Good concerts come to my South Florida town about as often as cold fronts. The dearth of viable venues south of the Carolinas and the unusual length of the peninsula discourage artists from making the long trip.
Sure, the major acts fly in from time to time. You can still watch the Billy Joel hit parade amble through Miami; or you might get a floor seat for Aerosmith or the Stones for $300.
But I’m talking about GOOD concerts. Where you can sit 30 feet (not 30 sections) from the stage. Where you can park a block away. Where you meet the band after the show and chit-chat about Marshall Crenshaw. For 17 bucks! Try doing that with Mick Jagger.
That’s the way it went down last week. The Bottle Rockets brought their wit and grit and a truckful of their great “outsider country” tunes to Lake Worth, FL. If they were weary from the long trip, it didn’t show. They managed a 90+ minute blue collar set in support of their strong 2006 release, Zoysia.
The show was a testament to the strength of their growing back catalog. With 8 discs to their credit, they can pull out one signature song after another in concert: $1000 Car, Gravity Fails, Welfare Music, Smokin’ 100’s Alone, Get Down River, I Quit, Radar Gun, Kerosene, and the should-have-been-a-hit, I’ll Be Coming Around. Introducing the latter, Brian Henneman alluded to their astounding lack of notoriety , saying, “This is the song girls would scream for…if we were famous.”
The setlist was so bursting that crowd favorites Wave That Flag, Kit Kat Clock, Better Than Broken and When I Was Dumb all had the night off. In fact, the band turned in its finest performance with a non-album track, a blazing version of Hoyt Axton’s Never Been to Spain.
Never Been to Spain — and pretty much every song — was fueled by the organic interplay of guitarists John Horton and Brian Henneman. Sometimes dueling, sometimes in harmony, their improvisations added a soulful urgency that the studio never quite evoked. The Rockets fully ignite on stage.
This is a band in their prime — check them out when they hit your town. Tour dates can be found at www.bottlerocketsmusic.com/tour.php.
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