The Well Worn Honky Tonk Highway; Alan Jackson 9/8 St. Charles Family Arena Concert Review

Alan Jackson has always been one of my mom's favorites, the neo-traditionalist with fiddle and steel guitar (And come on, only the most anti-country city slickers could dislike his music). When the announcement popped up that he'd be playing in St. Charles, near my mom's birthday, it sounded like a good idea to see this living legend of country music (And I mean country music, not Jason AlBryan Georgia Line crap).

We got decent seats on the right side of the stage 11 rows up, though blocked by some speaker cables. There was a surprise opener 20 minutes before showtime, Adam Wright, a singer-songwriter who played solo with an electric guitar for four songs. It wasn't nothing much, and later I found out he's Jackson's nephew.

At 7:30 sharp, Lee Ann Womack and band took the stage for an 11 song 50 minute set that was superb. This is the third time I've seen her, all as an opening act for bigger stars. She ran through most of her well known songs, as well as some new material. She also played Lord I Hope This Day Is Good, as a tribute to Don Williams who passed away earlier. The set was over way too quick. Again she is superb as an opening act, well known with "songs you've heard of," as she said during the show and musicality thoroughly on the country side. I find it greatly ironic that someone who came to fame as a crossover star in Shania's wake, is a standard bearer for what is real country music.

Set List 

Does My Ring Burn Your Finger
Never Again, Again
A Little Past Little Rock
I'll Think of A Reason Later
All The Trouble
Long Black Veil
Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good
I May Hate Myself in The Morning
The Way I'm Livin ????

I Hope You Dance
Ashes By Now













The set change took about 25 minutes and Mr. Jackson hit the stage at quarter til nine, with an introductory video and Gone Country, or at least a snippet of it, with him just singing the chorus. The first thing I noticed and my mom mentioned after the concert, it looked like he had trouble moving, whether it's drink, old-age, bad leg, too tight jeans and boots or some combination. In fact he'd take rests on a stool, between songs as a different member of his eight-piece band was allowed an intro-jamming at least once. But he seemed to get more lively as the evening got going, telling the audience, "..stand up and dance, sit and enjoy the music, we're pretty laid back up here," as well as pointing out some of the handmade signs the audience were holding up.

Jackson like his neo-traditionalist friend and ally George Strait, is a living legend that has enough number ones to make a concert just on those alone. He pretty much played the more well known ones and I was pressed to think of ones that I was disappointed he didn't play. His cover of It Must Be Love, was the closest especially for a Don Williams tribute, as one he didn't play . Jackson was a master showman, working the crowd signing autographs, throwing t-shirts to the crowd and name-dropping Missouri with lyric changes multiple times in songs. This is a contrast to Strait, who is more old school without the showmanship and I've heard compared to being more like a jukebox in concert. Not to mention the aforementioned Strayhorns band of Jackson, getting time to shine and vamp on solos.

The song that stuck out best was As She's Walking Away, with Jackson giving Zac Brown's part to one of his sidemen(complete with making him wear the stocking beanie). There was nothing really special about it, but it kept it with the theme of the song, without having to resort of video screens and let Jackson play the wise barroom sage...

Overall it was a good concert, but nothing spectacular. Again, someone with so many hits, it makes highs and lows of a show scarce. The biggest disappointment for me was the length. The show was roughly only 90 minutes long. Even though with a great opening act, I got my money's worth, for the ticket  price and $10 gouging for having to pay for parking, it should have been a little longer and closer to two hours. The other mild disappointment for me could have remedied both, was the truncated versions of  Gone Country (chorus only), Here in the Real World and Chasing That Neon Rainbow (first verse and chorus on each). Those are three of his best and a couple I like better, so I enjoyed getting just those, but the overall length of the concert made me wish for the complete songs...

As I said the man is a living legend and Country Music Hall-of Famer(or soon-to-be) and was glad to be able to see him in concert as well as take my mom to see another of her favorites.

