Zac Brown onstage Friday night at Roanoke Civic Center | KYLE GREEN, The Roanoke Times

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

Zac Brown Band has rolled through the Roanoke Valley as consistently as any act at the top of the country music game — about once every two years, touring behind each of the band’s three major label albums.

With that kind of consistency comes familiarity. Fans can be sure they’ll hear the hits — from 2009’s “Toes” and “Chicken Fried” to 2010’s “Colder Weather” to last year’s “Goodbye In Her Eyes.” They can be sure of such covers as Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” and Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic.” And they can be sure the songs will come across strongly, aced by Brown and his six band members, all of whom get time to shine.

Maybe all of it can feel too familiar. Or maybe Friday night’s colder weather, plus a snow-dump, had sapped the collective strength of more than 7,000 at Roanoke Civic Center. Even though the band seemed on, the crowd in the sold-out venue was more laid back than expected.

But as the nearly two-hour set, including encore, drew closer to the end, Brown and his group dropped in some surprises that fired it up.

It started with an acoustic set on the catwalk that seemed about the norm until the guitar and bass patterns of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” emerged. The line “everyone is gay” is far from the norm at a big box country show, but Brown had the folks singing along.

Then John Driscoll Hopkins popped out some more crowd-pleasing notes from an unfamiliar instrument — a ukelele-sized bass guitar — and the band was laying into Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion.”

By the time Jimmy De Martini’s fiddle sawing transitioned the band from that classic rock nugget into ZBB fan favorite “Free,” with its foray into the Morrison chestnut, the crowd was wide awake and rocking.

With an encore that started with a hot percussion and drum solo, moved into Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” — with a wild-eyed Hopkins taking the lead vocal — and finished with a verse of “America The Beautiful” segueing into ZBB signature song “Chicken Fried, the Atlanta-based band kept things interesting for the faithful.

And since that first appearance, at Salem Civic Center, the faithful have been consistently supportive. The band drew 4,640 in October 2009, and 8,876 at Salem Football Stadium in May 2011. The crowd might have been a bit smaller at Roanoke Civic Center on Friday, but the venue had moved enough tickets for a sell-out, even if a few seats were empty, probably due to the snow.

As usual, Brown had his friends along. Blackberry Smoke, a Southern-rocking country band signed to Brown’s Southern Ground record label, played a 35-minute set of strong material, with the rowdy “Sleeping Dogs” and the pounding “Leave A Scar” landing best. The volume was relatively low, which was unusual given the recent trend of ear drum-rattling country concerts at the civic center. Brown’s set was considerably louder.

Levi Lowrey, who was first on the bill, is another Southern Ground artist. Lowrey, on acoustic guitar, and a bass player did four songs. The strongest was “Trying Not To Die,” an earnest number about a guy who quit taking chances. He would go on to join both Blackberry Smoke and ZBB for portions of their sets.

Bryan Adams performing at Jefferson Center on Wednesday night | Photos by DANIEL LIN, The Roanoke Times

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

One of the biggest pop stars of the 1980s may have exposed the secret to what is happening in Nashville, Tenn., these days.

It started as a piece of schtick during Bryan Adams’ set at Jefferson Center on Wednesday night. During the latter part of “Please Forgive Me,” a tune that had stretched his Billboard top 10 resume into 1993, he began singing in a country twang.

“Please believe me/Every word I say is true/Please forgive me, baby/I can’t stop lovin’ you,” the Canadian sang in his best Appalachian drawl, to big laughs.

And there it was, in lyrics, chords and vocal delivery — an assembly line of Music City tunesmiths is writing Bryan Adams songs.

Not that Adams needs to reignite his career in middle Tennessee. Adams, whose “Cuts Like A Knife,” is 30 years old this year, wrote more than enough smashes in his heyday. But he showed that the idea is the same, whether north of the border, on either coast or Printer’s Alley. A popular song is a popular song, regardless of brogue.

And he played most, if not all of them, by the time this reviewer had to leave near the two-hour mark in order to make deadline. From set opening rouser “Run To You” to mid-show shuffle “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started” to the anthemic “Summer of ‘69,” his rangy, gravelly voice was strong, his rhythm guitar playing solid, even the rare pentatonic lead was tastefully constructed and well-executed.

