A packed house at Sidewinders grooves to Paul Thorn Band as it plays “Jukin’”

When Paul Thorn comes to town, it’s a double-dose of entertainment. Thorn’s originals and select covers are all high-quality, but between songs, he is equally entertaining.

Thorn has performed in the Roanoke Valley both as a solo act and with his band. On Wednesday, he and his four-piece backing act hit one of Roanoke’s newest nightspots, Sidewinders Steak House and Saloon, for a single set that ran nearly two hours. And as usual, the between-songs talk was just about as entertaining as the music.

Thorn didn’t lay out so much patter on Wednesday, though. Sidewinders is set up for dancing, with a wooden floor that’s in shape for boot-scooting — most of the acts that play there are of the neo-country variety. Many in the crowd of more than 200 packed the floor. Paul Thorn Band obliged.

But he got in his stories. Introducing “Walk In My Shadow,” a cover of a Paul Rodgers-era Free song that appears on his latest disc, “What The Hell Is Going On?” he discussed a long-ago affair he had with his girlfriend’s sister.

“It was wrong, but it was a lot of fun till we got caught,” he said. Then his girlfriend played the “revenge game.”

“How could she do that?” he deadpanned. “She was a terrible person.”

Introducing “What Have You Done To Lift Somebody Up,” he told the crowd that a female fan had brought him a gift that day — a gift bag of Spam-flavored macadamia nuts and Altoids for the bad breath those treats would evoke — all in a bag on which was written, “Smile if Jesus Loves You.”

Thorn, who grew up in the Pentacostal church with a preaching father — the young Thorn was a boy preacher in that church — but with a pimp for an uncle, has always walked the tightrope between the sacred and the profane. On Wednesday, he had a lunchbox that proved it. The metal lunchbox featured his own painting that adorned the cover of “What The Hell Is Going On?”

Thorn described the outsider-art influenced painting to the crowd — Thorn with Jesus in a kiddie pool in heaven, with women including Thorn’s wife attending them. “In Heaven, my wife encourages me to be with any woman I want.” he said.

Down below, in hell, were the people who had never bought any of his merch.

Again, though, this  night was mostly about the music — from “A Heart Like Mine” to “Pimps and Preachers” to “Joanie The Jehovah’s Witness Stripper” and “It’s A Great Day To Whup Somebody’s Ass,” crowd favorites all. This reviewer didn’t notice any new songs in the mix, but with that rock-solid and tasteful band behind him — including a great guitarist, Bill Hinds, who has been in the band for years — the show was still grooving and energetic.

Adam and Cary Rutledge, of the band Rutledge, opened the show, running through a variety of recent and older country hits such as Luke Bryan’s “Drunk On You,” Dwight Yoakam’s “Guitars, Cadillacs,” Blake Shelton’s “Sure Be Cool If You Did,” even Alabama’s “Dixieland Delight.” They sprinkled in a couple of Rutledge originals — “I Love My Life” and “This Old Truck” — both of which fit right in with the playlist. Adam Rutledge is a strong vocalist and brothers Cary and Roger (who sat in on a couple of numbers) have their harmonies down.

Ted Nugent, firing them up with the rock at Roanoke Civic Center on Sunday | Don Peterson, special to The Roanoke Times

Because there is only so much space in print:

I could have filled this morning’s review of the REO Speedwagon, Styx, Ted Nugent and Roanoke-based, contest-winning opening act Adam Rutledge with my mixture of exhileration and annoyance at Ted Nugent’s opening set.

For starters, Nugent is impressive in that, for all his extra-rockular activities — skilled hunter and ammunition seller, best-selling author, NRA board member/provacateur — he has retained his ferocity on both guitar and vocals. His band, including on-again/off-again rhythm guitarist and singer Derek St. Holmes, bassist Greg Smith and drummer “Wild” Mick Brown, rocked exactly to the “Motor City Madman’s” specifications.

