm T-shirt. I wonder how he felt about the crowd’s reaction to this all-timer. Next was Midland, from Dripping Springs, Texas, which is essentially three friends from out west who liked to perform country songs together and despite successful careers in other fields decided to make a go of it and have succeeded. I figured the crowd’s reaction would turn around once Midland took the stage. After all, Midland has been played on mainstream country radio – something that would be too afraid to play Hubbard – and has had a couple of top-five songs on country radio. But the crowd still did its own thing. Held conversations with each other. Got up every two minutes for another beer or bathroom trip. Twiddled their fingers while by-God actual country music was being performed right in front of their faces. It was clear this audience just wanted to tailgate essentially. They wanted to party inside the venue while waiting for Church and it didn’t matter if their partying came off as rude to those around them wanting to enjoy the sets of the openers or if it came off to the performers themselves as if they didn’t care. Much like Hubbard had done, Midland gave their best on the stage. They performed some of the best tracks of their most recent album 2022’s The Last Resort: Greetings From, including “If I Lived Here,” “Sunrise Tells the Story” and “Paycheck to Paycheck.” They played stuff from previous albums like a couple of my favorites in “Mr. Lonely” and “Cheatin’ Songs” off 2019’s Let It Roll, and “Burn Out,” off their 2017 debut On The Rocks. Lead vocalist Mark Wystrach shared the mic with his cohorts for a couple of songs letting guitarist Jess Carson perform a nice cover of my favorite Garth Brooks song “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)” and bassist Cameron Duddy rocked the crowd a bit with the Thin Lizzy classic “The Boys Are Back in Town.” It wasn’t until the opening notes of the band’s final song, “Drinkin’ Problem,” their biggest hit from 2017 that the audience’s attention seemed to perk up as if to say, “Hey, I know this one.” “Drinkin’ Problem,” is by far the group’s most played song on the radio and I think the attention given to it by the crowd just goes to show the insidiousness of country radio – after all remember what former C.E.O. of Sony Nashville said back in 2015: “if you’re not on country radio, you don’t exist.” As so to the majority of those attending the Church stop in Rogers, Ark. on Thursday, Ray Wylie Hubbard did not exist and only one song from Midland did. When the sun was completely gone from the sky and the lights on the stage went dark and smoke started billowing out from the set of doors at the back of the stage and Eric Church came out to the first notes of “Chattanooga Lucy,” from 2015’s Mr. Misunderstood, you would’ve thought the second coming of Christ was appearing right there in Rogers, Ark. by the reaction of the crowd. Don’t get me wrong, I was pumped too. I hadn’t seen Church since 2017 in Little Rock, Ark. and he’s always been one of the few mainstream country acts I’ve enjoyed since Nashville went and became a wasteland sometime in the late aughts. But the juxtaposition between the crowd’s response to Church and the artists who preceded him – though unsurprising – added to the rawness I’d felt during the evening. Anyway, you know by now that the crowd totally sucked, so how about a review of Church’s set? I wasn’t sure what I was going to get from Church’s set this time around because he’s changed things up a bit for his first-ever amphitheater tour and it’s rankled some of his fans. Gone from the set are some classic fan favorites he’s always done faithfully like “These Boots” and he’s added a horn section for the tour that doesn’t really seem to fit in with his style, as it has with other artists. But what Church did have and always has had were good songs and those were aplenty on Thursday night. He played many hits. He played some deep cuts. And I enjoyed nearly every one of them. His most recent release, the 2021’s triple-album Heart & Soul (& is its own album if you’re confused) has been my least favorite of his to date, but the songs he performed on Thursday night from it mostly had me singing along like “Heart on Fire” and “Bad Mother Trucker.” “Hell of a View” is a bit simplistic, but it seemed to be loved by the crowd. I know the deep-cut performance of “Livin’ Part of Life,” from his 2006 debut Sinners Like Me, really made my wife Aprille’s night. It’s one of her favorites. There were chest-banging hits throughout the show like “Creepin’,” “Smoke a Little Smoke,” “Drink in My Hand” and “Cold One” that energized the venue. There were also beautiful performances of non-singles like “Mistress Named Music” for a nice change of pace. He played some of my top-five favorites of his in “Give Me Back My Hometown” and “Mr. Misunderstood,” which were capable of making me compartmentalize some of my irritability from the night as a whole, and just shout the lyrics with thousands of others into the sticky night sky of Northwest Arkansas. And then came the encore, where he performed my all-time favorite song of his (which will likely always be my favorite of his) “Springsteen,” which included a new opening verse that honestly isn’t really that necessary (and somehow many within the crowd didn’t even realize was about to lead into “Springsteen” – I really have my doubts about the I.Q. of that particular audience). As I mentioned earlier, the horn section for this tour doesn’t do a whole lot for Church’s music and at times on Thursday night was even hard to hear over the mixture of sounds but having a saxophone on a song called “Springsteen” is perfect and does add to that particular performance. It just felt right. Church finished the show with what he told the audience was his favorite song – the touching “Holding My Own,” a tribute to his wife and sons from Mr. Misunderstood. It was a nice way to end the show. by Julian Spivey Seeing American Aquarium in concert in Little Rock has become something of an annual tradition for me and my wife, Aprille. We first saw them at The Revolution Room (affectionately known as The Rev Room) in Little Rock, Ark. in late May of 