Honky Tonk Ba Doggie Bag (Jamey Johnson, Prospectors Steakhouse & Saloon (Mt. Laurel, NJ), 5/08/09)

I know!

At least a couple levels of Huh? at work, here.  First:  How hard is it to see quality country music in New York City?  I don't want to get into urban/rural clichés - I'm not going to talk about the dude wearing the Confederate Flag do-rag and a caution orange t-shirt with CAN YOU SEE ME NOW ASSHOLE on the back, or the grade-schooler out front who looked pregnant, or an audience so monochromatic I thought for a while I might have accidentally wound up here.  Because Mount Laurel's just a rock chuck from Camden which is a quick hump from Philadelphia and this was just a suburban family restaurant and these people were just nice people.  The kid was probably just morbidly obese.  Cowboy hats-as-fashion accessories aren't any more ridiculous in this neck of Yankeeville than the stuff chronicled at Blue States Lose II.  (The hats do make fantastic view-obstructors, cheers on that, pard'ners).

I've been waiting like two years to see Miranda Lambert headline a local gig.  For the most part, name country stars avoid the place until they're certain to sell out Madison Square Garden, or they skirt the city in summer playing Jersey or Long Island amphitheatres (Lambert will be opening for Kenny Chesney at Jones Beach on June 24th).  It feels like they duck in for award ceremonies, television tapings, and exclusive industry showcases, but don't stick around for the fans.  And in as densely populated an area as this, surely they have some of those?  Were I more than a very casual country fan, I'm sure I'd be more than very casually frustrated.  It is always good to be reminded that, even if you're in Manhattan, everything worthwhile does not always come to you.

So that's why I'm there - by dumb luck I noticed Jamey Johnson's Jersey date on his tour page after I mentioned him a month ago.  Johnson, according to his site's only blog entry, had never even visited NYC until September of 2008 (the occasion was an exclusive industry showcase).  But what the bloomin' onion's a critically acclaimed, Grammy-nominated (Best Country Album, Song, Male Performance) artist touring behind a Gold-certified, award-winning album doing spending time as mayor of cholesterol city?

Prospectors Steakhouse & Saloon (the lack of an apostrophe drives me nuts) seems a fine, friendly establishment, the sound system was satisfactory, but the big shiny tour bus out back didn't look at home.  It's not like the house's event schedule is off the hizzy.  I was told the room where the concert was held - I'll guess that was the "saloon" - holds 525 people, but the bulk of the space is taken up by a large central bar and booths.  The thigh-high stage (which had two American flags hanging in back, because one would not be enough) is tucked into the corner of a raised corral area that seemed less than one-fourth the size of the room.  You could probably squeeze 250 people up there, and things never got tight; what the rest of the sell-out crowd did during the show I've no idea.  There were giant projection screens in the room, but as far as I noticed they never switched from NASCAR.  "We're not used to playing..." Johnson started, between songs, and I sure wish I'd heard how he finished.  Because I can think of a couple dozen ways that could have gone.

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Johnson didn't start many sentences.  Some disturbance up front that delayed the ending to "Mary Go Round" was dispatched with a series of gestures.  During gaps between numbers he'd raise a big red Solo cup, his wordless toasts met with a stretch of extended longnecks.  The man has deep-set eyes that depress an otherwise full, friendly face.  He's beefier and darker than he looks on the cover of his first studio release, The Dollar.  His hair has grown out, is parted in the center, thick locks bunch below his ears.  A mangy biker's beard juts south, streaked with gray.  (Wikipedia puts him in his mid-forties.)  He wore a black t-shirt and blue jeans, and though he entered the stage under playback of "Released" - the intro exeunt-con skit from his latest record, The High Cost of Living - he did so without ceremony.

(The very worthwhile High Cost is currently priced to move at Amazon, $9.99/CD or $5/MP3.)

The singer has selections that can be tricked up and rocked out, and sometimes he allowed his bandmates turns to do that.  (Seven guys were jammed up there:  Lead and rhythm electric guitars, lap steel, keys, bass, drums, and Johnson's fat-bodied acoustic.)   But mostly things erred the other way.  Vocal deviations tended towards delay, one of his waltzes ("Angel," I think) slowed to half-time, even the Buffett-light "Place Out on the Ocean" wound up wistful.  The urge to underplay the material and Johnson's growl - somber even when sly - emphasized the fact that the man who sings about "sad country songs" also specializes in them.  His biggest hit is a ballad, and a good one.