And Adams, long removed from the days of filling arenas, was more than comfortable in rapport with an auditorium full of folks.

During “This Time,” women screamed after each of the song’s opening three lines. He waited a few beats, milking the third set of yowls before joking, “Is that the Roanoke mating call?”

He had his crew turn bright spotlights on the audience, then picked a woman to stand and dance to his randy “If Ya Wanna Be Bad (Ya Gotta Be Good).” Afterward, he asked if the man beside her was her husband. It was her brother, she replied, to which he put on a mug that was equal parts Groucho Marx and Johnny Carson, drawing yet another of the many laughs his crowd gave up.

But it wasn’t all party-sparkers and humorous come-ons. He and pianist Gary Breit laid out the ballads that drew swoons back in the day, getting the first of at least four standing ovations for “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” and another for “Heaven.”

If he got at least two standing “O’s” during the encore, it still wouldn’t have topped the nine he got when he played the same hall in 2009. But this crowd was sort of used to Adams by now.

Early on, he said he remembered playing here in 2009 and asked if the people in the room were here that night, too. Many roared back in the positive.

They’ll likely be back next time, too.

Miranda Lambert headlined a sold-out Roanoke Civic Center on Saturday | Photos by Daniel Lin, The Roanoke Times

UPDATED with edited version and correction at 2:08 p.m., 1.21.13: Miranda Lambert’s song “Over You,” co-written with her husband, Blake Shelton, is about the death of Shelton’s brother. The print version and an earlier online version were incorrect.

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

Deep into her performance at Roanoke Civic Center on Saturday night, Miranda Lambert had figured out the crowd demographics.

She told the sold-out room of 7,563 people that she saw some dressed in camouflage and some in cowboy gear. She saw grandmas, grandpas and small children. She saw black people, white people and colors in between.

One thing united them, in Lambert’s estimation.

“We’re all here because we love country music, y’all,” she shouted.

More specifically, the crowd loved Lambert — the curvy, feisty Texan with the honey twang singing out-of-the-ordinary lyrics. She and her five-piece band gave it an hour and 15 minutes of hard country-rock, and the crowd responded with singalongs and lighter-waving throughout an 18-song set full of hits from across nearly a decade of work.

Her touring partner, Dierks Bentley, gave it an hour of his own hit-laden material before joining Lambert near the end for a cover of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll).” And he helped her close the encore with his “Bad Angel,” which saw both performers’ bands on stage for a big, bluegrassy musical finish.

Bluegrass, outlaw and honky-tonk music and lyrics were better represented on Saturday night than has been typical for recent country shows at the civic center. Both Lambert and Bentley have plenty of pop and rock touches in their music, but both showed real understanding of the genre’s tradition.

A video intro showed images of women including Loretta Lynn — quoted in the video saying that Lambert was one of her “very favorites” — Cher, Dolly Parton, Beyonce, Reba McIntire, Annie Oakley, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Oprah Winfrey, the cartoon character Betty Boop and the pinup Bettie Page. Then Lambert emerged wearing black and strumming a pink Gibson electric guitar as her band powered through “Fastest Girl in Town,” one of her newest songs.

“I hit the bottle/You hit the gas/I heard your 65 can really haul some ass,” she sang.

Her set was full of such wild-child lyrics. “I’ll keep drinkin’ and you’ll keep gettin’ skinnier/I’m just like you, only prettier,” she sang in a number that started and finished with some old-school Chet Atkins-style guitar.

Lambert told the audience that she was a bit “left of center,” prone to say what was on her mind and inattentive to those who try to tell her what and how she should eat and drink.

“I’m proud of my weight. … It’s all about being exactly who you are,” she said before leading her band through “The House That Built Me.”

The well-paced set included the night’s highlight and new single, the polka-meets-two-step “Mama’s Broken Heart” — “I numbed the pain at the expense of my liver. … Word got around to the barflies and the Baptists/My mama’s phone started ringin’ off the hook.” An emotional highlight came with “Over You,” when by the end of the song — which she co-wrote with her husband, Blake Shelton, about the death of Shelton’s brother — Lambert was in tears.

