The Devil Went Down To Pittsburgh

Zac Brown Band, Burgettstown, July 15, 2012

The Inky Jukebox would like to open this review of the Zac Brown Band by saying that it was, by a long shot, the loudest show we’ve been to in recent years. And by “recent” we mean since the mid-nineties, say. What liquid gold was poured into the engineer’s pocket to make it so? Let us tell you how loud it was: a raucous capacity crowd of 23,000 screaming people could not be heard above the music they were singing lustily along with. That’s damn loud. From way out on the lawn, it was deafening. The folks under the canopy probably staggered out and fell over afterwards.

This is not a problem, however. Why? Because the Zac Brown Band (ZBB hereon in) are musician’s musicians: each and every member can sing and play their hearts out, and are allowed their own moment (or two, or several minutes) in the spotlight to demonstrate this. Indeed, it is when individuals are allowed to shine that the crowd goes wild, and with good cause. If you’ve been to a ZBB show before, you’d know to expect some guitar fireworks from Clay Cook, and Holy Moly, he brings them — but you might not have been prepared for how far along fiddle player Jimmy DeMartini has come in terms of being comfortable in his own space on the stage. The solo he delivers during “Neon” is nothing short of astonishing.

Be patient and watch until the end of the clip

The Inky Jukebox has tried to find a good clip of it on the YouTube, and this one sort of shows you, but only towards the end. This one’s a year old; at last night’s show, his solo has been extended and made even crazier, so that he literally tears up the stage and sets it on fire. OK, not literally. But he might as well have: you never saw a fiddle player exert so much energy or play so fast in your life — and if you closed your eyes, you’d swear it was a blistering electric guitar. Dude makes a violin sound for all the world like a Gold Top. It’s something to behold and worth the ticket price alone.

Clay Cook, meanwhile, runs from the front of the stage to the organ and piano perched above, stage left, the all-wound go-to guy for basically anything that needs doing. He clearly relishes the attention and the camera, and being an unlikely axe man who could give ANY of the greats a run for their money. His “America The Beautiful” intro is a highlight for the crowd, who, patriotic as they always are, sing along with gusto. He takes turns leading the fray with Zac Brown himself, who’s no slouch when it comes to picking. He can play FAST.

Crowd favorite “It’s Not OK” is delivered by be-whiskered John Driskell Hopkins, complete with a moment of utter silence in the middle of the song when everything comes to a stop so everyone can imagine crickets chirping. Before the encore, the percussionist, Daniel de los Reyes and drummer Chris Fryer engage in an epic rhythm battle that leaves you breathless.

At this point, you know that they are saving “Chicken Fried” for the encore, and you’d expect to hear “Highway 20 Ride” in there too, but it isn’t. Perhaps they have simply shifted it to make room for “Colder Weather,” which appears earlier in the set, to much delight from the crowd. The Inky Jukebox was surprised they didn’t play “Sweet Annie,” which seems like an obvious candidate to be a single off their new album Uncaged, and that they didn’t take advantage of Sonia Leigh, who opens for them, to perform together.

Speaking of which: this was a Hillbilly Hippie bunch, oh Lawdy. There was tie-dye, there was reefer wafting in the night air, there were beach balls a-plenty. And before any of it, there was a group of already drunken backwoods boys in unlaced work boots, falling apart Wranglers, torn shirts, cammo ballcaps and grizzled beards who approached the party in front of The Inky Jukebox who were rather more upscale. The girl was petite and immaculately groomed; her boyfriend looked maybe 16, and like he was about to go off to college in the morning, in 1955. “What up, Nigger Motherfucker!” one of the grizzly boys proclaimed, leaning in to give Mr. Varsity a bro-hug. It could have been a comic scene, except for the deep aroma of sheer terror emanating from the clean-cut crew. It was very clear they had never met. The preppy folks gamely entertained the Mountain Men, standing for awkward photos, as if they were afraid they were about to slip into a Deliverance moment. One of the sweaty, gimpy bears got nacho cheese all over the girl’s iPhone, which the boyfriend endeavored afterwards to wipe off studiously with his shirt.

That’s love.

(Note to Clay Cook: When in the Pittsburgh region, don’t wear a Braves shirt. It incites the natives to belligerence.) 

Kenny Chesney / Zac Brown Band / Billy Currington / Uncle Kracker

When The Sun Goes Down At Heinz Field...
Going Coastal Tour, Pittsburgh July 2nd, 2011

If you were one of the many thousands of (mostly drunken) people partying your ass off in the bleachers at Heinz Field this Saturday at the marathon Going Coastal extravaganza, you may not have noticed that the entire concrete and steel overhang on which the bleachers rest was bouncing. Of course, if you were as drunk as these folks, solid ground feels like it’s bouncing too. What I’m talking about is the kind of movement you get from an earthquake — one of those “HOLY SHIT! The ground is rocking” moments. This, I can assure you, is immediately followed by the realization that this thought could be your last, as the part of the stadium you are in collapses under circumstances the engineers had not envisioned: Kenny Chesney. Then you come to your senses and think, “Whatev. What a way to go.”

