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Rosanne Cash performed Sunday at Bristol’s Rhythm & Roots Reunion music festival.
Risen from heaps of rock ’n’ roll well beyond the grunge era of the 1990s, Saving Abel helped resurrect straightforward rock. Hear them ring rock’s bell Friday, Sept. 16 at Sidetracks in Bristol, Tennessee.
Jared Weeks and Jason Null founded Saving Abel in 2004. Weeks, who left in 2013, returned last year to resume singing lead. Null still plays guitar in the Teflon-tough five-man band. They enjoyed their most widespread success courtesy 2010’s LP, “Miss America.” It included such sing-along rock sizzlers as “The Sex is Good” and the title track. Loud rock played in an era of oft-wishy washy fare, Saving Abel sledgehammers in unfettered fashion.
When: Friday, Sept. 16 at 9 p.m.
Where: Sidetracks, 3080 W. State St., Bristol, Tennessee
Web, audio and video: www.savingabel.com
Kentucky yielded decades of music’s thoroughbreds from bluegrass’ Bill Monroe to crooner Rosemary Clooney.
Harlan County, Kentucky, birthed DM and the 1601’s. Tunes including a country foreboding “Cold Hearted” provide chasms of outlaw-branded country. Catch their sunbeam Saturday, Sept. 17 at The Cascade Draft House in Bristol, Tennessee.
DM is singer Dustin Middleton. James Stewart provides guitar, Logan Turner yet another guitar, Kyle Wynn the bass, and Paul Nolan backs them all on drums. Middleton’s nuanced baritone emotes such life-in-the-balance ballads as “Hesitate” and “Bottom of the Glass.” Accompanied by country minimalism, his voice provides ample terrain through which to enjoy country music that’s raw and blessedly real.
Who: DM and the 1601’s
When: Saturday, Sept. 17 at 7 p.m.
Where: The Cascade Draft House, 828 State St., Bristol, Tenn.
Web, audio and video: www.facebook.com/DMandthe1601s/
Tricia Tripp stepped to the microphone some time back in Bristol. She looked into the crowd, then peered as if to the sky.
Friday, Sept. 23 at Abingdon Vineyards in Abingdon provides yet another page in the ongoing saga of Tripp’s country band of note, Hearts Gone South. Thumpity-thump beats their ever-loving country hearts.
Tripp’s a force. When she laughs, everyone laughs along. When she sings, all with an ear that leans country, listens enthralled. Based in North Carolina, Hearts Gone South includes Bristol’s JP Parsons on electric lead guitar and Scott Thomas on drums. In Tripp the band projects wide-open country much in the vein of Patsy Cline sans the late country legend’s sheen of pop.
When: Friday, Sept. 23 at 6 p.m.
Where: Abingdon Vineyards, 20530 Alvarado Road, Abingdon
Web, audio and video: www.facebook.com/heartsgonesouth/
Hangovers like halos linger from last weekend’s 21st Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion. A feel-good feeling from what was seen and what was heard and who was encountered alternates with a sweetened sadness.
As with every year, people hate to see Rhythm & Roots go.
Like a lover returned home from an elongated absence, each year’s dawning of Rhythm & Roots makes for Friday smiles about 10 miles wide. Saturday chirps along like a highwire full of songbirds, even with such rainy Saturday’s as last weekend brought. Then Sunday rises with astute promises of more music and memories made, which certainly happened this year with such luminaries as country’s Rosanne Cash and Junior Brown.
But then came Monday’s quiet and Tuesday’s calm. Happens every year. By now, one can barely see evidence of the festival around town. Ah, but when memories come around, Rhythm & Roots revives one well-loved memory at a time.
Like the Ferris wheel, from which much of Rhythm & Roots’ dazzlement could be seen. Or perhaps Friday’s have-to-be-there occurrence when Michael and Tanya Trotter of The War and Treaty joined country’s Tanya Tucker for the final lines of “Delta Dawn.”
For indeed, as if flung from Houdini’s cape, pure magic sprinkles throughout each year’s installment of Rhythm & Roots. What will next year hold? Who knows? But as it does each year from about this time onward, let the prognostication begin.
Meantime, tickets are on sale now for next year’s Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion. Scheduled to unfurl on Friday, Sept. 8 through Sunday, Sept. 10, purchase three-day passes by calling 423-573-1927. For additional information, visit https://birthplaceofcountrymusic.org.
Austin’s Shakey Graves helms this week’s free MP3 downloads. Reference www.pastemagazine.com/noisetrade/music/shakeygraves/cant-wake-up to find a four-track sampler of Graves’ 2018 LP, “Can’t Wake Up.” Graves’ quirkiness leads such pop-tinged tracks as “Cops and Robbers and “Mansion Door.”
Tom Netherland is a freelance writer. He may be reached at features@bristolnews.com.
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Rosanne Cash performed Sunday at Bristol’s Rhythm & Roots Reunion music festival.
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