The man they call “Uncle” Ted is part of the Midwest Rock And Roll Express now, opening, as he did so often in the days when he blew acts off the stage. And by the rock gods, he did it with brutal volume. It was so much fun to hear songs like  “Stranglehold” “Great White Buffalo,” and “Hey Baby” — St. Holmes’ work on the latter two showed a voice that has only improved with age — played by old rockers who cannot help but crank it.

It was even fun to hear “Cat Scratch Fever” and “Wango Tango,” with Nugent in full demented mode, the loincloth of old replaced by jeans, the flowing hair replaced by a camouflage cowboy hat. The crowd went bats for the 50-minute set.

Nugent gave what many in the crowd likely thought was a feel-good black history lesson, calling the names of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, James Brown and Motown artists as big influences on his music. Having heard this music for decades, I can say that this is definitely true in spirit. “Hey Baby,” for example, is a funky blues offering that St. Holmes sang with soul. The band’s version of The Temptations’ hit “My Girl” was pretty decent, though its work on “Johnny B. Goode” was much better at the back end of a medley.

What he didn’t say was that for Nugent, it is the Black Power 2013 Tour. In the article linked from the last sentence, he wrote: “All too often black children are now raised in single-parent households with no father in their lives.”

But before he introduced all his black musical heroes and played a bit of their music, he told the crowd that “every piece of music you love comes from a black American son of a bitch.”

Really, Ted? Did you have to call them sons of bitches? I know you’re crude, dude, but seriously.

In the World Net Daily piece, he wrote, “The truth is that the Democratic Party has been the engineer of the destruction of black Americans, and everyone knows it except the very people who need to know it the most – black Americans.”

That is Nugent talking out of his backside. As Leonard Pitts pointed out recently, “the Democrats themselves are still living on the 50-year-old fumes of Lyndon Johnson’s legacy. So there is no reason the GOP cannot command a portion of the black vote.” Pitts’ point, a small part of his column about Sen. Rand Paul’s visit to Howard University, is not a new one. Nugent was just not aware of it.

This is the same guy who has pondered on the op-ed page of The Washington Times about whether it would have been better if the South had won the Civil War. Way to bring your new target audience into the flock, Nuge.

Again, “Stranglehold” sounded great, and St. Holmes sang the devil out of it. But Nugent again had to preface it with something ridiculous.

“I love freedom! I love freedom!” he said, dedicating the next song to the military, the National Guard, the Coast Guard. “… It’s time to get the world in a ‘Stranglehold,’ m***********s!”

It is not clear whether Nugent defecated on himself, along with other self-abuse, in order to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War era. He has told different versions of how he avoided service at that time. Read all about it at snopes.com — www.snopes.com/politics/military/nugent.asp

Someone who avoided military service still is guaranteed the right to support the troops. The same First Amendment gives other people the option to call him out on his B.S., particularly when someone is using a song title to encourage war-making.

“I wish I was somebody else so I could go see me, ’cause nobody plays like this anymore,” Nugent told the crowd.

He would surely have loved himself.

At any rate, I’m still glad that Nugent has so far survived his prediction that he would be “dead or in jail” by — well, a couple of weeks ago — if President Barack Obama was re-elected. It was good to hear him rock out, annoyances and all.

Bobby McFerrin, performing last Friday at Jefferson Center | Daniel Lin, special to The Roanoke Times

byTad Dickens | 777-6474

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Singer Bobby McFerrin brought a lot of musical surprises to Jefferson Center on Friday night. The biggest one came when he asked if anyone had a request. That left the door wide open for someone to request “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” the 1988 a cappella song that brought him international fame and a No. 1 hit.

Instead, a woman walked up to the stage and asked for the Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends,” on behalf of a friend. McFerrin, who all night had shown a sense of adventure, was game. He and his band launched into a fine cover of the song, as the woman hurried back with her female friend. The two danced while the crowd sang along.

It wasn’t the only time that McFerrin got members of the sold-out audience involved in the action.

Read the entire review at music.roanoke.com.

Carrie Underwood and band members on stage Saturday night at Roanoke Civic Center | Photo by Don Peterson, special to The Roanoke Times | optimized via picmonkey.com

byTad Dickens | 777-6474

Sunday, March 24, 2013

When Carrie Underwood comes to town, what she will sing is not so much in question. Familiar pop-country hits fill her sets.

