Although that statement is as susceptible to exception as any other generalization, it held mostly true at Tuesday night’s Golf and Guitars charity concert at Haggin Oaks Golf Course in Sacramento, California. Preceded by a full day of golfing with — or, for those on a tighter budget, watching people golf with — celebrities in the rain, the mostly-acoustic concert started at 6pm and ran until almost 11. In that time, no fewer than fifteen Nashville acts crossed the stage, performing sets of three or four songs apiece.

The appeal of an event like Golf and Guitars is that it gives fans the opportunity to sample a variety of artists they might not necessarily make a special effort to go see at individual full band shows, all performing mini-sets under one large tent pavillion over the course of several hours. For the artists, it’s a great place to win new fans. For fans, it’s a great place to hear what artists actually sound like stripped of beefy backing and choreographed light shows. Oh, and all the proceeds benefit youth-oriented charities. Good karma.

While the concert was held inside a big tent — moved under cover in the final hours due to the inclement weather — its definition of country pitched a slightly smaller one. Roughly half of the night’s bill was comprised of twenty years worth of smooth male crooners from the pop side of country.

Larry Stewart offered solo spins on Restless Heart chestnuts “That Rock Won’t Roll,” “The Bluest Eyes in Texas,” and “Why Does It Have to Be (Wrong or Right),” with the audience doing its best to fill in the lush harmony support to which he’s accustomed. John Berry jived through “Kiss Me in the Car” and reminded everyone of what a career song sounds like with “Your Love Amazes Me.” Love & Theft offered “Wrong Baby Wrong” (a Stephen Barker Liles cowrite) and “Runaway” before being joined by Bryan White for “Amen.” White kept things uptempo in his own set (“Sittin’ On Go” and “Love Is the Right Place”), ceding part of his time to guitarist Scotty Alexander’s “Better Listen to a Woman.” After opening with “Old School,” fan favorite Chuck Wicks got swooning Conway Twitty-esque reactions with “Hold That Thought” and a new one called “The Whole Damn Thing” (sadly, this wasn’t the Those Darlins song about binging on chicken). Jimmy Wayne, whose hair is every bit as majestically feathery in person, showed a surprising amount of soul on set highlight “Do You Believe Me Now,” a song so monstrously large that it doesn’t even sound country when performed solo acoustic. Fittingly, he ended with his cover of “Sara Smile.” Just how pop is the talented Mr. Wayne’s country? Ty Herndon, who fought a flu to deliver solid versions of ’90s hits like “Living in a Moment” and “What Mattered Most,” seemed a stone cold traditionalist by comparison.

The biggest rule of hanging with these guys is that you’ve got to have a killer soul face. To illustrate this point, I made a Pop Country Soul Face™ collage to show variations of proper form:

Former Trick Pony wild man Ira Dean and recent Warner Bros. signees The Dirt Drifters brought some rock energy to the proceedings. An unadvertised late addition to the lineup, Ira Dean was a welcome surprise, with a set heavy on his familiar cowrites. He began with “Feelin’ Like That” (Gary Allan) and “One in Every Crowd” (Montgomery Gentry), then proceeded to his upcoming single “Beer or Gasoline” (a previous album cut for Chris Young) before settling into a ballad called “Still Hungover You.” It was The Dirt Drifters, though, who brought the night’s most hard-charging set, eliciting more excitement with less name recognition (their first single came out in February and hasn’t even broken into the Top 40 yet) than anyone else. Culling the best of their upcoming debut album — “Always a Reason,” “Married Men and Motel Rooms,” and “Something Better” — they literally had people singing along and dancing in the aisles to unknown songs. Their gritty country-rock sound and penchant for rural storytelling puts them firmly in the Steve Earle/Chris Knight vein, with hopefully just enough polish to sit comfortably beside Swift and Chesney. I’d like to see these guys do well. I think they might be our best shot at hearing anything like Earle on country radio again.

It wasn’t until the final two acts that the show veered toward the neotraditional side of modern country music. Jason Michael Carroll ran through his biggest hits (minus downcast “Alyssa Lies”) while working the stage and front section of the audience, posing for pictures with a seemingly unending stream of eager female fans without missing a note. He also bravely sported a faded pink shirt. Clay Walker, no slouch in the spiffy shirt department himself, subscribed more to the Strait ‘stand and deliver’ school of performing, an approach that works perfectly fine when you have a collection of hits as familiar and as infectious as “If I Could Make a Living,” “What’s It to You,” “Then What?” and the more recent “She Won’t Be Lonely Long.” The final act to take the stage, Walker was also the first to wear a cowboy hat, an impressive distinction given that he was preceded by fourteen other country acts. This never would have happened in the ’90s.

