LITTLE BIT COUNTRY, LITTLE BIT ROCK ‘N ROLL: KENNY & GRETCHEN WOW SLC
By JOHN YOUNGREN
POP STEW RATINGS: Kenny Chesney at USANA Amphitheatre: ****
Gretchen Wilson at USANA Amphitheatre: ***
SALT LAKE CITY–No matter what you think you’d think of Kenny Chesney, current King of Country Music, the fact is if you’re a music fan with any kind of rock ‘n roll pedigree – and if you happened to grow up in the ‘70s and early ‘80s – Kenny’s gonna appeal to you, especially given his predisposition for John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen covers.
The fact that Chesney’s musical roots run deep was apparent in his Salt Lake City appearance, halfway through his current “Road and the Radio Tour,” which turned out to be his third stop in Utah in the past three years. A sellout – and seemingly then some – crowd was on its feet for nearly every Chesney song, from his opening single “Summertime” (performed as a surprise opening from halfway up the amphitheatre, with Kenny singing to the cheap seats) to his more established hits, including “Young,” “Anything But Mine” and “How Forever Feels.”
An energetic and passionate performer – with a deep voice that sounds much more resonant live than it does on record – Chesney knocked the socks off a sizzling Salt Lake City audience once again, superbly suited as he is for the hot-summer-nights-and-sitting-on-the-grass ambiance of USANA Amphitheatre (technically in the Salt Lake suburb of West Valley City).
Though he didn’t do any of his familiar ‘80s covers – his versions of Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane” and “Hurts So Good” and Springsteen’s “One Step Up” are album favorites – Chesney’s sheer exuberance and over-the-top connection with the passionate crowd was on full display throughout the nearly-two-hour show. His audience sang along with nearly every Kenny song of remorse and reminisces, high school and college memories and good times and too much beer in Mexico (among other places).
Kenny's tight and obviously close backing band and feel for performance drove the evening, highlighted as it was by Chesney hits from his early ‘90s breakthrough period to his early 2000s superstardom. Indeed – and with all apologies to Toby Keith and Tim McGraw, two male country superstars of some repute – it seems more than ever that Chesney has inherited the mantle of “Best Live Performer” from the legendary (and quasi-retired) Garth Brooks, who established the current country formula of music and mayhem during his own superstardom ride in the ‘90s.
Whether it was singing with his favorite recurring guest star, Uncle Kracker – and who would have predicted this pairing say five, six years ago? – or compelling the Utah crowd into a sing-along of his own “Back Where I Come From” (interspersed with shot-on-the-day video images of Hires Big H, Bar X, the Delta Center and other Salt Lake-area landmarks), Kenny had the crowd from “hello,” despite his minimal stage chatter and relatively quick song list. For a Wednesday night in Utah (June 21, 2006), Chesney had the party going full steam.
If there was a disappointment, it’s that Kenny is getting so successful (particularly in his last three albums) that he was forced to short-circuit some of his own greatest hits in the interest of performance time. As a result, he grouped “The Good Stuff,” “The Woman In You” and others into a midshow medley and shared his finale, “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” with opening acts Carrie Underwood and Dierks Bentley (as well as Kracker, who probably hasn’t heard much from Kid Rock lately) as a post-encore sing-along.
Dressed in his patented (and painted on) faded jeans, worn boots and white cowboy hat, with a kind of teal T-shirt that had the girls in the audience squealing between sighs, Kenny’s sheer momentum carried the show from start to finish. And while some of his songs sound a bit the same ¬– titles mesh together; what’s the difference between “There Goes My Life” and “Who You’d Be Today” or “No Shoes. No Shirt. No Problems” and “When The Sun Comes Down,” exactly? – it didn’t much matter. Kenny is King, and on this night, and on this tour, nobody’s arguing.
A FEW WEEKS EARLIER, to a lesser but no less enthusiastic crowd at the same venue, Country Queen Gretchen Wilson served up her own brand of rock and country rockabilly, even paying homage to some of her rock ‘n roll heroes with a soundtrack of traditional rock and roll songs playing on the P.A. system prior to her taking the stage (where she didn’t disappoint with her own covers of hits by Heart and other musical legends).
Much like Chesney, Wilson is a product of the ‘70s and ‘80s – their simmering duet cover of Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” was far and away the highlight of an ABC special shot when Gretchen was appearing with Kenny last fall – and her musical tastes also run to rock standards by people like the Wilson sisters and Pat Benatar. But at the same time, Wilson has assumed a favored spot among country music fans, who seem to regard the hard luck working girl from Pocahontas, Illinois (made famous in her own song) as a grittier (and maybe more approachable) working-class version of the country women of today. Indeed, Wilson’s super-sexy appeal (and her simple jeans-boots-tank top wardrobe) essentially positions her as the anti-Shania or Faith. (Nothing against Shania or Faith, mind you.)