Instead, the question is: What will she do?

When Underwood hit Roanoke Civic Center in November 2010, she climbed onto the bed of a pickup truck that would eventually carry the high-heeled singer over the audience and across the coliseum. It was quite a spectacle, particularly because she told the audience that she is afraid of heights.

She apparently has fully conquered that fear, or she is a masochist. On Saturday night in the same coliseum, she rose above the audience again — this time with three members of her band, on what she called a “flying stage” rigged up to look like hot air balloons were carrying it.

Read more.

Audience members on Jefferson Center’s Shaftman Hall stage wait for the Snarky Puppy’s Family Dinner show on Friday night | Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis, The Roanoke Times

Something that few listeners will ever experience happened on stage Friday night at Jefferson Center’s Shaftman Hall.

In truth, quite a few rare things happened during the first set of “Snarky Puppy’s Family Dinner,” a show recorded with its audience onstage for a forthcoming CD/DVD set.

But the astounding thing happened near the end, and it came from the voice of Lalah Hathaway, a daughter of Donny Hathaway, the late jazz, soul and R&B master singer and songwriter.

Lalah Hathaway was singing “It’s Something,’” her cover of a Brenda Russell number. As Snarky Puppy slammed on the mid-tempo, half-time, two-chord vamp that took the song out, Hathaway harmonized with herself. She split her voice into two voices, and the notes sympathized beautifully as she rolled them over the changes for a measure or two.

Michael League talks to the audience before the Snarky Puppy’s Family Dinner show

It’s something that monks hide themselves away for years to learn. And there she was, letting it go. Jaws dropped. One of the harmony singers turned around, a huge smile on her face, to look at Snarky Puppy drummer Robert “Sput” Searight, who had arranged this version. He smiled back and kept slapping his kit.

“Did you just hear her sing two notes?” bandleader/bassist Michael League said to the audience after it was over. “I thought I did, too.”

Go to roanoke.com to read the entire piece.

Flannel Church | Courtesy Margaret Willard

Sitting behind his drum set with Flannel Church at Growler’s American Grill on Wednesday night, Duane Trucks was a rock with soul. His time was fantastic, his ears were wide open and his playing was supportive where it needed to be and sympathetically chaotic when the Atlanta-based band took it there.

What else could a listener expect from Derek Trucks’ younger brother and fellow Col. Bruce Hampton acolyte? Well, wicked solo work, that’s what. And Duane Trucks delivered that, too, at the very end of a long set in front of, oh, maybe 30 people. Wednesdays in Roanoke. Ack!

I came a bit unprepared, as I had my own band rehearsal earlier last night. But when Trucks started riffing through this funky band figure, I had to whip out the Galaxy, as poor as it is for this kind of thing, and commit it to the zeros and ones. So here it is. Pardon the sound and picture and just get into this guy’s playing.

Marvel at the way he displaces time. Enjoy the humanity as he drops a stick but keeps something strong going on with the other hand while he reaches to pick it up. Savor the improvisational skills. He goes for a bunch of stuff. And when he makes a couple of mistakes, he turns them in his favor. Impressive.

And while this is a drum-centric post, let it be known that Flannel Church, soon to be known as King Lincoln, is a force. Three of these guys — bassist Kevin Scott, Trucks and guitarist/singer Lawson Feltman — played with Hampton’s band The Pharaoh Gummitt, and they sound like it, which is a great thing. And lead singer Marshall Ruffin has great range, tone and control over a variety of styles. Here’s hoping the band returns on a weekend.

Steve Martin on stage with Steep Canyon Rangers on Sunday night at Virginia Tech’s Burruss Auditorium | Daniel Lin, special to The Roanoke Times

Four banjos stood propped on stage Sunday night at Virginia Tech’s Burruss Auditorium.

That’s a lot of banjos, even for a bluegrass show, and for a hardcore ‘grasser, the sight was a joke waiting to happen.

Steve Martin had some.

A few songs into his set with Steep Canyon Rangers, Martin referenced his instruments, noting that people wonder why there are so many.