Female performers were in relatively short supply, but the ones present were well worth hearing. Julie Roberts bookended the highlight of her set, a duet with guest guitarist Chris Roberts titled “Back to Me and You,” with nice takes on “No Way Out” and hit single “I’d Sure Hate to Break Down Here.” Deana Carter hit a bit of a lull with consecutive slow songs — including a lovely version of “You and Tequila,” the current Kenny Chesney/Grace Potter single she cowrote with Matraca Berg — before leading one of the great singalongs of the evening with a more familiar Berg collaboration, modern classic “Strawberry Wine.” Meghan Linsey, joined by Joshua Scott Jones as Steel Magnolia, proved an imposing vocal presence, bringing her Tina Turner-style pipes to bear on two singles and an album cut (“Without You”) that only just managed to deserve the talents of either her or her Big Kenny-sounding singing partner. Now that we know they can definitely duet, perhaps some more memorable material is in order.

Returning host Jack Ingram didn’t perform his own set, but did mix in a song here and there while introducing other acts. With a vow to continue hosting these shows as long as he’s asked, there’s no reason for the organizers to consider replacing him. Ingram’s amiable presence, and occasional quips at the expense of the artists he’s introducing, is the thread that ties everything together and keeps the momentum up even as the show winds well past its fourth hour. As hosts go, he’s a catch.

By the time all was said and done, tens of thousands of dollars had been raised for the Morton Golf Foundation and the Keaton Raphael Memorial for Neuroblastoma. Not that anyone involved really needed another reason to feel good: The music itself would have been quite enough.

You can find larger images of all the performers on the Country California Facebook page. Be sure to ‘Like’ us while you’re over there; you never know what cool stuff we might post.

Here’s my day in photos and pithy commentary. Albums for most of the individual artists will be going up on our Facebook page, so be sure to ‘Become a Fan’ or ‘Like’ us over there if you want to see those as they’re posted.

Tyler Reeve reeled in some early arrivals with sturdy Texas country-rock and a regrettably fiddle-less cover of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” He also sang with this member of Heidi Newfield’s band.
Sarah Buxton and Jedd Hughes, now known as Buxton Hughes, put on what was probably the most charming small stage performance of the day, including “Outside My Window,” “Stupid Boy,” Jedd’s “High Lonesome,” and an Australian song called “G’day G’day.” They have great rapport.
Swapping songs with Buxton Hughes was Dave Pahanish, one of the parties responsible for Toby Keith’s “American Ride.” With sunglasses on, he looks like the rebel brother of Dave Haywood. His performance of “What Am I Waiting For” was especially good, though not so good as to forgive “American Ride.”
I missed the beginning of Emily West’s set because it overlapped with Sarah Buxton’s on the other small stage just across the way. Obviously someone in scheduling has a sense of humor. West was very possibly the best pure singer featured all day, with “Rocks in Your Shoes” being especially well-received by the crowd.
The Lost Trailers had the distinction of being the first act up on the main stage. They’re breaking up after this year. No word yet on when the CMT tribute special will air.
Jonathan Singleton and The Grove was one of the most rock-leaning acts in a fairly rock-leaning lineup, but that Singleton fella does have one cool voice. I wasn’t surprised to see them drawing a considerable crowd
The Eli Young Band followed The Lost Trailers on the main stage. This guy isn’t Eli Young.
Heidi Newfield wasn’t shy about reminding the crowd of her Northern California roots, and they received the local-girl-made-good’s mix of new songs and Trick Pony favorites (plus “Johnny and June”) enthusiastically. She was pulling in enough people, and has a large enough catalog of hits, that they probably should have given her a spot on the main stage. One of the later acts apparently thought so too. More on that in a bit.
Meanwhile, crowd pleaser Jack Ingram was inviting a bunch of his fellow performers to the main stage for a “Barbie Doll” chorus and giving away his boots during “Barefoot and Crazy.”
Eric Church gave a fiery, dynamic performance that likely won him some new fans. It’s hard to imagine anyone who has any appreciation for his recorded music being disappointed by his live show.

Then there were the members of Little Big Town, who are almost impossible to get in one shot when spread out across an enormous stage unless you’re sitting way back… in the boondocks. Their harmonies easily filled the amphitheatre, sounding every bit as good as they do in the studio.