“Well, good lord, you’ve already got me crying, and I’m only four songs in,” she said. But for the most part, she smiled, hollered, boogied around and worked hard — including strutting her stuff during a country-funk-rock cover of Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen.”

“I hope you’re getting your money’s worth,” she said. “I’m sweating, if that means anything.”

Bentley, back in the civic center for the first time since opening for Keith Urban in 2009, is headliner quality. In fact, he shared the bill with Lambert for this “Locked & Reloaded” tour. But only three shows into the run, his resonant tenor sounded worn at times, and he missed a note here and there.

But he more than made up for it with his energetic and affable stage presence and a killer band that brought plenty of banjo, fiddle and steel guitar that were more than superficial dressing.

His “Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go)” and “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do” had legitimate outlaw country feel, unlike other acts that pass through who feel the need to name-drop the likes of Waylon, Willie and Hank Jr. into their songs, so listeners will know what they’re trying to do.

Bentley often strummed a well-worn Martin acoustic, in particular on new song “I Hold On,” a pop-rock ode to the guitar, pickup truck and other holdovers that keep him “going strong.” During “Lot of Leavin’,” he pulled a woman up on stage and strapped his red Fender Telecaster over her shoulder, holding the chords while directing her strums, then leaving her to slap fives with folks in the pit while his guitarists traded fours.

The band went acoustic for the title cut to his bluegrass record “Up On the Ridge,” then stuck with that configuration for a reworked “Settle for a Slowdown.”

First-on-the-bill Lee Brice had only about 25 minutes to work with, but he again showed that he has one of country music’s strongest voices. Brice, who opened for Luke Bryan in 2011 at Salem Civic Center, wedged in hits “A Woman Like You,” “Hard to Love” and “I Drive Your Truck.”

Fiends mosh to the Misfits at Growler’s Towers on Wednesday | Photos courtesy Danielle Dunaway

By Danielle Dunaway

Fans of the Misfits, also known as fiends, gathered at Growler’s American Grill and Venue in Roanoke Wednesday night for a loud, horror-punk show of songs new and old.

Singer/bassist Jerry Only –  a Misfits’ founding member and the only one remaining in the band — former Black Flag guitarist Dez Cadena and drummer Eric “Chupacabra” Arce followed a pair of Roanoke acts, Black Mountain Revival and Gloom Despair N Agony.

The Misfits have been gathering fiends since the band formed in 1977. Evidence of the band’s longevity could be seen in the layered crowd, with younger fiends moshing and throwing each other around in the front while seasoned fiends took to the back parts of the venue so they could rock without getting rolled.

The Misfits onstage Wednesday at Growler’s

Considering how Growler’s looks from the front, it seems that it wouldn’t be big enough to contain this band and all the hyper fans that would soon be immersed in a flood of fast riffs and vocals. But the restaurant’s concert space was the right size to fit all the fans and allow the Misfits to interact with the crowd.

Only paid attention to the audience, noticing one man who had sang along to every song and inviting him on stage to sing a duet on “Dig Up Her Bones.”

Fiends were rocked by a range of songs from the Misfits’ catalog, including “Father” from their latest album “The Devil’s Rain,” “Helena,” “Scream!,” “ Die Die My Darling,” “American Psycho,”  “Teenagers from Mars,” “Skulls” and “Saturday Night,” a song Only said was for the ladies. The concert ended with an invitation to remember “Halloween.”

Misfits singer/bassist Jerry Only with Danielle Dunaway

After the last song, instead of retreating back stage and avoiding fans, Only, Cadena and Arce made themselves very available to the fans for autographs and photos; Only sat on the surface of the bar, Arce was in various places around the floor of the venue and Cadena was outside near the trailers.

The Misfits want to ensure that their fans have fun. Further proof of this point can be found on their website in an interview with Only about why the Misfits focus on horror, monsters and such instead of more worldly issues.