“It’s an ego thing,” he said, adding that he thinks of all of his banjos as children, “which means that one of them probably isn’t mine.”

Read the full review at roanoke.com.

Rosanne Cash | Courtesy Jefferson Center

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

If Rosanne Cash wasn’t having a great time on stage at Jefferson Center on Saturday night, then she is a better actress than she is a singer.

At the end of a nearly two-hour set at the venue’s sold-out Shaftman Hall, Cash asked the crowd of more than 900, “Why didn’t you invite me sooner?”

A man in the crowd shouted, “Come back soon!”

“I will, my darling,” she replied, as the audience shouted and applauded in approval.

Cash — leading a five-piece band that featured her husband, producer John Leventhal, on guitar — brought out the earliest gems in her catalog, sprang a couple of brand new tunes on the audience and gave them plenty of recent stuff. She relied mostly on music from “The List,” the 2009 album of American standards culled from 100 numbers that her father, Johnny Cash, gave her when she was his 18-year-old backup singer.

Along the way, Rosanne Cash marveled frequently at her husband’s monstrous Telecaster chops. As Leventhal worked through 16 particularly incendiary bars of rock guitar on “The List” cut “Motherless Children,” Cash grinned big as she watched him.

When it was done, she said, “Oh, man! Will you marry me?

“It seems a shame to have so much fun on such a sad song,” she said, to laughter. “But I’m over it.”

And why shouldn’t she be having fun? After all, she is more than 30 years into a career in which hits including set-opening “Seven Year Ache,” which she wrote, and “Tennessee Flat Top Box,” which her father wrote, continue to hold up.

On the former, her resonant, steely vocal drew immediate chills. On the latter, Leventhal and multi-instrumentalist Rich Hinman brought electric guitar fireworks, harmonizing the melody when they weren’t taking turns scorching their fretboards. Cash smiled and grooved throughout.

Leventhal’s arrangements gave new life to the old material, bringing swampy country-jazz spice to “I’m Movin’ On” and rock ‘n’ roll impetus to encore closer “Heartaches By The Number” — both from “The List” — without distracting from either tune’s original power.

Cash and Leventhal, married since 1995, are quite a team. Their songs “Radio Operator” and “House On The Lake,” from the 2006 record “Black Cadillac,” were show highlights. They gave the band a break to perform “House On The Lake” and Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode To Billie Joe,” showing that they probably could have done the entire show as a duet, and it would have been about as entertaining.

Of Gentry’s number, Cash told the crowd that she and Leventhal figured it could have been the 101st song from “The List.”

With new numbers “Modern Blue” and “Etta’s Tune,” from an upcoming record she and Leventhal are working on, they showed that they’re still writing with quality.

It was all enough to make her Jefferson Center fans happy, too, and to want her back. It seemed that the feeling was mutual.

Tiffany Godette (left) and Chuck Campbell of The Campbell Brothers play Jefferson Center’s rehearsal hall stage on Friday | Photos by Rebecca Barnett, The Roanoke Times

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

A long debate has simmered. Which came first, gospel music or the blues? The Campbell Brothers had an answer at Jefferson Center on Friday night.

“Some of the same ones who played the juke joints on Saturday night played church services on Sunday morning,” guitarist Phil Campbell told a crowd inside the venue’s rehearsal hall.

Campbell and his brothers, Chuck and Darick, and their traditional “sacred steel” guitar band brought both styles together, with the balance rising toward their Lord. In two sets, the dynamic five-piece band and singer Tiffany Godette brought church on Friday.

The Campbell Brothers onstage Friday night at Jefferson Center’s rehearsal hall

The rehearsal hall, with a capacity of about 150, was nearly full, with many standing, waving hands or clapping. The shame of it was that the show was originally scheduled for the Jefferson’s Shaftman Hall, with its capacity of 900. Once again, the Roanoke listening audience showed itself to be shy about something different, even with reasonable ticket prices.

Phil Campbell (left) and Levi Bennett

But the smaller room provided intimate atmosphere, and The Campbell Brothers’ charisma held the crowd easily.