Beginning with “High Cost of Living” and Keith Whitley cowrite “Lonely at the Top,” Johnson treated the crowd to the most traditional country to be heard anywhere at Throwdown. He ceded part of his time slot to Heidi Newfield, allowing her to do one song on the big stage, before calling Little Big Town out for “Macon” and dueting with Eric Church on Hag’s “Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver).” Predictably, nothing got the crowd going quite like “In Color,” which turned into a thousands-strong singalong.
Montgomery Gentry was technically the headlining act, but I weighed my desire to see them (and my suspicion that nothing could top Jamey Johnson) against my hatred for post-show traffic jams and decided to get a jump on the competition by ditching out after the first couple songs. I’ll go ahead and guess that Eddie Montgomery twirled the mic stand a few more times and there was a big finale involving other performers and explosions.

All things considered, a solid day of music and fun for anyone even remotely interested in the sounds of mainstream country music today and tomorrow. Assuming there is indeed a second annual Country Throwdown, it’d be nice to see a wider range of country styles featured and perhaps the addition of one or two bona fide legends to round out the bill and give context to the work being done by some of the younger acts.

As far as first attempts go, though, this was a pretty satisfying one.

Here are some of the highlights from the cheap seats:

• My uncanny ability to set up camp on what ends up being the noisiest, drunkest part of the lawn. My unwillingness to move from said area halfway into the show for fear of not finding a better spot.
• One bleach-blonde drunk girl’s comment that Josh Gracin looks almost exactly like Jake Owen.
• Requisite fortysomething drunk guys flirting with girls young enough to be their daughters.
• Jack Ingram’s hosting: “Well, that was cute” after The Band Perry, razzing Josh Gracin for being a fourth-place finisher on American Idol, telling the husband of a raffle winner to get his “lazy ass” onstage, etc.
• Radney Foster’s entire set, including cameos from Jack Ingram and Emily West.
  
• Size comparison: Chris Young and Justin Moore
  
• Female reactions during sets by Chris Young and Chuck Wicks. Also, Wicks’ resemblance to Rodney Atkins from far enough away. To wit:
  
• BOMSHEL and Emily West coming onstage to ogle Bryan White during his set. Jack Ingram quipped afterwards that it was like a reenactment of their teenage pajama parties.
  
• Mark Wills doing “Jacob’s Ladder.” Ahhh, the ’90s…
  
• Chely Wright’s conversational set, highlighted by “Something Positive and Hopeful” and banter with a tiny raffle ticket salesboy she pulled onstage.
  
• One Flew South had a doozy in the humorous song “Two Nights in a Row.” The guy in the middle had a doozy in his whole-head (minus sunglasses strip) sunburn.
  
• Jack Ingram inviting any “Barbie Dolls” from the audience to jump onstage with him for the encore. They answered the call:
  
• The best news is that everyone sang just as well live acoustic as they do on their records, which I suspect might not be the case in other genres of music. All in all, a good show for a great cause.

You can see all my pictures from the day on Country California’s Facebook page.

With multiple acts appearing at any one time, it’d be insane to attempt anything like comprehensive coverage of the weekend. So this is just about the stuff I saw (chose to see), which means it’s necessarily limited by my tastes. Sorry to fans of the acts I didn’t catch; if there were five more of me, I’d have been there. The days were roughly split into two groups: Saturday was mostly Texas (gotta see those guys on their rare trips out this way) and Sunday was mostly bluegrass (couldn’t pass up an amazing line-up of legends).

Here are a few notes, followed by a chronological photo tour of my HSB 2009.

Toughest Decision – Noon on Saturday
Hayes Carll, Buddy Miller, and Guy Clark playing on different stages simultaneously. Guess who I saw?

Best Duo Performance – Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson
I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see Clark, as Carll and Miller tour out this way more regularly. His subdued show with musical partner Verlon Thompson didn’t disappoint. While Clark was billed as the performer, Thompson was every bit an equal partner, winning applause with his vocal contributions and smooth acoustic guitar solos. Recent compositions like “Somedays the Song Writes You,” “Hemingway’s Whiskey,” and “Wrong Side of the Track” blended seamlessly with old favorites like “L.A. Freeway” and “Homegrown Tomatoes.” I was hoping for some “Randall Knife,” but they closed with “The Guitar,” eliciting gasps with the final line.

Best Line-Up on One Stage – Banjo Stage on Sunday
Darrell Scott Band, Hazel Dickens, Doc Watson & David Holt, Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, Del McCoury Band, Emmylou Harris. Like an immersion course in bluegrass history.

Best Bluegrass Supergroup – Earl Scruggs’ band
Scruggs brought along sons Randy and Gary, as well as dobro virtuoso Rob Ickes, velvet-voiced Jon Randall, Keith Sewell on electric guitar, and Hoot Hester on fiddle. Predictably, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and the Beverly Hillbillies theme (sung by Randall) got the biggest responses. Festival sponsor Warren Hellman appeared onstage to pick some banjo with Scruggs. (Hellman joined Steve Martin onstage the previous day.)