Only said  “fiends who buy our records and come to see us perform enter another world — from the guy all the way back in the balcony, to the guy getting his head banged around in the front — they come to have a good time. And we make sure they have it.”

And have it, they did.

Peter Rowan | Photos courtesy Jefferson Center

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

Bill Monroe is often called “the father of bluegrass music.” But he also made his mark on rock ‘n’ roll.

Peter Rowan, who sang and played with Monroe during a couple of years in the late 1960s, told a sold-out crowd at Jefferson Center on Friday that Monroe didn’t mind that association at all.

An English reporter once asked Monroe if he thought that Elvis Presley had ruined his song, “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” Rowan said. Monroe replied: “No sir, them were powerful checks.”

“And that’s why we play bluegrass music,” Rowan said, the irony drawing as big a laugh from the band as from the audience.

After all, bluegrass music rarely makes a performer rich. But it was clear that even now, about 14 years after mandolinist/singer/songwriter/bandleader Monroe’s death, Rowan and the players onstage were not simply playing for the money.

Rowan, the Travelin’ McCourys and guest guitarist Cody Kilby — a late substitute for an ailing Tony Rice — brought energetic musicianship, deep harmonies and a lot of spirit to that old reportoire over the course of two hour-long sets.

The Travelin' McCourys

The occasion was the Jefferson Center event, “Celebrating 100 Years of Bill Monroe.” And even if it came around a little late — Monroe was born Sept. 13, 1911 — it was still powerful evidence that Monroe’s tunes hold up. An audience of more than 900, spanning multiple age groups, responded strongly to the sort of playing, singing and songcraft that stuck in the ears long afterward.

It began simply, with Rowan on guitar and Ronnie McCoury on mandolin, harmonizing tightly on “Long Journey Home,” originally performed by the Monroe Brothers. Like that old version, the pair did it country rag style, with tight harmonies, McCoury sounding much in timbre and inflection like his father, Del, another old-school Monroe band member.

By the end, the rest of the players joined in, driving it home in more bluegrassy style. And things stayed that way, driving and swinging, throughout the night, on flat-footers and waltzes alike.

Bill Monroe

Any conversation about bluegrass music’s origins has to include Earl Scruggs, the recently deceased banjo master who in 1945 brought his three-finger roll style to Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, pushing the music away from its country and ragtime roots and into new, friskier territory.

Sure enough, four songs into the set, banjo man Rob McCoury took the microphone to introduce a rare deviation from the night’s Monroe catalog. He led the band through a rousing version of the Flatt and Scruggs song, “Earl’s Breakdown,” playing it as traditional as you please, down to the twisted tuning key trick.

The show was full of highlights. Ronnie McCoury dedicated the instrumental “Roanoke” — written after Monroe suffered a bad toothache in this town — to yet another mandolin great, Roanoke resident Herschel Sizemore, who was in the audience.

Rowan told the crowd about “The Walls of Time,” a song he co-wrote with Monroe. During a bus breakdown, Monroe appeared while Rowan stood outside watching the sunrise and told him “to listen good to this and don’t ever forget it” before singing him the melody. Rowan took the lead vocal, his voice still sweetly spooky, if a bit torn in places.

Sometimes, Rowan’s harmonies with Ronnie McCoury, fiddler Jason Carter and bassist Alan Bartram were chill-inducing. Bartram, taking his only lead vocal on “Kentucky Waltz,” showed a powerfully rangy tenor to go along with his round, fluid upright tone. And when Carter wasn’t singing, he was bowing the line between traditional and progressive.

And that’s how great players keep great music alive.

Acoustic Africa frontwomen, from left: Dobet Gnahore, Kareyce Fotso and Manou Gallo | Photos courtesy Jefferson Center

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

Truth be told, the name Acoustic Africa was misleading for folks who went to hear the act at Jefferson Center on Friday night.

Sure, there was a strong acoustic vibe going on at times during the two-set show. But much of what was happening was electrified — guitarists trading blues/jazz solos, the thump and smack of Manou Gallo’s bass guitar. If the name of the show evoked thoughts of folk music, a lot of the music bordered on jazz-fusion, with energetic takes on traditional African polyrhythms.