The band started out relatively mellow, with the straight-ahead mid-tempo “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around,” Darick Campbell carrying the melody on lap steel. Godette rose to sing over the shuffling “I Feel Good,” Chuck Campbell developing his pedal steel lead work from her vocal melody. Still, things were mellow.

Darick Campbell

Then the intensity grew. On a cover of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” Darick Campbell had his tone locked in, bringing lyrical beauty that has been the trademark of an 80-year old tradition in the House of God Church Keith Dominion. Brother Chuck mimicked locomotive whistles and delivered cascading 16th-note runs as the band chugged behind him on “I’m Going Home on the Morning Train.”

Brother Phil got some electric guitar solo work in, too. After telling the crowd about the similarities between gospel and blues music, he wailed over the 12/8 swing of set-closer “Don’t Let The Devil Ride,” with Godette bringing blistering vocal work of her own.

The second set built on the intensity. Phil Campbell stomped an effect that made his guitar sound like a piano, and he showed the chord work and solo chops of a church pianist on “I’ll Fly Away.” Chuck Campbell, who had broken a string early in the set, had a new one wound up and tuned just in time to push his slide through some haunting lead work.

Darick took the vocal on the band’s final tune, an extended version of “Lord I Just Wanna Thank You,” from the band’s upcoming album, “Beyond The Four Walls.” He gave way soon to Godette, whose full tone, glass rattling range and sweet falsetto were a marvel all night.

As Chuck Campbell — with brothers Levi (drums) and Derrick Bennett (bass) pounding hard — worked a pedal to summon overdriven low notes, Darick asked the crowd to stand and be thankful.

It was a show to be thankful for.

Punch Brothers perform Wednesday night at Burruss Auditorium, Virginia Tech | Don Petersen, special to The Roanoke Times

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

There are at least two things to know up front about Punch Brothers. First, the band is full of goofballs. Second, the band takes its music altogether seriously.

To the first point: Deep into a nearly two-hour set at Virginia Tech’s Burruss Auditorium on Wednesday night, a female voice from far back in a crowd estimated at 1,300 shouted: “I love you, Chris!” One might have presumed that she was hollering at frontman/lead singer/mandolinist Chris Thile.

But Thile immediately turned to his right, where guitarist/harmony singer Chris Eldridge stood. They looked at each other with semi-randy mirth. They high-fived, to laughs from the crowd and their bandmates.

“Oh boy, that was inappropriate,” Thile said, before taking it a step further. “Which Chris do you want? Hell, you can have us both.”

To the second point: This is an act that can work genres ranging from Johann Bach to Bill Monroe – and that was just the encore. These brothers are steeped in bluegrass but with deep knowledge of practically every other musical style.

When it wasn’t covering the likes of Josh Ritter’s darkly beautiful “Another New World,” the band mined last year’s CD “Who’s Feeling Young Now” and EP “Ahoy!”

With “Movement and Location,” “Who’s Feeling Young Now” and “Patchwork Girlfriend,” the band has combined many stylistic elements into a pop-rock and sometimes goof-goth brew that suggests it is developing a genre of its own.

And while everyone in the band – Thile, Eldridge, banjoist Noam Pikelny, violinist Gabe Witcher and bassist Paul Kowart – can and did solo like cliche-free  beasts, the band played tick-tight, with a multi-layered, harmonic intensity that only comes through countless hours of group and individual rehearsal.

Thile was the most physically dynamic, strutting around like the drunken spawn of a rooster and peacock. But he rarely missed a note, and his voice, a tenor that rises high into falsetto, has strengthened while retaining a wistful quality.

Eldridge and Witcher often harmonized spookily behind him. And Witcher shone with his lead vocal on “This Girl,” from “Who’s Feeling Young.”

Punch Brothers went back to 2010 disc “Antifogmatic,” with the dark pop of “Missy” and rollicking newgrass of “Rye Whiskey.” And at the end of the night, the band unplugged, walked to the front of the stage and played Bill Monroe’s “Blue Night.” It filled the room and stuck in the ears afterward.