We keep saying goodbye to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and they keep getting better.We were at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville when the band kicked off its farewell tour last year and were back again this week for what logically would have been the closing of the loop, their final show at this storied theater. Not likely, though. They’re…
Category: Reviews
WMOT presents Los Lonely Boys, Strung Like A Horse, Bettysoo
Los Lonely Boys, on the road promoting new album Resurrection, headlined the Oct. 8 WMOT concert at Riverside Revival in Nashville. Set opener “See Your Face” set the tone for the energetic acoustic set to follow. The evening’s revelation was Knoxville’s Strung Like a Horse, whose showmanship transcended the recorded work we’ve heard. There’s a Old Crow Medicine Show spirit…
Todd Rundgren’s show at the Ryman in Nashville 2024
Todd Rundgren’s show at the Ryman was impressive and challenging in equal measure. It’s the rare artist who chooses to do an entire set of deep cuts largely drawn from his least successful albums, completely forgoing the reliable crowd-pleasers. Not until the encore and a 5-minute medley combining “I Saw the Light,” “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference” and “Hello…
8 decades on, Bruce Cockburn spans past, present
By Paul T. Mueller – Showcasing most of the songs on one’s latest release while also providing a career retrospective spanning decades is quite an achievement for pretty much any performer. Doing so less than a month before one’s 79th birthday, as Bruce Cockburn did at Houston’s Heights Theater on May 3, falls somewhere between impressive and phenomenal. With his…
Buddy Mondlock’s rich and bright “Filament”
By Ken Paulson Buddy Mondlock is part of a rich singer-songwriter tradition. His songs – like those of Nanci Griffith, Steve Goodman and Guy Clark – tell stories and create characters in a truly compelling and realistic way. By the end of a Buddy Mondlock album, you feel as though you’ve met a half-dozen new people. Filmanent, produced by Brad…
Thirty years on, Ellis Paul’s songs and stories delight audiences
By Ken Paulson – Singer-songwriters are plentiful these days. Have a guitar, smartphone and social media account? Suddenly you’re giving concerts. There was a time, though, when anyone stepping on stage at a coffeehouse had to truly engage an audience with songs, stories and a sense of humor. If you wanted to work, you had to entertain. Ellis Paul is…
Perfect pairing: James McMurtry and BettySoo in concert
It might sound like an unlikely pairing for a singer-songwriter show – a famously curmudgeonly Anglo man in his early 60s and a Korean-American woman in her mid-40s.
A brilliant showcase from Lori McKenna and Brandy Clark
By Paul T. Mueller – There’s a belief in some quarters that everything coming out of Nashville these days is formulaic dross, but Lori McKenna and Brandy Clark put that idea to rest in their Sept. 28 co-headlining appearance at Houston’s Heights Theater. The 90-minute show, the first on an 11-date tour, amounted to a two-person guitar pull that drew…
Kent Blazy Meets the Beatles
By Ken Paulson – It’s always a joy when an artist and songwriter is an unabashed music fan like the rest of us. That’s certainly the case with Kent Blazy, whose new album From The Beatles to the Bluebird, is fueled by a love of John, Paul, George and Ringo. Blazy, a 2020 inductee into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of…
Time Traveler: Jason Wilber’s engaging musical journey
By Ken Paulson — Jason Wilber was among friends and family as he took the stage in Fort Myers, Florida on June 24. There was his wife Michelle in the second row. Sitting next to her was Jason’s father. On the left side of the room were friends from Bloomington, Indiana. And pretty much everywhere there were fans who loved…
Gretchen Peters’ graceful exit from touring
By Paul T. Mueller — Gretchen Peters, wrapping up a long touring career, gave her fans in Houston a fine show to remember her by. The prolific singer-songwriter and her husband and musical partner, Barry Walsh, performed for a nearly full house at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on June 22, the final show in the church’s Coffee House Live spring…
Michelle Malone spans decades in Houston show
By Paul T. Mueller – Georgia-based singer-songwriter Michelle Malone brought decades’ worth of songs and showmanship to her May 13 show in Houston. The show at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, featuring Malone on acoustic guitars and Doug Kees on electric, included a career-spanning 14 songs. All were fueled by Malone’s powerful vocals, ranging from a delicate croon to an all-out roar.…
Review: RB Morris in rare concert in Nacogdoches
By Paul T. Mueller – RB Morris, a singer-songwriter, poet and playwright based in Knoxville, doesn’t tend to venture too far west from his Tennessee base. So it was something of a rare treat for his Texas fans when Morris played a Jan. 21 show at Live Oak Listening Room, a former church turned intimate concert venue in the East…
Remembering Townes: 26th annual “wake”
By Paul T. Mueller A wake can be a mournful affair, but the mood at the Old Quarter Acoustic Café on the first day of 2023 was anything but. As they have every January 1 since 1998, talented musicians and appreciative fans gathered at the small listening room in downtown Galveston, Texas, for the annual wake to celebrate the songs…
Concert review: The Arc Angels in Houston
By Paul T. Mueller – For a band that made only one studio album – 30 years ago – Arc Angels has quite a devoted fan base. That loyalty was clear at Houston’s Heights Theater on November 16, when the band drew an enthusiastic near-capacity crowd for its third Houston show of 2022. Arc Angels – named for the Austin…
Despite illness, Rodney Crowell shines in hometown show at Heights Theater
By Paul T. Mueller – Sometimes seeing what a performer is overcoming to deliver a performance is as impressive as the performance itself. Early in his Oct. 18 show at Houston’s Heights Theater, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell announced that he was battling “the mother of all colds.” But despite a voice that often sounded hoarse and strained, and taking an occasional…
Review: John Egan’s musical twists and turns
By Paul T. Mueller – You never know quite what you’re going to get at a show by Texas singer-songwriter and bluesman John Egan. A song title might be familiar, but most likely Egan will throw in some twists that make it sound different from what you’ve heard before – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. This dynamic was on…
Steve Earle in concert, with a nod to Jerry Jeff
By Paul T. Mueller – Steve Earle’s August 31 show at Houston’s Heights Theater began with a seven-song tribute to one of Earle’s musical heroes, Jerry Jeff Walker. Fittingly, Earle opened with “Gettin’ By,” which happens to be the opening track of his latest album, Jerry Jeff, featuring 10 Walker songs, and also the first track on Walker’s iconic 1973…
James McMurtry taps into his rich body of work
By Paul T. Mueller – Singer-songwriter James McMurtry released his first CD in 1989, so it’s pretty much inevitable that his shows these days resemble career retrospectives. At an August 26 solo acoustic show at Houston’s McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, McMurtry led off with “Melinda,” from his 1995 album Where’d You Hide the Body. Next came the title track of 2002’s…
Cayamo 2022’s exuberant rebound
By Paul T. Mueller – After a year lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cayamo cruise returned in mid-March, rewarding passengers and artists alike with nearly a week’s worth of floating music festival. The chartered cruise, produced by Norwegian Cruise Lines subsidiary Sixthman and held aboard the NCL Pearl, featured more than 40 bands and solo artists and around 2,000…