Gretchen’s less the homecoming queen, more the gritty stoner chick with the hot body you’d share a cigarette with behind the gymnasium instead of going to class. (Bonus points if she'd ask you for a ride after school.)
That certainly does nothing to diminish her talent or popularity, on full display during a semi-full evening at USANA (June 3, 2006). While she hasn’t quite assembled the catalogue of hits of a Chesney (Wilson is touring in support of what’s just her second album, “All Jacked Up), Gretchen has made the transition from opening act to headliner in style, keeping most of her audience interested with her memorable hits – “Here For The Party” remains the obvious opener, and she has to close with her theme song, “Redneck Woman” – and belt-it-out voice, a nicotine-tinged testimony to what seems like too many long nights, Bud Lights and smoky taverns.
When she appeared in Salt Lake City earlier this summer, Wilson was on her way to California to shoot her new video, the mesmerizing “California Girls” (which began appearing on CMT and GAC this past week). She smiled as she told her Utah audience it’d be her next single – but she never let on how smokin’ she’d be in the final cut.
That’s probably for the best, in retrospect. Redneck woman or not, Wilson is the bluesy heroine of country’s working class, a role model for working women and a sex symbol for guys with beer guts and a taste for women “with a little meat on their bones.” Her songs are funny, self-deprecating and clever and her performance – still a little shy on her variety of songs – was through the roof, sparked as it was by the power of her vocals, sassy strut and good-times-with-the-guys gusto.
My only disappointment on this night: She didn’t do “One Bud Wiser,” one of my personal favorites from her new CD. No matter. I’d chew Skoal and drink whiskey with Gretchen, anytime.
# # #
John Youngren promises to reinvigorate his “John Youngren Dot Com” blog (also known as “Pop Stew”) more regularly now that the rest of the world has caught on to these goddamn things. To contact John, e-mail johnyoungren@mac.com
Monday, July 10, 2006
LETTER FROM SALT LAKE CITY: UTAH-BASED ‘CALLING OUT’ A COMPELLNG READ
POP STEW RATING: **–1/2
By JOHN YOUNGREN
“Calling Out” (2006 fiction)
By Rae Meadows
MacAdam/Cage, 280 pages, $22
While considering “Calling Out,” a new novel by Rae Meadows (a University of Utah master’s graduate, who sets the happenings nearly entirely in Salt Lake City), I went and had a beer at Red Rock, the distinctive brewpub on 200 West, got my clothes cleaned at Red Hanger, the Utah-based line of dry cleaning establishments, and drove past the Village Inn on 400 South, where I sometimes have a Saturday lunch with my mother and sister.
In the midst of reading Meadows’ novel, about an advertising executive-turned-prostitute who leaves New York City and finds herself living in Utah, I also purchased a pizza to go at The Pie, a popular hangout near the University of Utah and talked about Bar X, a beer tavern just down the street from me, on 200 South.
Name checks sounding ridiculous? Well, sure. And maybe I’m just super-sensitive, being just a few blocks away from where most of what Meadows – and her main character, Jane, aka Roxanne – is talking about, given her U of U degree, the book’s locale and her hyper-attentive attention to place and time, despite the fact that most of her audience isn’t really going to appreciate, know or even much care about the particular SLC locations her book mentions.
For example, in just four pages – 66 thru 70, for those of you keeping score at home – Miller manages to drop names of eight local landmarks, including the opening paragraph to Chapter 6:
“Driving south on State Street from downtown Salt Lake, seediness and sprawl take root as the LDS temple (sic) shrinks in the rearview mirror. There is a throwback quality to the used-car dealerships, the stand-alone Sears, and the fast-food restaurants – including the country’s first Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchise, with its script, light-bulbed sign. After Beehive Bail Bonds, South State Street turns into a no-man’s land of decay. In the gelid high desert twilight, it glows in dirty orange and yellow.”
And it ends up at American Bush. Now we’re talking gelid.
And so it goes – Little America and Hotel Monaco and Smith’s in the Avenues and runs to Wendover and Moab. If it weren’t for Miller’s calls-to-call girl story (her character, Jane, starts working for a local escort service as a sort-of dispatcher for her company’s team of sort-of call girls and eventually starts making some of the calls herself), the book would be like reading a random listing of Salt Lake City landmarks and locations, underscored by the main character’s Avenues setting and University of Utah orientation.
And if that’s all there was, I wouldn’t have much more to say about this book, despite its heart-in-the-right-place sentiment and acutely descriptive bottom line: Depressed intelligent woman, around 30. Leaves a boyfriend and a numbing job in New York City. Lands in Salt Lake City, of all places. Becomes a prostitute.
