FRIDAY
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit - I'll let a quote from my son Charlie be the review here. "Daddy this is cool. It is so loud I feel like I have 2 hearts." In other words he rocked. Also, he gave me one of the best memories ever from a music festival. When they played the DBT song "outfit" and Jason dedicated it to his father and all fathers, my son crawled in my lap and said "Daddy I love you. You are a good dad." Folks it doesn't get any better than that.
Old Crow Medicine Show - It was late and already way past my son's bedtime so we had to miss OCMS but I heard they were good.
SATURDAY
I had unavoidable family obligations on Saturday. So I missed my 3rd day of Stages in the 18 years I have lived in Birmingham. I will share some video instead. I heard Grace Potter was the best act on Saturday from a couple of people the following day.
| Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - live at City Stages |
| Griffin House at City Stages |
OCMS
Ben Harper on Saturday
SUNDAY
The lineup on the Songwriter stage was: Elizabeth Cook, Pieta Brown, Hackensaw Boys, Shooter Jennings and Robert Earl Keen. Not one of those artists disappointed. Elizabeth Cook got it started with her country flair and Keen closed it out as you would expect with his typical Texas showmanship. However, The Hackensaw Boys may have put on the best show and they certainly picked up a bunch of fans in the Magic City.
All that being said the Flaming Lips generated the biggest buzz of the entire weekend. I ran into a couple of freinds after the festival ended and received rave reviews from them.. Amazingly enough thay weren't even that familiar with their music. Howwever, in order to see the Flaming Lips I would have needed to skip Robert Earl and that would have been sacreligious.
The Flaming Lips
| The Flaming Lips - live at City Stages |
More Flaming Lips:
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Elizabeth Cook Live - Workplay Birmingham, AL June 1st
Three songs into her set at the Workplay Theatre in Birmingham Elizabeth Cook broke into the Merle Haggard tune “Today I Started Loving You Again.” Somehow she took this Haggard composition and channeled Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn simultaneously. There is no doubt in seeing her live that she is every bit as authentic as Tammy or Loretta. Along with her husband Tim Carroll, the crowd at Workplay was entertained by someone that the Nashville music industry brass is not going to be able to ignore much longer.The show moved seamlessly between honky tonk twang and rock. Tim Carroll also got in on the act rocking the crowd with his on music and covers like his hard driving cover of Randy Travis’ “Diggin Up Bones,” which Cook referred to as an “ironic cover” as he took a slow song and turned it up to “11.” Cook also got the crowd going when she sang Carroll’s “If I could.” “If I could pay all these bills with my guitar then I would pay these bills with some rock and roll,” is a line she sang from that song. Paying bills might not be much of a struggle in the future based the crowd’s reaction. Cook was great with the crowd joking around with good one liners. She got a big laugh when she thanked the folks at Workplay for the “Cheese Log and Carr’s crackers” before the show saying that most places they played didn’t treat her so well.
Cook is also one heck of a clogger. She exchanged her boots for tap shoes and put on a demonstration for the crowd as Carroll accompanied her with his lively guitar work. After the clogging demonstration she launched into the live favorite “Punk Rock Honky Tonk Girl.” Toward the end when she played “Sometimes it Takes Balls to be a woman” she introduced it by saying, “Here is the song that started it all. Let’s hope it doesn’t end it too.” If the crowd at Workplay gets their way, I see no end in sight.
This review also appears on: http://twangville.com/
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