TASTE STAGE
A fitting choice to kick off the tribute to western swing pioneer Bob Wills. Langford & the Cosmonauts recorded one of the more lively and entertaining homages to the maestro a couple years ago–The Pine Valley Cosmonauts Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills (Bloodshot)–with a vast and swell array of guest singers, including Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Robbie Fulks, Alejandro Escovedo, Edith Frost, Sally Timms, and Kelly Hogan, who went on to release an acclaimed recording of her own with the band this year. It wasn’t a particularly accurate rendering of the Playboys sound, but it certainly captured their freewheeling spirit.
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With its forthcoming Night Tide (Hightone), the world’s greatest rockabilly band gets even better. Perhaps emboldened by his 1998 solo album, an homage to 50s R & B called Dedicated to You (Hightone), leader Robert Williams, aka Big Sandy, sings more expressively than ever, finding new emotional shadings between Elvis and Hank and injecting a restrained soulfulness into the Fly-Rite Boys’ killer swing. The band, featuring guitarist Ashley Kingman and steel ace Lee Jeffriess, whose lines cross expertly on everything from the Latin-tinged “Tequila Calling” to the dreamy instrumental “In the Steel of the Night,” can do it all, and though they’ve never explicitly mimicked Wills’s Playboys before, they can play western swing in their sleep.
6:30 PM Playboys II
6:00 PM Randy Travis
1:45 PM Hazzard County
This young Nashville combo claims to mix traditional country with modern pop; leader Juliano cites Buck Owens and Daryl Hall as key influences.