It might have surprised the crowd of 730, but it also kept it energized.

Not that acoustic fireworks were in short supply. Aly Keita’s work on the balafon — an African version of, probably a precursor to, the marimba — was a study in speed, precision and melody delivered via woody tone. Singer Kareyce Fotso’s acoustic guitar work was sweet and supportive, when she wasn’t making her backside shimmy so frenetically that one wanted to hook her up to an electric generator.

And when Fotso, Dobet Gnahore and Manou Gallo sang a cappella, accompanying themselves with hand percussion, that folk feel was in the air.

They band turned in gorgeous harmonies and dancing on the bouncy “Cote D’Yvoire” and intense soloing on the 5/4 funk of “Nalingyo.” But when Leni Stern, the jazz guitarist and composer from New York, took the stage, things took a blues/fusion turn. Stern also sang nicely on “Ingneda” and added some mystical-sounding work on the ngoni.

Bukuru Celeston, his sisters and band

Bukuru Celestin, a 20-year-old Music Lab at Jefferson Center student who opened the show, fronted a band that included his three sisters — Ndayishimiye Furaha, 17, Niyonzima Ethrasie, 14, and Nibigira Elvanie, 12. Celestin, noticably nervous in his biggest performance to date, still delivered a strong but mellow tenor over the course of four original African gospel/folk songs.

He had help from as strong a backing act as anyone could want — guitarist Cyrus Pace (Jefferson Center’s executive director), bassist Dylan Locke (the venue’s artistic director), drummer Kris Hodges (FloydFest co-founder) and percussionist Otu Kojo (of Kusun Ensemble). But what made his act unique was his sisters’ harmony work, particulary on the rock-influenced set-closer “Ntumbero.”

When the four siblings sang a part of that song a cappella, they summoned a little magic.

Eric Church, headlining on Thursday at Roanoke Civic Center, has fun with the crowd | Photos by Kyle Green, The Roanoke Times

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

Eric Church is having a rock star moment, but on Thursday night he remembered when the halls weren’t sold out.

In the middle of a rousing rendition of “Jack Daniel’s,” in which his beverage of choice “kicked his a– again last night,” he told the crowd at Roanoke Civic Center that he remembered playing in front of “about eight of you all” at the old Cattle Annie’s, in Lynchburg.

If those eight were in the room, they were hidden in the midst of 7,196 in the coliseum, a sold-out crowd, according to the civic center. And if they were there, he wanted to be sure that they come next time, along with all the new fans.

After kicking off his set with the grinding backwoods-metal of “Country Music Jesus,” the mid-tempo smack of “Guys Like Us” and pop-rock of “Hell On The Heart” — a quick tour of favorites from all three of his albums — Church wanted to share a pledge.

“I, Eric Church, promise to give you every ounce of what I’ve got till the show is over,” he said, to huge cheers.

He wanted the audience to give him all it had, too, and if they all did that, he said, “I promise you we’ll burn this son of a b—-to the ground.”

Showing he meant it, he kicked his band into “Pledge Allegiance To The Hag,” as in Merle Haggard — complete with a reference to “Sing Me Back Home” and guitar riffs from “Mama Tried.”

But this was a rock show too, where Earl Scruggs-style banjo picking and Angus Young blues-rock riffs shared space, where the double-bass drum set pounded and the volume was eardrum-rattling.

Church, whose latest album, “Chief,” is a million-selling crossover hit that has spawned a career-highlight single in “Springsteen,” kept the highly relatable material rolling before standing by himself about an hour in. With stage fog rolling around him, it was just Church, his guitar and a tenor with plenty of whiskey and smoke seasoning.

Then, it was easier to hear the big singalongs on “Like Jesus Does” and “Love Your Love The Most.” This was a crowd that knew its star’s work.

When Church played Jefferson Center in 2009, he didn’t sell out the 900-seat house. That was still an improvement over those eight or so at the Lynchburg venue.