Let The Inky Jukebox tell you something about what happens when Kenny Chesney comes to town. A giant vortex sucks in hardcore party people from several states and deposits them at the stadium, where they tailgate like there’s no tomorrow from the crack of dawn until— well, tomorrow. If your stadium happens to be adjacent to a major waterway, expect to find boats moored 6-deep for miles, with canopies on the boardwalks shading fans who have dedicated themselves to a lifestyle where the dress code is a bikini, cornhole boards are sacred, and redemption can be found at the bottom of a red dixie cup. These people are already a deep brown early in the season, and probably recite the lines to Jimmy Buffett songs in their sleep.

Kenny Chesney’s got a reputation for putting on a hell of a show, and these folks know it. They will have missed out of they waited to enter the stadium until he came on however, because he has three other acts with him that were worth the price of admission alone.

Uncle Kracker breaks the ice with a half-hour set that features everything you’d expect him to sing: all his hits plus a healthy smattering of his well-known covers, including Dobie Grey’s “Drift Away” and Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler.” He also breaks out his good friend Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long,” which drives the crowd nuts.

After a very brief intermission, Nashville hottie Billy Currington takes the stage for a longer set. “Pretty Good At Drinking Beer” in particular appeals to everyone. What sets them on fire though, is a song everyone knew the words to and sings with gusto: “People Are Crazy.” (An Inky Jukebox Top Tip: If you want to write a real crowd-pleaser, include beer and get folks to admit they do insane shit. It’s a winner every time.)

It’s a bit of a misnomer to call this Kenny’s Tour, because it really has two headliners. The Zac Brown Band play a 90-minute set that could very well be an entire show. If you ever get a chance to see them play, DO SO. They are a phenomenal band live, not only because the vocalists’ harmonies are a thing of utter beauty, but because they know how to deliver live tunes peppered and seasoned with extra jams that cleverly blend in covers and other musical styles (in this case, reggae, perfect for summer). These guys also know how to cover a stage, running about from one end to the other like someone stuck a firecracker in their pants. Crowd favorites include the ballads “Highway 20 Ride” and “Colder Weather,” and the summertime ode “Toes.” They had everyone on their feet with their hats to their hearts for “Free” (with “Into The Mystic”), which felt just right, this being Independence Day Weekend. They ended with “Chicken Fried,” the crowd signing along with such rampant enthusiasm it was deafening.

What The Inky Jukebox loved seeing was what a live wire master musician Clay Cook is. When he’s not playing keyboards (“America the Beautiful” brought the house down too) he’s being an Axe God, for which he’s given his due with a long solo played out on the stage extension on a beautiful Les Paul Goldtop. When he plays he puts his whole body into it and makes an awesome guitar face. We also love the new song “Sweet Annie.”

When it’s time for the evening’s big hitter to come on, so does the volume; the opening chords to “Live A Little” echo around the stadium as if it was a glass at a wedding being tapped with a knife to announce a speech; the whole place rings and vibrates. The Inky Jukebox would like to point out at this juncture exactly WHY this is the perfect song to open a concert with; it’s not just that the intro is long, allowing anticipation to build until the inevitable crescendo yanks the curtain up — it’s because it is the introduction to AC/DC’s “For Those About To Rock” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” mixed together. Check it out:

Once Kenny hits the stage he does not stop. He sang his guts out for 2 hours and forty minutes, and The Inky Jukebox can safely say it was the loudest show she’s ever experienced (beating previous Loudest honorees WAR-era U2 and Crazyhorse by a mile, which is impressive seeing as The Inky Jukebox was at the opposite end of the field, and it was an open-air venue). This is not simply because the amps were cranked to breaking point, but because they were accentuated by 53,000 people singing along to every single word at the top of their lungs. An hour after the show The Inky Jukebox was still a little deaf.

Interestingly, Chesney didn’t give us much of his latest album, the excellent Hemingway’s Whiskey, filling the set list with a Greatest Hits collection, which STILL only covered half of what he could have included. He saved the superb “The Boys of Fall” for his encore, though this was a show for which the encore was NOT the end; both Uncle Kracker and The Zac Brown Band came back for an extended duet set after Chesney was finished.

Uncle Kracker came back out for “When The Sun Goes Down,” and stayed for a rousing rendition of “Cowboy,” with Chesney taking Kid Rock’s part. The local paper that shall not be named because they sent an intern to cover the show concluded that the tired fans were weary of The Zac Brown Band and Chesney’s monumental closing mash-up that included covers of Steve Miller, Tom Petty and Bob Marley among others, so gave it a weak reception.

