CMT Blog: Archive

If there's one thing that the performers of the Big Surprise tour wanted us to take away from last night's (Aug. 13) Nashville gig besides a headache and a sore voice, it was summed up during the encore -- "We're all in this thing together ... This life don't last forever." That's what the Old Crow Medicine Show, the Felice Brothers, Dave Rawlings, Gillian Welch, Justin Townes Earle and a few thousand fans sang, but we had figured out that message much earlier in the night. Floating on a barge in the Cumberland River and surrounded by small boats and concertgoers, the stage was in constant motion with the guys (and gal) deciding to join in with the other groups at will. In his opening set, Earle noted to the crowd, "You don't know what you've got yourselves into. We plan to mess up each other's sets real good."

I say opening set, but really there were only two sets, even though there were four acts. Each was about 90 minutes long, and since the stage was set up for everybody to be up there at one time, there were no set changes between groups -- much appreciated by the restless crowd. By the time Earle had finished up with "Mama's Eyes" and dedicated it to her (Earle is a Nashville native, so mama was somewhere out in the crowd), it was just getting dark and the folkie New Yorkers, the Felice Brothers, took over the barge. With "Whiskey in My Whiskey" and a free-for-all explosion on "Penn Station," the brothers looked like they had settled into this tour that they had been so excited about just fine. Sometime during this set, I lost all track of who was on stage and who was not. Every time I looked up, it was different.

After a short break, the Dave Rawlings Machine stepped up to the mike and played what was probably the most laid-back set of the evening, with less frequent visits to the stage by the other bands. But maybe that's because when Rawlings sings with his longtime musical partner, Gillian Welch, the sound is so good that no one wants to get it dirty. And nothing that I've heard sounds quite like Rawlings willing the notes out of that old arch-top he plays. A cover of Bob Dylan's "Queen Jane Approximately" was the audience-rousing end to their time, and Old Crow immediately took the stage to a huge welcome from the hometown crowd.

They gave it right back to us with "Down Home Girl," and the dancing, onstage and off, never stopped after that. This was the first time I had seen the old-time-meets-modern-life string band, and everything about the group is fun and musically irresistible. Welch returned to help out on "Methamphetamine," singer Ketch Secor dedicated "Caroline" to his sister and the whole band offered "Crazy Eyes" for my side of town and theirs, East Nashville. The next thing I knew everybody was back on stage, leading to collaborations on the Felice's "Chicken Wire," Earle's rendition of "Can't Hardly Wait" and a three-guitarist "duck walk" that ended with Rawlings falling backwards over a stage monitor (I really hope somebody posts a video of that!). Then it was on to the end of the show for some of my favorite sing-along songs ever, "Wagon Wheel" and "Tell It to Me."

These are some of the most talented and unusual musicians on the road today, and that was not hard to see. The crowd loved every minute of it, which was expected. So the "Big Surprise" was this: this is what a concert should be.

Photo credit: Erika Molleck Goldring