But things can happen fast when you keep pumping out the hits, and as this reporter left to make deadline, Church’s band was kicking into “Drink In My Hand,” the other No. 1 hit from “Chief.” They might not have set the building on fire, but they were smoking.

Both opening acts had recent hits on the charts, too. Justin Moore, who opened for Blake Shelton at the same venue in February, got the crowd riled up with “Small Town U.S.A.” and “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away,” locking in with the crowd via guns, grandpas and butt-kicking.

First on the bill, Kip Moore played his biggest hit to date, “Somethin’ ’Bout A Truck,” and his most recent, “Beer Money.” The video for that song features onetime Roanoker Gordana Ban, who plays the waitress with the kiss like honey, while the singer had a little beer money.

Esperanza Spalding onstage at Jefferson Center Tuesdsay night, leading her 12-piece band through music from her album, "Radio Music Society" | Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis, The Roanoke Times

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

The typical jazz show can be a phenomenal thing, even if it’s a group of cats simply delivering wild goods. With Esperanza Spalding, though, an audience doesn’t get a typical jazz show. Spalding likes a theme.

On Tuesday night, the singer/bassist/composer took Jefferson Center’s Shaftman Hall stage for the third time, supporting her latest record, “Radio Music Society.”

As she had in March 2011 at Jefferson with that disc’s sister album, “Chamber Music Society,” Spalding showed a flair for the theatrical. But she never let it distract too much from nearly two hours of challenging but gorgeous music. She led her group through extended and improvisationally deep versions of songs from the new album.

More than 900 had filled a sold-out Jefferson Center in that 2011 concert, which fell shortly after Spalding took the Grammy award for best new artist. Maybe curiosity drew that full house.

A smaller crowd of about 790 showed for this one, and Spalding challenged any perceptions they might have had about the songs on “Radio Music Society.” She gave her band room to move freely, and her voice often made the audience gasp.

It started with an instrumental — the sound of a radio dial rolling through static as the house lights dropped, showing only a giant picture of a boom box’s glowing radio dial. Found stations and found songs, courtesy of her 12-piece band, punctuated the static. Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” were among them. The latter got a laugh from the crowd.

Then the band broke into its own funky large band arrangement, accompanied tightly by a bassist no one could see. That was Spalding, who emerged playing an electric bass and telling the crowd that everyone in the band was going to show what “Radio Music Society” was all about. From there, practically everyone got eight bars to burn before the song was through.

As the years have gone by, the 27-year-old’s upright bass has grown to the point that it’s truly a second voice. On the bluesy torch song “Hold On Me,” her vocal rolled up high and airy, right into a flurry of a double-bass solo.

She let her seven horn players deliver harmony after lush harmony, from the pastoral folk jazz of “Cinnamon Tree” to the ancient royal shouts of “Crowned & Kissed.” Saxophonist Tia Fuller, who led her own band at Jefferson Center in 2010, took hot choruses on the Stevie Wonder-like “I Can’t Help It,” with Spalding and guitarist Jeff Lee Johnson weaving a polyrhythmic web of chords behind her.

Spalding conjured sadness and sympathy with the mournful gospel of “Land of the Free.” She elicited a big singalong and handclaps on the bouncy-funk of the set closer, “Radio Song.” And in the encore, it was just Spalding and her upright. She walked her bass through some humid midtempo jazz as she sang Betty Carter’s “Look No Further,” sounding like she could have done the entire show on her own.

Notes on stuff that wouldn’t fit into 15 inches of copy

Spalding is more than a musician. She cares about bigger issues. She dedicated her song, “Land Of The Free,” to Cornelius Dupree Jr. who served 30 years of a life sentence on an incorrect murder. DNA evidence and the Innocence Project freed Dupree. Spalding said that merchandise table sales of “Radio Music Society” last night would go to the Innocence Project.

Friends from the Amazon Aid Foundation were in the house, too, and Spalding said she would be joining them in the atrium after the show for the public meet-and-greet. She said that T-shirt sale profits would go to that organization. She talked about the foundation’s attempts to get people to “adopt an acre” of the Amazon Rain Forest, for preservation of what she called “out lungs.” Then she led the band through a devastating version of Wayne Shorter’s “Endangered Species,” one of the album’s few covers.

