Saturday Night's Alright for ...

concerts!

Outdoor, summertime, beer & lawn chair concerts.

And to start the season out right, Jim and I headed down to Maryville (pronounced MUHRvull) to The Shed at the Harley-Davidson dealership. Yes, I said Harley. It's a cool little venue: basically a covered pavillion there to the side of the store with enough room to put a couple hundred folks under the roof. They sell beer and BBQ, but you have to bring your own lawn chair - but that's not a problem for this intrepid soccer mom. It's right on 321, but there's not a lot of traffic noise. There's not all that much traffic in Maryville, especially when you venture out to the outskirts. Saturday night's headliner was James McMurtry and I assume the guys with him were the Heartless Bastards. I took one picture with my phone, but it was garbage, so I stole this one. Just put him in a faded black baggy T shirt and black jeans and that's my picture.

We were joined by our good buddy and pal whom I have previously referred to as The John Prine Ticket Master. I am officially changing his name now to Hayseed Wannabe, and I'm gonna buy him his first pair of overhauls. Maybe a John Deere cap, too. I like him *that* much. We met Hayseed at a Mexican restaurant pre-show. Did I mention it was Cinco de Mayo? Not one of my better ideas, but damn did they feed us fine. Great food and a whole lot of it. Hayseed recently celebrated a big birthday, so I'm going to give him an Alzheimer's pass for not knowing the show started at 7. Not 8. 7. 7, Hayseed. We only missed a little of the opener, whose name escapes me (but I bet Hay will remember!) and whose voice I found vaguely irritating.

James McMurtry has a bunch of guitars. Like, eight. And this guy came out and tuned them all. Diligently, lovingly and excruciatingly slowly. Then these random guys came out and picked up instruments. No, they are not vagrants, they are the band. JM is the kind of guy you would probably avoid eye contact with on the street. He looks a little dangerous in a redneck survivalist kind of way. So, it's a good thing he can write a good song and pick a good tune, because you wouldn't buy a car (new or used) from him. He's not a chatty kind of guy either. He looks like he could just as easily tell you to go to hell as tell you to come back and see us again real soon. And he's most definitely NOT a republican. Probably not a democrat, either, but I wouldn't count him amongst the John Birchers. He has a voice and a point of view, and he's not afraid to use either. So I was thinking he would get a fairly hostile reception, here in ardently republican east Tennessee. The audience was part bikers, part overall-wearing country boys, part LL Bean type couples. And us. Fisticuffs seemed inevitable.

Alas, it was not to be. Everybody seemed to be having a great time. I'm not sure they all understood all the words, because I'd give JM a C+ in subtlety. Some good tunes all around, my favorite being Choctaw Bingo, which is just an absolute verbal locomotive, a barrage of character sketches and X-acto knife insights, with some incestuous fantasies thrown in for good measure. Maybe it's not incest if you're second cousins - I'm really not sure of the legalities. He played all those guitars. They did a one song encore. And then we all went home.

And that's a fine way to spend a summer evening.