Other than a single (new?) number (wherein Johnson sings, "Nothing is better than you... when you left I found it was true, that nothing... is better than you"), the first part of the set wisely hewed to High Cost material(*).  That album - recorded post-divorce, after a period of indulgent hermitage, originally released for free on the web when the singer was between labels - not only features his strongest work, it has a great flow, something  preserved on stage.  The only song missing (I think) was "Stars in Alabama."  The only disappointment was his cover of Waylon Jennings' "Dreaming My Dreams;" nicely arranged - it started as a collaboration between Johnson's acoustic and the bass, ended in a wash of steel and synths - the vocals never took command.  It's probably just not Saturday night saloon-stuff.

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Willie Nelson - Write Your Own Songs (mp3)(buy)

"We're just going to play whatever the fuck we want to.  You're welcome to stick around if you want."

Toward the end of the first part of the set Johnson started lightening up.  Smiling, even, occasionally.  And where the encore would be - no one bothered with the formality of stepping off and stepping back - came a full hour that mostly consisted of covers.  It's the sort of thing that probably happens at every show of his - they didn't take requests,  didn't court the home crowd with any Springsteen - but it's awesome when it happens in the show you're at.

Interesting and unsurprising that many of the dozen songs he and his band partied through - and Johnson started taking solos, here, too - adhered to a traditionalist mission statement.  Both composers and content were on-message. 

There were two songs by Hank Williams, Jr. ("Old Habits" and the anti-disco "Dinosaur" - its pathetic homophobia intact) and there was David Allen Coe's "The Ride," a song about meeting Hank, Sr.  Johnson's own "Between Jennings and Jones" was tellingly held to this section, and followed covers from each of those artists (Jennings' "Are You Sure Hank Done it This Way?" and Jones' "Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes?") that he'd earlier echoed in his "Last Cowboy."  It's almost paranoid and self-defeating, framing regurgitation as a panicked loss-of-values; what's remembered is the remembrance of things lost, not the thing itself.

That'd be more a cause for concern if there hadn't been a bunch of showing to go along with the telling.  Some simple, off-topic, good songs and crowd-pleasers like Willie Nelson's "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground" and the Allmans' "Midnight Rider" helped.  I'd have worried more about the irony of Jamey Johnson putting the words of Merle Haggard's "The Way I Am" or Nelson's "Write Your Own Songs" into his own mouth, or his reclamation of the hit he wrote for George Strait ("Give it Away") if I didn't actively enjoy it all.  I wasn't free from nostalgia myself:  When they whipped out The Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" (which took a detour into George Jones'/Big Bopper's "White Lightning") they were covering the very first band I saw.(**)  Well, the first band other than the Rock-afire Explosion.

Jamey Johnson's tour dates are on his site and his myspace page.

Also there:  Life on the "Golden Road."  There's a photo gallery of the night here.

(*) The Dollar is iffier.  Its title track is a Cat's in the Cradle story about a kid trying to hire his Dad to spend time with him.  Awwwwwww.  "My Saving Grace" is a classically weird country track, where a boy thanks his abusive father because he "kept the devil off my back by taking up his time."  Tailor-made for a weekend night in a Jersey steakhouse.

(**)  They were opening for Tom Petty and the Del Fuegos.  Also, Johnson's not built for yodeling, but it was nice of him to try.

 *

Giant Flyer Department:

Whoa that's a giant flyer.

The esteemed and honorable Ms. Shilpa Ray (myspace, elaboration) - cabal of joyous sex workers in tow - starts her weekly Wednesday night residency at Pianos tonight!  And unfortunately these guys are not among their openers.  But the next two Wednesdays have no Lost finale with which to contend, so purchase tickets worry-free.  See her before dumb Jack creates a temporal paradox and we're all unable to ever do anything.

*

"I thank you for your attention."  The world's better filled with good people and shitty times than shitty people and good times.

*

"Walking down the Travelodge steps, I make my way into the car park. It's a beautiful Glasgow morning. The sky is filled with a layer of unbroken cloud, its pure shade of grey all the more authentic with the motorway exhaust fumes.

"This is the most romantic time of day, I think to myself, coughing a little."

*

What's in Your Wallet Dept.:

"Mrs. Littleton, while in San Antonio, Tex., is a male and has a void marriage; as she travels to Houston, Tex., and enters federal property, she is female and a widow; upon traveling to Kentucky she is female and a widow; but, upon entering Ohio, she is once again male and prohibited from marriage; entering Connecticut, she is again female and may marry; if her travel takes her north to Vermont, she is male and may marry a female; if instead she travels south to New Jersey, she may marry a male."  (via)

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From the Department of OoooOOOoooooo:

The clip below is 100% puppet-free.  And it's moronic.  And it made aerosol cheese shoot out of my nose.

I was not eating any aerosol cheese at the time.  I should perhaps to the doctor.

tags: jamey johnson  concert reviews  craig ferguson  

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