Grace Potter onstage at Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre on Thursday | Photos by Jeanna Duerscherl, The Roanoke Times

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

After her first song Thursday night, Grace Potter had a request for her audience at the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre.

“What do you say we stand up here for a little bit,” Potter told the crowd of about 1,600. “There’ll be plenty of time to sit later. Let’s get a groove on now.”

Fair enough. She and her band, the Nocturnals, had already taken many requests via Twitter. Fans who hashtagged “gpnsetlist” got to pick many of the tunes they heard Thursday, and the numbers ranged from set opener “Ah, Mary” and “Here’s To The Meantime,” from 2008’s “This Is Somewhere” to brand new songs from this year’s “The Lion The Beast The Beat” — “Never Go Back” and “Parachute Heart.”

Potter, whether on guitar, Hammond organ or upright piano, was at the center of it all. After a decade on the road, her voice still makes her sound like a love child of Robert Plant and Ann Wilson of Heart. If she wasn’t playing and singing, she was dancing and singing, encouraging the audience to clap or sing along.

Grace Potter working her Hammond organ -- and the audience -- at Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre

Behind her, the Nocturnals rocked it, with new bassist/multi-instrumentalist Michael Libramento moving to a Rhodes electric piano or Potter’s Hammond, with rhythm guitarist Benny Yurco exchanging six strings for the bottom-end four, and grooving with drummer Matt Burr. Scott Tournet’s guitar work kept things in turn grinding, psychedelic or mellow.

And once the crowd got to its feet, many of the folks stayed up.

“If you guys are getting tired, you can sit down,” Potter said, seven songs into their set. “No!” came shouted replies from several quarters.

“I like it when you stand up,” she said. “You’re awesome.”

Then she dipped back into 2008, fingerpicking an acoustic guitar, with only Tournet’s accompaniment, for “Falling or Flying,” which she told the crowd was one of the first songs she wrote on the road. And it was about the road.

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals in concert at Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre

The vibe went from “Things ain’t good/But things ain’t boring” to “This too will pass/Play every show like it’s your last.”

Those last two lines might be cliche, but for Potter and her band, they’re true. Energy abounded in the breakup songs of “Goodbye Kiss” and “Toothbrush and My Table,” as well as the psychedelic blues-rock of “Sugar” and the pop-rock mourn of the latest single, “Stars.”

Singalongs were commonplace. But Potter’s own powerful instrument rose above it all, still effortlessly hitting the stratosphere, giving up sexy growls and primal screaming — sometimes all in the space of one number.

Opening act Rayland Baxter, who has gotten some adult alternative radio play with his single, “Driveway Melody,” set up an early contrast for the headliner. The laid-back Baxter never left his chair during a 40-minute opening set. With a Fender electric in hand, he fingerpicked a lot, whistled some and put his round tenor to some pastoral folk-rock music. He and his brand-new band made some new fans, judging from the response at set’s end.

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

Derek Trucks (left), Tyler Greenwell and Susan Tedeschi perform with Tedeschi Trucks Band on Tuesday night at Jefferson Center | Photos by Don Peterson, special to The Roanoke Times

In two years, Tedeschi Trucks Band has already built what most bands never will, even after decades.

Eleven members strong, with virtuosos on both the front and back lines, the act pumps blues, rock and soul with dynamic intensity and open ears. It stays grounded in the songs it plays while allowing room for multiple on-fire soloists and frequent dips into near chaos.

It has been two years since the band, led by singer/guitarist Susan Tedeschi and guitarist Derek Trucks, first played Roanoke. At the 2010 Down by the River Festival, one of the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s earliest shows, the group revealed an intriguing blueprint. At Jefferson Center’s 2012-2013 Star City Performance Series opener on Tuesday night, the band delivered the completed building.

The sold-out crowd of 900 responded enthusiastically, breaking out in mini-standing ovations during several points in the show. The audience cheered wildly for favorite vocal lines — Tedeschi did not miss a note all night, and her power and range remained stunning — as well as for particularly incendiary instrumental solos.