Nothing could be further from the truth which is why they should have sent The Inky Jukebox instead; on the contrary, the crowd (most of whom stayed till the very last echo bounced off the seats) freaked out with joy. The Inky Jukebox suspects that the intern (being a college junior) was not old enough to recognize the songs, and therefore found the jam mystifying. The majority of the audience, however, consisted of people old enough to remember these songs when they first came out (The Inky jukebox included) and could therefore understand and appreciate the homage it was.

Of note was Chesney’s performance of “The Boys of Fall,” his anthemic love song to football, the video of which became such an iconic collection of images that it spawned it’s own documentary. Chesney preceded it by speaking directly to the Pittsburgh fans who were chanting “Here we go Steelers, here we go.” He mentioned how special it was to sing the song in Heinz Field (home of the Steelers), which delighted the crowd no end. The cheer that went up when the Steelers footage playing behind him came on was perhaps the loudest of the night. Chesney actually cracked up with emotion when singing (notice that, intern?); he could have been singing a spiritual for all the fans cared — three half naked boys in front of The Inky Jukebox all hugged up unselfconsciously, took off their hats and crushed them to their hearts, and held their other arms up in the air waving gently and swaying as if in church.

It’s clear why Chesney has been named Entertainer of the Year so many times; he’s earned it and continues to earn it every time he plays. This show was worth every penny, especially when you consider that you got four top-name acts or your buck.

(On the slow descent down the ramps exiting the stadium, The Inky Jukebox can report that a passionate chant of “Fuck You Jagr” could be heard reverberating off the concrete. Hey; it’s a sports town.) 

Please Pass The Jar

Zac Brown Band and Friends 

Pass The Jar

Live from The Fabulous Fox Theatre, Atlanta

The Zac Brown Band have just released a DVD and double live CD that documents a concert they did to raise funds to help rebuild the fabled Georgia Theatre in Athens, and you should buy it.

Why?

Because unless you have had your head up your ass for the last two years (or not been listening to country radio, which some may argue amounts to the same thing), then you will not have been able to escape them. First, you will have liked, then hated “Chicken Fried,” their zydeco-styled paean to Georgia good-old-boy living, which was played too much for its own good. Then you will have loved the ballad “Highway 20 Ride” and the pop song “Whatever It Is” and thought huh; they can do more than fiddle around a campfire. Then “Toes” will have gotten on your nerves a bit, but that would not have prevented you from singing along. It’s been enough of an introduction to have garnered them some serious trophy action in the Best New division, but like most best new acts, this is because they’ve been around for donkey’s years honing their craft. To absolutely no-one’s surprise they walked away with the coveted New Artist of the Year gong at this week’s CMA’s.

So what, you ask?

The reason you should give a toss is that the Zac Brown Band are throwbacks: to a time when bands consisted of fuggly-looking musicians who could write and play the crap out of actual songs. When was the last time you saw a chubby bearded dude wearing a velvet jacket hit up lead guitar, mandolin, piano, organ, pedal steel and vocals? With absolute virtuosity? Not all at the same time, sure, but, you know, wow. (Clay Cook. That’s him singing “America the Beautiful.”) And he’s not even Zac Brown. This is a band in which every member has an integral part to play: they are a BAND. They sound, if I’m being 100% honest, like The Band, and if this concert reminds you of anything it will be The Last Waltz. But since when was that a bad thing? (See “I Shall Be Released and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”)

They pull a happy bunch of musical friends, famous and not, onto the stage with them to deliver a mix of their best hits (new and old) and awesome covers. Kid Rock lights up “Can’t You See” the way only Kid Rock can (balls-to-the-wall); and if any band could take on “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” (how apt!) it is they, and their fiddle player (Jimmy Di Martini). If you ever wondered how a violin hacks it as a lead instrument, lend this your ears. Little Big Town, a group whose sound is based on harmonizing (a la Fleetwood Mac), gives “Colder Weather” a richness that reminds you of the Allman Brothers at their rocking finest. Joey and Rory help out on a version of “Free” that incorporates “Into The Mystic” in the bridge, thus bringing Van Morrison into the fold.

The Zac Brown Band are popular with my kids because of the song “Sic ‘Em on a Chicken,” which is a song about setting a dog on a homicidal rooster. Hey, it’s country, y’all. But my favorite is “Jolene,” a ballad that manages to feature the line “Booze in my hair, blood on my lips” with sublime grace.

There are 24 songs on the CDs, and 19 on the DVD (with 5 bonus tracks). That’s a lot of great music for your dollar. This concert is an instant classic, something you get the feeling someone, somewhere knew it would be before they decided to roll the cameras. Thank god they did; the Fox Theater don’t hold that many folks.