Set List

Gone Country (Snippet)
I Don't Even Know Your Name
Livin' on Love
The Blues Man
Who's Cheating Who
Here In The Real World > Chasing That Neon Rainbow>As She's Walking Away
Little Bitty
Drive 
Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning
Don't Rock the Jukebox
Remember When
Good Time
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere
Chattahoochee 
Where I Come From
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Mercury Blues


St. Louis Post Dispatch Review Here

The Gunslinger; Shooter Jennings 5/27 at The Blue Note Concert Review

It had been eight years since I last saw Shooter Jennings in concert. Far too long. I was planning on seeing him the last time he played the Blue Note, in Columbia in 2013, but my dad bought tickets for another concert the same night. So, I wound up seeing the Sail Rock tour instead. Hell, 2013 was the last time I went to the Blue Note too, when I saw Billy Joe Shaver...

And waking up with little good sleep and a continuing sinus headache, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it tonight. But good old Claritan cleared it up and, after the storms dissipated,  I was on my way. I got there about 40 minutes til doors opened with a small line. Past history says to get there early enough to avoid being snaked through the alleyway. But it wound up being maybe half full at most tonight, probably due in part to the holiday weekend and that the students are gone for summer, which is a good thing.

Once inside, it was a 50 minute wait until the first openers, the Tanner Lee Band hit the stage at 8:30. They were a traditional four piece that played eight songs in little over half an hour. They were okay, but suffered from the muddied sound opening act syndrome. I would kind of describe them as somewhere between Southern and Country Rock.

Then a quick set change, led to Mountain Sprout taking the stage, playing nine songs at around 45 minutes. They're a Hellbelly Bluegrass bearded quartet from Arkansas and as their leader said in his quick talking Southern accent, "We sing about sex and drugs." Which is pretty much right on. And their songs were quite good as well as hilarious. Their opening song Dry Counties, set the tone, as well as Money, Pussy and Drugs and Screw the Government. Their songs are refreshing tongue-in-cheek honesty...


The final set change took a bit longer and Shooter, clad in his purple Nudie-like suit, and his four piece band came out a little after 10:30, opening with Electric Rodeo. His four piece "LA Band," featured Aubrey Richmond on violin, which added a unique texture to Shooter's sound, along with the typical guitar, drums and bass. I've always loved the countryfied live version of 4th of July over the more rocking take on the studio album and the fiddle here took the place of the steel guitar and sounded beautiful. But it was one of many beautiful solos and fills throughout the show.

The more hard rocking songs started out the show, before Shooter favored the acoustic guitar for the majority of later songs. Maybe the best song was Outlaw You, which brought an intensity that helped feed the audience, as well as the aforementioned fiddle work. Another highlight was Nashville from Afar and the intended George Jones song (Or so Shooter thought as he related the story.), Living in A Minor Key. There definitely was a slant towards his Black Ribbons and onward material, as he only played five songs from his first three albums. (I'm kicking myself for not seeing him at the Blue Note in 2007 or the next year at the Montgomery County Fair, when the The Wolf was released, which has become my favorite album of his and missed seeing him preform most of those songs live...)

A guy nabbed one of the set lists and let me take a pic.

Shooter played around 90 minutes, closing with the cover Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues and no encore, or the fake encore as I call it. This was the first show, I've seen him, where he didn't play a Waylon cover. (Though Waylon did cover Good Time Charlie, I'm not sure his version is the most famous). The only bad parts was I wish Shooter played longer, and the tall guys that moved their way to the front right before Shooter started. Though by halfway through, they had moved again or left.

This was fourth time seeing Shooter, overall it was a kick ass show, well well worth more than the $20 ticket and convenience charges. I'm sure some of it was not having seen Shooter for so long. But I love Shooter's blending of music, from Country, various forms and eras of Rock, to things I'm not big on like Electronica.