Best Bluegrass Show – Del McCoury Band
Del and the boys smiled their way through an impeccable set of familiar favorites, matching their masterful picking and singing with a real flair for showmanship as they fielded audience requests. The way they weave around that mic without butting heads or missing a step makes it clear: bands don’t come any tighter.

Best Bone-Chilling Moment – Ralph Stanley singing “O Death”
Stanley is still in remarkably good voice, and he owns this song.

Best Awe-Inspiring Display of Versatility – Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives
Stuart and his snazzily-dressed Superlatives gave an accomplished, wide-ranging set that bound disparate strands of country rock, honky tonk, bluegrass, gospel harmony, instrumental music, and country humor into a satisfying whole experience that seemed structured with all the care of a fine concept album. No other act I saw did as many things as successfully as Stuart and his band. Spellbinding. (I was going to cut out early to catch the beginning of Robert Earl Keen, but I just couldn’t do it. Didn’t count on them being so good!)

Best Guest Appearance – Todd Snider on “Corpus Christi Bay”
Robert Earl Keen pulled Snider from backstage to join him on this old Keen favorite, which Snider sang in live shows for years before finally committing to record on The Excitement Plan.

Best Honky Tonk Party – Billy Joe Shaver
Shaver delivered a spirited, electrifying performance, highlighted by his natural charm and occasionally raunchy sense of humor. There were smiles all around as he romped his way through his imposing songbook, including “Georgia on a Fast Train,” “Honky Tonk Heroes,” “You Asked Me To,” “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal,” “Live Forever,” and “When Fallen Angels Fly.” Great, great performance. In a weekend that leaned more ‘alt’ than anything else, Shaver’s set was a beautiful hour of true blue honky tonk.

Best Rock Show – Reckless Kelly
Reckless Kelly chugged its way through a set that kept the crowd dancing, though a few too many rocking guitar solos killed some of its momentum. At one point, they offered to do a bluegrass song, then launched into a rocking version of “Wild Western Windblown Band”… as Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers picked some honest-to-goodness bluegrass one stage over. Not bluegrass, boys, but that’s some fine rock.

Best Thing Missed By Late Arrivals – Darrell Scott Band
Darrell Scott got the 11am opening slot on the festival’s biggest stage, and put on a hell of a show for those who arrived early to stake out some lawn space for the day ahead. Beginning with “Family Tree” and ending with “Long Time Gone,” he kept it mostly uptempo, which perhaps explains the regrettable absence of “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.” His band included Tim O’Brien, whose own set the previous day also had people raving.

Liveliest Stage Show – Old Crow Medicine Show
Those who chose Old Crow Medicine Show as their festival-ending Sunday night performance (Emmylou Harris was playing two stages over) sent the weekend out with a bang, as the OCMS boys (sans their usual banjo player) jumped around the stage like men possessed. The rowdy crowd’s excitement peaked with the one-two punch of “Wagon Wheel” and “Tell It to Me” near the end. Incidentally, if you want to understand all that isn’t bluegrass about Old Crow Medicine Show, see them right after Dickens, Scruggs, Stanley, and McCoury. It’s not difficult to see why their infectious brand of old-timey party music raises the ire of bluegrass purists.

Best New Material – Elizabeth Cook
Tucked away on the festival’s outermost and smallest stage, Cook took the opportunity to try out new material for her next studio album, which she’ll begin working with Don Was on in the next couple weeks. Her tunes and easy stage manner (also, her clogging and adorable accent) won over the mostly unfamiliar crowd; when the show ended, it seemed like about half the audience swarmed the merchandise table to pick up a CD. The biggest response was to “Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman.” Can’t wait for the new record.

—-
Now, a photo tour of my HSB 2009. Click images to enlarge.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3

Marshall Crenshaw (behind the fence)

Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson

Austin Lounge Lizards

Reckless Kelly

Billy Joe Shaver

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives

Robert Earl Keen

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4

Darrell Scott

Hazel Dickens

Doc Watson

Earl Scruggs

Dr. Ralph Stanley

Elizabeth Cook

Del McCoury Band

Old Crow Medicine Show

Let’s start with this: Line-dancing is the scourge of humanity.

So imagine my horror when I arrived at Rockin’ Rodeo at The Stoney Inn to discover that it was… a line-dancing venue. The choreographed boot-scooting and heel-slapping commenced shortly after I arrived. Line-dancing is a bit entertaining for the first song or two, if only for the novelty of seeing the ’80s and ’90s brought back to life in all their embarrassing splendor.

