My wife got tickets to see Jamey Johnson for our anniversary in my hometown last week. I hadn’t been back in a while and we ended up going with a lot of my good friends from high school, so it was a really cool gift and fun time.
We went out to eat before, one of Zanesville’s nicest restaurants is about 1/4 mile from the venue. I had crab stuffed orange roughy, becoming the first person in history to have crab stuffed fish before a country concert. We got there right as the opening act was playing, but the alcohol was downstairs. We stood in a huge line for about a minute that turned out was the men’s room line. I knew this when a really drunk guy told my wife for 45 seconds straight. THANKS WE GOT IT.
We got to our seats in time and I was surprised at the size of the band. Three horn players, three guitars, a steel guitar, bass, piano/organ, drums and a lady – still not sure what she was doing. She sang backup on about two songs and got stuff from offstage. I think she won a contest to go onstage.
One of my favorite things about Jamey is that in two times seeing him, he’s said about ten sentences that weren’t singing songs. The steel guitar had some brief technical issues on the fourth song and after they fixed it, he said, “Guess we got to start over now.” Then about 12 songs in a row before talking again. Are you reading this musicians? Take notes. He also played a lot of unique songs, even covering Tom Petty and Jerry Reed, plus a song that was a Johnny Cash poem he added a melody to. I guess Johnny’s son found the poems and had Jamey, Jewel, Chris Cornell and others add music to a few; so he played “Spirit Rider” and it was awesome.
If you like blues and old school country, original songs performed by the songwriter, acoustic guitar or performers that sound like the album, then you would enjoy Jamey Johnson. Other than some added guitar riffs, it sounded like studio recordings, which is rare for live music. My favorite part, though, is the couple that was asked to sit back down after going to the front near the stage and slow dancing to “In Color”, which is a song about a grandpa telling his life story through black and white photos. Very romantic moment, for sure.