A clever, intuitive writer, Miller infuses Jane with intelligence, warmth and humanity, in spite of the character’s gritty circumstances, dull feelings and general malaise (Miller, the author, apparently worked as a dispatcher-sort for an actual Salt Lake escort service while attending the U of U, giving the whole circumstance a buzz of reality).
Jane’s journey, such as it is, doesn’t have a particularly happy ending. And the men (and w0men) she touches in the course of her discourse present a particularly pathetic, pathologically painful existence, profoundly brought to life by Miller’s descriptions, which seem at least semi-autobiographical, hence all the personal references to place and time.
“Calling Out” isn’t a great novel, but it is a nice first novel, full of characterizations that will keep you thinking long after you finish the final page. And drive by the Little America.
# # #
John Youngren promises to reinvigorate his “John Youngren Dot Com” blog (also known as “Pop Stew”) more regularly now that the rest of the world has caught on to these goddamn things. To contact John, e-mail johnyoungren@mac.com
POP STEW RATING: **–1/2
By JOHN YOUNGREN
“Calling Out” (2006 fiction)
By Rae Meadows
MacAdam/Cage, 280 pages, $22
While considering “Calling Out,” a new novel by Rae Meadows (a University of Utah master’s graduate, who sets the happenings nearly entirely in Salt Lake City), I went and had a beer at Red Rock, the distinctive brewpub on 200 West, got my clothes cleaned at Red Hanger, the Utah-based line of dry cleaning establishments, and drove past the Village Inn on 400 South, where I sometimes have a Saturday lunch with my mother and sister.
In the midst of reading Meadows’ novel, about an advertising executive-turned-prostitute who leaves New York City and finds herself living in Utah, I also purchased a pizza to go at The Pie, a popular hangout near the University of Utah and talked about Bar X, a beer tavern just down the street from me, on 200 South.
Name checks sounding ridiculous? Well, sure. And maybe I’m just super-sensitive, being just a few blocks away from where most of what Meadows – and her main character, Jane, aka Roxanne – is talking about, given her U of U degree, the book’s locale and her hyper-attentive attention to place and time, despite the fact that most of her audience isn’t really going to appreciate, know or even much care about the particular SLC locations her book mentions.
For example, in just four pages – 66 thru 70, for those of you keeping score at home – Miller manages to drop names of eight local landmarks, including the opening paragraph to Chapter 6:
“Driving south on State Street from downtown Salt Lake, seediness and sprawl take root as the LDS temple (sic) shrinks in the rearview mirror. There is a throwback quality to the used-car dealerships, the stand-alone Sears, and the fast-food restaurants – including the country’s first Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchise, with its script, light-bulbed sign. After Beehive Bail Bonds, South State Street turns into a no-man’s land of decay. In the gelid high desert twilight, it glows in dirty orange and yellow.”
And it ends up at American Bush. Now we’re talking gelid.
And so it goes – Little America and Hotel Monaco and Smith’s in the Avenues and runs to Wendover and Moab. If it weren’t for Miller’s calls-to-call girl story (her character, Jane, starts working for a local escort service as a sort-of dispatcher for her company’s team of sort-of call girls and eventually starts making some of the calls herself), the book would be like reading a random listing of Salt Lake City landmarks and locations, underscored by the main character’s Avenues setting and University of Utah orientation.
And if that’s all there was, I wouldn’t have much more to say about this book, despite its heart-in-the-right-place sentiment and acutely descriptive bottom line: Depressed intelligent woman, around 30. Leaves a boyfriend and a numbing job in New York City. Lands in Salt Lake City, of all places. Becomes a prostitute.
A clever, intuitive writer, Miller infuses Jane with intelligence, warmth and humanity, in spite of the character’s gritty circumstances, dull feelings and general malaise (Miller, the author, apparently worked as a dispatcher-sort for an actual Salt Lake escort service while attending the U of U, giving the whole circumstance a buzz of reality).
Jane’s journey, such as it is, doesn’t have a particularly happy ending. And the men (and w0men) she touches in the course of her discourse present a particularly pathetic, pathologically painful existence, profoundly brought to life by Miller’s descriptions, which seem at least semi-autobiographical, hence all the personal references to place and time.
“Calling Out” isn’t a great novel, but it is a nice first novel, full of characterizations that will keep you thinking long after you finish the final page. And drive by the Little America.
# # #
John Youngren promises to reinvigorate his “John Youngren Dot Com” blog (also known as “Pop Stew”) more regularly now that the rest of the world has caught on to these goddamn things. To contact John, e-mail johnyoungren@mac.com
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