But its novelty fades quickly. And on this Saturday night, the dancing continued for most of the show, long overstaying its welcome: right through the first act, a decent local bar band called the Crossman Connection; right through the break; right through the second act, a guy named Tim Murphy who had a pretty good voice but a distractingly frantic stage presence (standing on speakers, jumping into the crowd, singing from on top of the bar) that seemed like every over-caffeinated karaoke singer’s dream.

No joke, friends: hours of line-dancing. If not for the drunk guy who went spinning out onto the dance floor like a top, weaving between the dancers and impeding their choreography, it would have been unbearable. Thanks to that guy for at least keeping things interesting… until a bulky bouncer politely asked him to stay off the dance floor. Aww, man. Drunk or not, the guy just wanted his chance to shine.

The dancing mercifully stopped when headliner Aaron Watson took the stage, with people crowding the dance floor for a better view of the Texan’s first-ever Sacramento show. Watson played Strait to Tim Murphy’s Chesney, mostly subscribing to a ‘stand and sing’ style that felt like a welcome reprieve from all the hustle and bustle of a Saturday night in a cosmopolitan cowboy hotspot. With an unaffected charm and an easy smile, Watson came across as a nice guy with a proficient band (teenage fiddle ace Damian Green took multiple solos) and a back pocket full of sturdy traditional numbers like “Shut Up and Dance,” “Barbed Wire Halo,” and “Honky Tonkin’ Around Texas” that seem custom-made for barroom singalongs.

Perhaps it was the live energy. Perhaps it was the fact that Watson’s set was essentially a Best Of, culling most of the best songs from his albums while leaving behind some of the less interesting cuts. But the Aaron Watson that appeared at Rockin’ Rodeo was one that I haven’t heard on record yet. Not even the Live at the Texas Hall of Fame recording put out a few years back captures the live show. This is clearly a guy who has honed his chops on the road and feels more at home onstage than just about anywhere else. You can try to put that down on record, but it won’t be the same. See him live if you get the chance.

Watson was also exceedingly generous, offering everyone in attendance a free CD from the merchandise table (on a $12 cover charge) and promising to stay around afterwards to sign and chat until the venue shut down . He presumably made good on both of those promises, but with the show ending well after midnight, I had to hightail it out of there as soon as the last song was sung; I wanted to make it to church the next morning so as to cleanse all that line-dancing from my soul. By the time I left, Watson had already gone a long way toward making good on his promise to “make friends, not fans” on his hurried swing through California. He’ll be back in this area in September for what will hopefully be the second of many trips to come. His new friends will be waiting.

Kris and the Hag are at the point in their careers where you figure they’ve probably already done just about everything. But on the first night of a three-night run up the West Coast, taking the stage together in an acoustic setting was clearly something new. The singers seemed almost giddy at the new experience, smiling broadly and maintaining a good-natured rapport as they felt their way somewhat tentatively through the evening.

For Kristofferson, who has been touring solo acoustic for years, the main change was Haggard’s presence. For Haggard, who favors a full band with lots of jazzy improvisation and instrumental interplay, the changes were two-fold: sharing the stage and performing familiar songs in new stripped-down arrangements. Like a good sportsman, Kris allowed the less-experienced Haggard to bend the rules a bit by bringing a four-piece band (including electric guitar) to an acoustic event originally billed as Two Legends – Two Guitars. Even with this added support, Haggard joked that the mostly-acoustic setting made him feel like “an old stripper without her g-string.”

G-strings or no, neither of these two men has lost a step. Kristofferson’s voice has only grown weightier with age, allowing him to imbue his poetic lyrics with more depth and humanity than ever. Haggard – who underwent lung surgery not long ago – sounded even better than he did on a swing through this area a couple years ago. Partial credit goes to the acoustic setting, which laid bare the full character of his voice and all the nuances of his phrasing. Rattled from his routine full-band shows, Haggard also relied less on stock introductions and showed more personality in his stage banter. There was more Merle and less of the showman/bandleader on display.

Like great pairings before them, the two men succeeded by meeting in the middle. Gone were some of Haggard’s more acerbic topical songs, though staple “Are the Good Times Really Over” made the cut. Gone were most of Kristofferson’s more overtly political songs, though he still found time for a jab or two. Instead, it was mostly a night for middle-of-the-road classics like “Mama Tried,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Sing Me Back Home,” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night” – you know, some of the finest songs country music has to offer.

