Photo Credit: Alexander Stafford
Jamey Johnson’s flowing mass of hair and beard gives the impression of a man who might look taciturn, the type not given to much conversation, but whose intimidating figure makes most words redundant. Perhaps fittingly, it wasn’t until six songs into his set Saturday night at the Eagles Ballroom that he spoke between songs.
And Johnson sang a lot of songs, about 30 of them, with the growing tendency to make them longer and include more jamming as his set of articulate, emotionally varied outlaw country went on. Leading an eight-piece band as he was, he allowed his often loosely grooving players to stretch out with solos with more frequency than concerts in his genre often do. So, it wasn’t merely Johnson’s majestic mane that gave the proceedings more than a smidgen of a hippie vibe.
The almost casual approach to song and performance structure may also be attributed to Johnson’s recent independence and having little to prove. He has had some success in mainstream radio country. He may yet again with his forthcoming album on his own Big Gassed Records. But this date on his current Truth & Tradition Tour, wherein he has no current product to shill, suits his current mode of operation. Considering the legal wranglings that left him unable to record his own original material for years, that mode understandably has an air of “Screw Nashville!” about it.
However, to paraphrase the title of his last country Top 40 airplay hit from nearly five years ago, Johnson still knows how to play the part when it comes to writing economically composed songs with hit potential. His new love ditty “You Can” could be chart bound with the right promotional push. Alas, the more reflective, and seemingly autobiographical, “Alabama Pines” sounds less likely to share company with the current surfeit of dunderheaded bros high in the format’s rotation. But anyone capable of co-writing something so instantaneously endearing as George Strait’s “Give It Away,” which he also performed, has it in him to keep the radio royalties checks coming.
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Where Johnson was more apt to let his co-guitarists, harmonica man, bassist, keyboardist/fiddler, pedal steel player and drummers extemporize was on remakes that displayed his catholicity of taste in country history. Numbers by artists including traditional standard bearer Vern Gosdin, reconstituted folk rocker Don Williams, countrypolitan queen Patsy Cline, outlaw forebears David Allan Coe and Waylon Jennings, and acts who seemed more pop at the time they were having hits but are now being critically reassessed—such as Barbara Mandrell and one-time Wisconsin State Fair staple Alabama—were all subject to interpretation by Johnson’s luxuriant bass-baritone. As a benediction for a show so long and fulfilling that no one clamored for encores, he ended with Hank Williams’ hymn of gospel revelation, “I Saw The Light.”
Johnson’s originals got the most applause and occasional sing-alongs, however. He bounded boldly into his set with “High Cost Of Living,” with its memorable couplet about doping up in front of a Baptist church’s cross. His first smash as a soloist, “The Dollar” has the making of a tear-jerking Father’s Day anthem, but the biggest response came for his “In Color.” That gold-certified single vividly examines the difference between living through tough times and others’ assessment of them as quaint. Johnson didn’t have to sing a word of the final chorus the audience was so engaged.