2018 and I believe we’ve seen them every year since with the exception of the pandemic year of 2020. So, there we were again at The Rev Room on Sunday night (July 23) for our annual night of fantastic, heart-pumping, sweat-pouring, rock music with a country tinge from one of the hardest-working bands in America. American Aquarium frontman and songwriter B.J. Barham told the enthusiastic crowd at The Rev Room on Sunday night that Little Rock is like a home away from home because it was the very first city outside of the band’s home state of North Carolina (home base being Raleigh) that really accepted and took in the band and its music. You can tell what the city and the fans in the city mean to the band, and Barham in particular as the only original member of the band by the way he glowingly talks about it and its impact on the band’s career. When I first saw the band in 2018 I did so because I had instantly loved the songs “The World’s on Fire” and “Tough Folks” off its, at that time, upcoming album Things Change and had remembered hearing “Losing Side of Twenty-Five” a few years before and enjoying it. They were also performing that night with another recent, at the time, favorite singer-songwriter of mine, Cory Branan. Through that performance that night, subsequent performances, and excellent subsequent albums (2020’s Lamentations and 2022’s Chicamacomico) I’ve gone on to love the band’s entire repertoire – I posted on Twitter the other night after the show that all of their songs are terrific, which doesn’t even make sense to me. You can tell by the band’s sweat-stained shirts and energetic movements on stage throughout their two-hour shows that they’re one of the hardest-working bands you’ll ever see, but the music is so good it also seems effortless. American Aquarium opened the Sunday night show with “Casualties,” from the 2012 album Burn.Flicker.Die., a perfect song to begin a night of raucous heartland rock with and somewhat of a theme for Barham and the boys. It was a non-stop performance of fantastic song after fantastic song for the next two hours with much of the crowd singing along to every last word. The band went through older classics like “St. Mary’s,” “Lonely Ain’t Easy” and the beautiful “Hurricane,” which damn near drops me every time I see Barham perform it live. They played plenty of the new stuff, the stuff that hooked me as a fan starting in 2018, with “The Long Haul,” “Tough Folks,” “Crooked + Straight,” “All I Needed” and “The Luckier You Get.” They played both songs inspired by another Little Rock music and drinking establishment, the White Water Tavern (another of my favorite Little Rock concert haunts) with “Bigger in Texas” and “Rattlesnake” with Barham heaping glowing praise upon that venue, which I’ve seen him do before at The Rev Room and it’s always slightly awkward thinking of what the folks who run this place must be thinking, but having been to the White Water Tavern many times there is something special about “those old hardwood floors.” The band had the crowd in the palm of its hand the entire night from the very first note struck, but both the band and the crowd were kicked into overdrive with the ending of the show culminating in fan favorites like “Wichita Falls,” especially “I Hope He Breaks Your Heart” (the go-to sing-along for all A.A. fans) and “Burn.Flicker.Die,” which works as another theme song of sorts for the band with its chorus of “We’re no different than the neon lights/When you turn us on we stay up all night/We do what we can, we put up a fight/Then we burn too long, we flicker and die.” Being a Sunday night and most of those in attendance likely having to get up and go to work the next morning the band didn’t want to do one of those cliché encores where they leave the stage and feed their egos by hearing the crowd clamor for their return, so they went straight into the encore with Barham taking center stage alone and the rest of the band taking a bit of a break. This is when one of the most riveting moments of the entire show took place – and frankly one of the most beautiful concert moments I’ve ever witnessed – and this was without Barham even strumming a chord on his guitar or singing a note. Barham told us a story about his mom. How much he loved her and everything she meant to him. Then he told us about the tragedy of her dying due to opioid addiction and how addiction runs in his family – I believe Barham said he was now seven years sober. He told us about how her death truly broke him when he didn’t receive his annual phone call from her at the exact moment on his birthday when he was born. Then he told us about his father and how his parents were married on the Fourth of July and how he made sure to be home for his dad on that day, and his dad one of the old-school tough Southern men broke down when he woke up on the first anniversary without his wife. He then performed “The First Year,” which was written about the entire thing he’d just told us. This was probably a 10-plus minute monologue from Barham to us in the audience just baring his entire heart and soul. It was truly special for everyone involved. Nobody interrupted with chatter. Nobody took the moment to get another beer or go to the restroom. He entranced us with one of the saddest stories any of us had probably ever heard – a story that I know personally affected some in the audience to tears because they had similar things happen to people they loved and adored. This moment in the show truly shown a light on the kind of storyteller Barham is – whether on an album or in conversation. Following “The First Year,” the band returned to the stage, including the night’s opener Kate Rhudy, who had performed a lovely set before American Aquarium’s, for “Just Close Enough.” Rhudy, also a native of Raleigh, N.C., performed the song and other backing vocals on the group’s most recent album Chicamacomico. The band ended the show, which is probably now my favorite of all of the ones I’ve seen them perform – they somehow keep getting better – with a raucous performance of “Katherine Belle,” which sent the entire crowd home with smiles on their faces. |
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