Above all else, it was a night for camaraderie. Kris tried on occasional (apparently spontaneous) harmony vocals for Haggard. Haggard provided some hot acoustic guitar solos for Kris. They threw it back and forth, each listening intently and reacting along with the audience to the other’s songs.

There were some false starts, a few bum notes, some rushed conversations as they planned and reorganized the show on the spot. But when you have two of the most important songwriters ever onstage together, it’s hard to go wrong. In fact, there was probably as much songwriting talent on that stage as there has been on any stage in history. That’s a big claim, but theirs (collectively) is a colossal talent. And they put on a show worthy of it.

The luxury of doing a concert review on a blog is that I have the freedom to digress. If you think I won’t use it, you are wrong. Let’s talk about “Okie from Muskogee” for a minute.

Although it has been widely interpreted as a rallying cry for small-town conservatism, it’s not hard to detect satire in the lyrics. Passages like “leather boots are still in style for manly footwear,” “pitchin’ woo,” and “we don’t make a party out of lovin’” sound particularly tongue-in-cheek. Some of Haggard’s stories about the song support the satirical interpretation: he wrote it while rolling past Muskogee with a bunch of musicians (known to partake of marijuana, by the way) in a bus, he wrote it about his Dad, and so on. However, he has also shown some willingness to say – and not say – certain things about the song depending on his ever-shifting political inclinations and the audience he’s addressing.

On Wednesday night, with “left of that” liberal Kristofferson standing at his side, Haggard introduced “Okie” as a song about his Dad, thus distancing himself somewhat from its message. (He offered no such preface when I saw him solo.) In one of the few parts of the show that seemed pre-planned, he also had Kristofferson come in with a verse from his satirical version of the song. That’s the version that appears on the 1972 recording of Kristofferson Live at the Philharmonic (Amazon).  On the record, Kristofferson ends by saying “We always have to do that one with apologies to our good friend Merle Haggard, who is neither a redneck nor a racist. He just happens to be known for the only bad song he ever wrote.” Kristofferson was just one of many left-leaning acts to poke fun at the song in the years immediately following its release.

Knowing that history, it was interesting to see them perform the song together 40 years after its debut. It was a bit surreal, an original and a parody all in one. Haggard kicked it off: We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee/We don’t take our trips on LSD. A few lines later, Kristofferson came in with lines like: We don’t shoot that deadly marijuana/We get drunk like God wants us to do. The joke being, of course, that the small-town hypocrite doesn’t even understand the things he judges so harshly. In light of Haggard’s own political shift over the years, this version of the song might better reflect the way he feels about it today. Case in point: for at least the past several years, he has been removing his hat to reveal his own shaggy ‘do on the line We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy/Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.

“Okie” was also notably the only time during the show that the singers attempted anything like a duet.

As the show rolls up the coast – and hopefully across the country if this short run is successful enough – Haggard and Kristofferson might polish their act, iron out some of the wrinkles, work up more proper collaborations. They might even deliver better shows. But it’s hard to imagine them delivering another as refreshingly off-the-cuff and genuinely heartfelt, bristling with all the newness and uncertainty of this first acoustic pairing. There’s something really inspiring about watching a couple old legends try something new for the first time.

More reviews:
San Francisco Chronicle
Santa Rosa Press-Democrat
(plus article from backstage before the show)
City Sound Inertia (includes full setlist)
Twang Nation (includes videos)

When Snider took the stage at about 8:45pm, a 21+ crowd ranging from frat boys to grizzled bar band veterans to lots and lots of middle-aged couples welcomed him with an outpouring of sincere enthusiasm and adoration that would last for the rest of the night. For about an hour and 40 minutes, Snider held court like the best shoeless showman the world has ever known. He made holding the audience rapt with well-spun stories and songs soaked through with his trademark brand of wry, compassionate humor seem like the easiest thing in the world, certainly a testament to all the road time he has logged in the 15 years since his debut album arrived in 1994.

Less than halfway into the show, Snider switched over to a by-request format. Judging from the diversity of the requests being called out, there were lots of serious Todd Snider fans in attendance. (In fact, as I waited outside the venue beforehand, it seemed that I was one of the few there for my first show.) From those requests, he strung together a well-balanced show that made room for ravers like “Devil You Know” and “Incarcerated,” moments of quiet poignancy like “Fortunate Son” and “Waco Moon,” and mid-tempo Snider classics like “Alright Guy,” “Beer Run,” and “Doublewide Blues” that turned into group singalongs the right way, without any additional prodding from the performer.