Derek Trucks performing with Tedeschi Trucks Band on Tuesday at Jefferson Center

At the heart of the it all was the clear idea that this was a building still open to near constant creative renovation above the bedrock foundation.

The work began at the front door, with set-opening “Don’t Let Me Slide.” Where listeners who knew the song from the band’s debut album, “Revelator,” might have expected Trucks’ stinging slide guitar work to follow Tedeschi’s powerful vocal, the band’s three horn players instead played a harmonized lead.

Then Trucks did his work, the band ascending with him as he released the quicksilver, flawless but gritty slide work that has made him one of the country’s most revered guitarists.

Similar surprises would follow through about 90 minutes and one encore. On the slacker-anthem shuffle “Bound For Glory,” one of the band’s most popular numbers, organist/keyboard player Kofi Burbridge began a solo rooted in Sunday soul and took it into free jazz territory while his brother, bassist Oteil Burbridge, anticipated his moves and delivered walking lines that helped lift the madness another few steps.

Kofi Burbridge, who arranges the band’s horn lines, brought out his flute for a trip into the Derek Trucks Band back catalog. On the the Sahara-feeling “Mahjoun,” with only Trucks and the band’s drummers behind him, he floated and stabbed over the modal roll of a 6/8 feel.

The band continued throwing change-ups. On the band’s second CD, the live “Everybody’s Talking,” the song “Love Has Something Else to Say” takes a detour into Bill Wither’s “When I’m Kissing My Love,” a vocal tour de force for trombonist Saunders Sermons. On Tuesday, though, Kebbi Williams and his saxophone took over with rapid-fire blowing that sent the song into a jazz stratosphere.

Oteil Burbridge would blister a bass solo during the band’s cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight,” singing his trademark space-jazz harmonies along the way. Underneath the part-roiling, part mournful bass work, Kofi Burbridge played his organ’s bass keys while drummers J.J. Johnson and Tyler “The Falcon” Greenwell smacked a 7/4 groove that transitioned into a freak-tribe double-drum duet.

Susan Tedeschi performing with Tedeschi Trucks Band on Tuesday night at Jefferson Center

Harmony singer Mike Mattison reprised a couple of Derek Trucks Band gems — a rousing version of the R&B classic “I Know” and a blistering “Get What You Deserve.”

With so much going on, it might have been easy to forget who was actually fronting this band.

It wasn’t that Tedeschi didn’t make great use out of her often-transcendent voice and rip into plenty of Chicago-style guitar leads, to boot. She blasted them both on the Howlin’ Wolf classic “Rollin’ and Tumblin.’”

And it wasn’t that Trucks didn’t use both his slide and his fretting fingers to show continuing instrumental mastery. His solos on “Get What You Deserve” could have lit a carton of Kool Kings at 500 paces.

Those are, after all, their names on the marquee. But it is obviously a band to them, not some simple vehicle for them to show off ad nauseam. And the rest of the band was the same — laid back or guts-out, depending on the song, and deeply complementary underneath the solo work from so many different instrumental voices.

In less capable hands, it might have been a train wreck. With Tedeschi Trucks Band, it was a work of live art.

Mattison, who brought “Bound For Glory” and the haunting “Midnight In Harlem” to the band, opened the show as part of his own band, Scrapomatic. He and his bandmates, guitarists Paul Olsen and Dave Yoke, played a well-received set that included songs from the band’s new CD, “I’m A Stranger (And I Love The Night).

Mattison’s versatile voice reminded listeners through Scrapomatic’s 30-minute set why his work in the Derek Trucks Band was so beloved. And Yoke provided the night’s early guitar sparks, accompanied with taste and strength by Olsen, who with Mattison writes most of the band’s material.

Scrapomatic played its own 2010 show in Roanoke, at Martin’s Downtown Bar & Grill. But with Emmylou Harris at Jefferson Center that night, the trio didn’t get the audience it deserved. It got that audience on Tuesday night, and the crowd gave the band’s diverse set — Tin Pan Alley and the Mississippi Delta were both represented — an enthusiastic response.