Set List (In case image gets deleted )

Electric Rodeo
Steady at the Wheel
Don't Feed the Animals
Triskaidekaphobia
The Real Me
Outlaw You
The Last Time I Let You Down
Nashville From Afar
Wild and Lonesome
I'm Left You're Right, She's Gone
Living in a Minor Key
The Door(A George Jones Cover) 
The Other Life
Manifesto No.1
All of This Could Have Been Yours
Summer of Rage
The Gunslinger 
4th of July
Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues

The Low and High Times of Missouri Basketball

The last time I wrote about Missouri Tigers basketball, was twice in a couple weeks span in 2014, with an end of season review and then with the news of the Kim Anderson era happening after Frank Haith's escaping the posse out of town. Then between starting college classes and not having the free days off  I used to have from work, my overall blogging slipped and well, Missouri basketball under Kim Anderson didn't exact inspire much to write about....The last three seasons of Missouri basketball produced less than 30 wins combined. As many point out, Frank Haith won that many in his first year at Missouri...

Then the official word, what many of us fans expected sooner, happened after the final regular season game of the season, was that Kim Anderson wasn't coming back for next season. I had decent hopes for Kim Anderson at Mizzou, but he was in over his head, inheriting not the best of situations; a young inexperienced team, as well as a horrendous APR score and the beginnings of an NCAA investigation, that Anderson didn't even get told about until the took the job.

But it wasn't as horrible a situation as his defenders made it out to be. He had quite a bit of talent on his first roster with Jonathan Williams III(who's now starting for the possible NCAA Champion Gonzaga Bulldogs) and several other four stars, recruiting and rerecruiting  some back on board. The biggest knock on Anderson was that people didn't think he'd be able to recruit at a Division I Power 5 conference level, but he'd be good with the x's and o's and developing his players.

Except it turned out to be more the opposite. His first season he had a talented young roster, that seemed on the cusp of getting over their humps, but an injury to their best scorer, Montaque Gill-Caesar , derailed what progress was being made on a team that struggled to make 60 points. And then the transfers started, with multiple players leaving on a yearly basis. This wasn't what people meant by bringing back the years of Norm, specifically the mid-90s version of Norm.

And there seemed to be no progress among players, no continuity, no development and no sense that things were going to get better. Many felt he was lucky to get a third year. His tenure started with an embarrassing home loss to UMKC and this season featured three more home losses to low majors at home that probably sealed his fate for good.

As the lows started to wear off, with the excitement of a coaching search(which happens too frequently with MU for my tastes), things seemed to be on the right track. Early signs seemed to be that Tom Crean, who was running out of favor, with a cutthroat fan base at Indiana that's stuck in the 1980s, was the man for the job. I was totally on board for this. He's a great coach that's proven he can build up a major conference team, take a team to the Final Four and bring in major talent. Hell, he's recruited Missouri better than Missouri has.

Alas the behind the scenes wrangling didn't pan out and it was soon announced that Cuonzo Martin was offered the job and sources early on indicated he was going to take it. I'd rather have still had Tom Crean, but Martin has shown he can recruit high level talent and build decent teams, where down years are NIT years. The biggest concern is whether he can get over the hump of hovering around 20 wins and not be perceived as a job jumper. I really think he'd still be at Tennessee if not for sort of being Frank Haithed out of town. We want a guy that wants to be here for the long haul and at least in the press conference that's what Martin alluded to too. 

Of course that same day or the day after, it was announced that Washington was parting ways with Lorenzo Romar, for six straight years of missing the NCAA Tournament, while having stellar talent and recruiting classes. And he happened to have the number one recruit by many services coming in, whose father happened to be an assistant coach for Romar. When that axe fell, Michael Porter Sr. started making plans and rumors of a job offer to be an assistant at Missouri, where he previously coached on the women's team(His sister-in-law is the coach) started swirling.

When that became official, it was pretty clear that Michael Porter Jr. was coming to the Tigers. The number one player in the country was coming back home and going to play for Ol' Mizzou. For a MU fan, the 180° turnaround in a matter of weeks has been something out of our wildest dreams. Good things don't happent ot Missouri.  Martin has gotten interest drummed up, all while he's still not even done recruiting  and not even coached a game for us yet!

All I know, is that I'm ready for next fall.