Expect fine guitar-picking and harmonica-blowing, but one of the real attractions of a Todd Snider show is all the stories and assorted Toddisms sprinkled throughout. From meeting a shirtless Slash of Guns N’ Roses in a hotel bar to watching a well-off guy flip out at a drive-thru window (the genesis of “Stuck on the Corner”) to reflections on Michael Phelps and bongs (“When everyone found out, they thought ‘Well, I guess we misjudged that boy.’ Nobody thought ‘Well, I guess we misjudged bong hits.’”) There were also timely lyric changes. Where the speaker of “Doublewide Blues” previously didn’t get out much since O.J. came on (the song was written in the mid ’90s), now it’s Blagojevich. Where Snider once sat around his house looking at pictures of Madonna naked (in “Alright Guy”), he now sits around looking at pictures of his tour manager Elvis naked. Or so he says. [Dave 'Elvis' Hixx, who doubled as Snider's roadie, was watching the show from the side of the stage.]

By the time he encored with “The Ballad of the Devil’s Backbone Tavern” and the old standard “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” – and called up Elvis to do a few lines of “Don’t Be Cruel” in between – it was around 10:30, late enough for a Sunday night, though there were few signs of restlessness in the crowd. If Snider had decided to play straight through the night, I don’t think anyone would have minded. Oh well. See you next time, Todd.

Opener Ashleigh Flynn (Myspace) began by promising to turn some Todd Snider fans into Ashleigh Flynn fans and offered a strong set of self-penned tunes that went a long way toward making it happen. With a voice like a roootsier Norah Jones and stage banter that got better as her 30-minute set proceeded, Flynn proved herself a confident, capable songstress deserving of a wider audience.

—

SETLIST: Slim Chance / Tillamook County Jail / Fortunate Son / ? / Just Like Old Times / Devil You Know / Alcohol and Pills / D.B. Cooper / Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues / Horseshoe Lake / Play a Train Song / Alright Guy / Beer Run / Iron Mike’s Main Man’s Last Request / The Ballad of the Kingsmen / Stuck on the Corner / Doublewide Blues / Waco Moon / Conservative Christian… / Incarcerated / Good Fortune / ENCORE: Ballad of the Devil’s Backbone Tavern / Don’t Be Cruel [Elvis] / Will the Circle Be Unbroken

VIDEO: Here’s a video from the show. After explaining that he plays the song so infrequently that people assume he must be sick of it, Snider launches into an extended rendition of “Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” that acknowledges his indebtedness to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie:

Imagine my surprise, then, to find that one of the better contributors at CMT.com, Craig Shelburne, has been haunting this area recently. Here’s a quick rundown of what he saw during his stay, and what he missed.

He saw…
- Keith Urban and Sarah Buxton at Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa in Kelseyville on Saturday, August 23. Konocti Harbor is a neat lakeside venue about 2.5 hours from here. I like their intimate showroom concerts, but am not sure I’d make the trip to see a big show at their outdoor amphitheatre. You can see a show like that anywhere.
- Jessica Simpson at the California State Fair in Sacramento on Monday, August 25. If I had known this was Simpson’s first headlining set as a country act, I might have made the fifteen-minute trip to Cal Expo and watched her free show from the lawn. Just to say I had been there.
- The main gate of Folsom Prison. Pretty cool. Despite having lived in this area for 6 years now, I still haven’t gotten around to checking out Folsom or San Quentin, which is also less than two hours away.
[Edit: It turns out he's still around, so the list continues.]
- Patty Griffin at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga on August 26.

He missed…
Gary Allan at the California State Fair on Saturday, August 23. Shelburne was at the Keith Urban show during Allan’s refreshingly loose 90-minute set to a sold-out seating area and packed lawn. The show featured most of Allan’s big hits and the bulk of his latest album, Living Hard (7/11 songs). Midway through his set, he explained that he had been losing his voice over the past couple days, so he spent all day drinking to get it back in shape for us. I don’t think he was joking; he chatted and smiled more than usual, occasionally even rambling in between songs. While his vocal problems were apparent – he couldn’t quite hit some of the more ambitious notes required by his songs – his band stepped up and provided more than ample cover. Perhaps as a means of saving his voice, Allan opted to fill out the middle of his show with an extended series of slow-to-mid-tempo songs, many performed acoustically. These included a particularly handsome acoustic reworking of “Right Where I Need to Be” and a swinging version of the highly singalongable “Alright Guy” (a Todd Snider song). This quieter stretch allowed Allan to build up a reserve of vocal strength, which he used on a number of rocking tunes near the show’s end. An excellent performance of “Drinkin’ Dark Whiskey” ended the encore, cementing my impression that Gary Allan operating at 70% is better than most country singers at their best.

Next time, I say skip Urban and see a California boy in action.

