Saturday, June 27, 2009
Sugarland gives fans 'Something More'
Concert review
Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times
Sugarland performs at Roanoke Civic Center.
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If you want more to your big-time concert than just some folks singing and jumping around stage, Sugarland is a sure bet.
One of the decade’s biggest country music success stories delivered hits aplenty Friday night at the Roanoke Civic Center Coliseum.
But Sugarland complemented its chart-toppers with what seemed at times like a series of little Broadway shows, with movable set pieces and full-band choreography. The crowd of 6,252 in the 7,700-capacity venue waved glow sticks, blew bubbles and had a big time along with one of popular music’s most unusually charismatic frontwomen, Jennifer Nettles, and her co-writing sidekick Kristian Bush.
Nettles, a lanky Georgia girl in a minidress over tight, patched-up jeans, prowled the stage all cat-like, with a big voice reminiscent at times of a hyper-rural Steve Perry of Journey fame. Bush switched between guitars and mandolins, chunking out big rhythms that drove their pop-country tunes. He took the Jon Bon Jovi part on the hit duet, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.”
That tune climaxed with video footage of Roanoke landmarks including the Mill Mountain Star, Corned Beef & Co. (where openers Billy Currington and Holly Williams also played sets) and a Roanoke Express logo. Did they miss the “hockey is dead in Roanoke” memo?
The showmanship throughout was interesting, whether it was Tiffany lamps dropping toward the stage during the band’s recent No. 1, “Already Gone,” or the whole group marching to the beat of Travis McNabb’s tenor drum to play “Genevieve.” The band followed that one up with Nettles on bass, Bush on an electric guitar and drummer McNabb doing “Blood on Snow,” power-trio style.
Currington and his five-piece band delivered a combination of melodic rock, country soul and honky-tonk. Currington’s voice was suited to all of it.
His 40-minute set included his recent top 10 country hit, “People Are Crazy,” your barfly meets unassuming billionaire and winds up written into the will type song. He closed with more hits — the soul-fused swooner, “Don’t,” and the singalong “Good Directions.”
Williams opened the show with further proof that the Hank Williams family line retains a dominant gene for talent. With her single, “Mama” — about the woman her father left behind during his “rowdy days” — and “Keep The Change,” she came across more like Sheryl Crow than her father, Hank Williams Jr. She wrapped it up with Hank Sr.’s classic, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