(The picture isn’t from the August 23 show; it’s from a show last year.)

The show began shortly after the 8pm start time with “Two Doors Down.” As the band made its entrance, some sections of fans back in the boondocks began cheering for one of the back-up singers who (from a distance) bore a resemblance to Parton. Oops, false alarm. The band started playing and, moments later, the real Dolly made her appearance from underneath some sort of funnel-like curtain that was whisked upward to reveal her at center stage. It was an entrance befitting one of the reigning queens of country music.

Parton kept things mostly up-tempo for the first half hour. Early highlights included fan favorite “Jolene” and the autobiographical mission statement “Backwoods Barbie,” a song which does for her what “Man in Black” did for Johnny Cash. This early part of the show featured a number of cover songs – John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” Little Jimmy Dickens’ “I’m Little But I’m Loud,” and an especially well-received version of the Fine Young Cannibals’ “Drives Me Crazy,” which she recorded on Backwoods Barbie.

When she tried slowing things down, the results were mixed. While the classic “Coat of Many Colors” was affecting, the obscure album cut “Only Dreamin’” seemed to drag on interminably, creating the first real lull in the show. The crowd’s restlessness was almost palpable, and the perfectly enjoyable gospel medley that followed didn’t quite manage to pull them out of their funk. Intermission came just in the nick of time, although not before the sixtysomething couple seated beside me quietly slipped out. Maybe it was just their bedtime.

While we’re at intermission, here are some random musings:
- Dolly’s stage banter often seems rehearsed, but the audience eats it right up, so why not? It seems to be working for her. Some of the biggest reactions of the night were to her jokes, not her songs.
- Still, the boob jokes started getting old after a while. One or two of the later ones even fell flat. No pun intended.
- Being a musician in Dolly’s band is a pretty low-profile gig. Every time there’s space for a solo, Dolly takes it. She probably played close to 10 different instruments over the course of 2 hours.
- I’ve read some reports of her declining voice, but I didn’t hear proof of it on Monday. Her voice has changed in the past 40 years, of course, but not for the worse. She still sounds great.

Okay, back to the show.

We reconvened about 20 minutes later for another hour of music. This part of the show included two of her recent singles, “Better Get to Livin’” and “Shinola.” “Better Get to Livin’” got a surprisingly spirited reaction from the crowd and had some singing along as though it were one of her big ’80s pop hits. Parton’s explanation that the next song was called “You Don’t Know Love From Shinola” earned peals of laughter from the largely gray-haired crowd. My reservations about the dated product reference aside, the song actually came off very well.

Parton’s melodious voice was on full display in slower songs like “The Grass is Blue” and “Little Sparrow” (the latter given a particularly dramatic reading) and a barbershop-style vocal arrangement of “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” done with her ‘brothers’ from the band. For my money, Dolly is at her best when she keeps it simple and puts her voice and her songwriting right out front. Such moments, taken collectively, formed my favorite part of the show.

Eventually, Parton had to give the crowd what they wanted most – a four-pack of the big, pop-oriented numbers for which she is best known, culminating in the show-closing “I Will Always Love You.” This portion of the show had the audience at its rowdiest. One woman near me was jerking her arms around in the air in a manner which suggested some combination of fist-pumping Springsteen fan, drunken conductor, and epileptic seizure. Parton returned for a mostly unnecessary encore, as some of the crowd was already filing out and “Jesus and Gravity” can’t exactly top one of the best love songs ever. But who’s going to complain about one more song from a legend? The overwhelming sentiment of the night seemed to be: whatever Dolly’s dishing out, we’ll take it.

SETLIST
Two Doors Down
Why’d You Come In Here Lookin’ Like That
Jolene
Thank God I’m a Country Girl
I’m Little But I’m Loud
Backwoods Barbie
Drives Me Crazy
Shattered Image
Coat of Many Colors
Only Dreamin’
Gospel medley -
– - Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show
– - I’ll Fly Away
– - When the Saints Go Marching In
– - Old Time Religion (?)
– - Calm on the Water (?)
– - Daddy Was an Old Time Preacher Man
– - Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show (reprise)
INTERMISSION
Baby, I’m Burnin’
Better Get to Livin’
Shinola
The Grass is Blue
Great Balls of Fire (Richard Dennison)
Puppy Love
Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
Little Sparrow
Here You Come Again
Islands in the Stream (with Richard Dennison)
9 to 5
I Will Always Love You
ENCORE: Jesus & Gravity

(?) I sort of blacked out (not really) during the medley and creatively filled in these two based on a fairly similar setlist from one of her past shows. Corrections are welcome.