Concert review: Chris Young charms at Oklahoma City’s Diamond Ballroom
Chris Young plays March 12 at Oklahoma City Arena. (Archive photo by Nathan Poppe, For The Oklahoman)
From passionate balladeer to down-home party animal, Chris Young let fans hear his varied “Voices” Friday night at the Diamond Ballroom, where he played a solo show during a break from touring with country A-lister and Tishomingo resident Miranda Lambert.
Stalwartly weathering bitter cold outside and oppressive heat inside, hundreds of fans in cowboy hats, boots and embellished jeans whooped wildly as the up-and-coming country star took the stage nearly 40 minutes after opening act The Lost Trailers exited with their new comeback anthem “Underdog” and a reprise of their raucous “Holler Back.”
Young made the wait worthwhile, launching his set with the playful party song “Save Water, Drink Beer,” which had people toasting with their cups and bottles and shouting out the chorus even before he got the crowd organized into a friendly sing-along contest.
“I can already tell this is gonna be one of those deals that I have to roll my sleeves up,” the rising star said, cuffing the sleeves of his dark gray plaid shirt and flashing his killer smile.
But Young charmed his audience — particularly the female fans — with relative ease whether offering up a countrified version of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” or making romance with “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song),” his first No. 1 hit.
With five chart-toppers to his name, the singer-songwriter’s hourlong set featured plenty of chances for the crowd to sing along. Young spiked his honey-rich baritone with ardor for “The Man I Want to Be,” “Tomorrow” and “You,” and the smash ballads got several couples slow-dancing around the ballroom. The Murfreesboro, Tenn., native banked the fires of passion to a good-humored warmth for “Voices,” his tribute to familial advice.
But the 2006 “Nashville Star” winner – who will compete for single and male vocalist of the year at the April 1 Academy of Country Music Awards – really showcased his impish sense of humor and polished showmanship with the album cuts and covers in his set. For instance, the handsome singer suavely vowed to alter the lyrics of “Lost” to suit women of every eye color.
“I love my blue-eyed ladies, but I love my green-eyed ladies and my brown-eyed ladies, too,” he said, prompting squeals and sighs from his female fans.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band shout-out in the country love song set up a rock-solid rendition of “Fishin’ in the Dark.”
“Ladies, I don’t care if you came here with your man or if you came here looking for one, this song’s for you,” he quipped as he launched into “I Can Take It from There.”
He then paused midway through the twangy seduction to emphasize his admiration for Conway Twitty and lead the crowd in singing a snippet of “I’d Love to Lay You Down.”
“Not only did he possibly have the best perm/mullet combination in country music … he had a (expletive) of hits, so I know you know Conway Twitty,” Young said.
Fulfilling a request he received backstage, he also paid homage to military servicemen and women and their families with the moving story-song “The Dashboard,” although the fervent performance was unfortunately marred by feedback.
Occasionally pausing to wipe his sweaty face with a towel and comment on the overheated venue, Young got his croon on and showed off his lung power with the road song “Neon,” the title track of his 2011 album. He and his talented band got boots stomping with fun-loving fan favorites “Twenty-One Candles,” “Small Town Big Time” and “Who’s Gonna Take Me Home.”
For an encore, Young and his cohorts sent the crowd home with an energy jolt, courtesy an expended and amped up cover of the ZZ Top classic “Sharp Dressed Man.”
Even dressed in jeans and sweat-stained plaid, the rising star still pulled it off.
— BAM
Blu-ray review: “The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
“The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall”
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash spectacle gets an appropriately lavish 25th anniversary celebration with “The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall.”
Widely considered the most successful entertainment project in history, the silver anniversary production was staged in grand fashion in October and beamed to movie theaters worldwide. Even fans who have seen “The Phantom” performed live and in person will be impressed at the royal treatment the musical receives in the special staging, augmented by rich high-definition Blu-ray picture and crisp Dolby Digital sound.
Featuring a cast and orchestra of more than 200, the commemorative performance was inspired by the original 1986 staging by Hal Prince and Gillian Lynne on London’s West End. Lynne returned to oversee the musical staging and choreography, which was cannily adapted for the famed London concert hall.
The international cast features the perfectly picked Sierra Boggess as lovely young soprano Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious masked magician and musical genius known as “The Phantom of the Opera.” Ramin Karimloo gives a commanding star turn as the terrifying but sympathetic Phantom, while the supporting cast — particularly Hadley Fraser as Christine’s fiancé Raoul, Wendy Ferguson as the Paris Opera’s proud prima donna Carlotta and Liz Roberston as stern choreographer Madame Giry — contribute uniformly stellar performances.
The Blu-ray features a grand finale with special appearances by Lloyd Webber and the original London company, including Michael Crawford, who first played the role of the Phantom on the West End and Broadway. In addition, the finale includes performances by Sarah Brightman, who originated the role of Christine, and former Phantoms Peter Joback, John Owen-Jones, Anthony Warlow and Colm Wilkinson as well as Karimloo.
Bonus features include a behind-the-scenes featurette and a trailer for Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom” follow-up, “Love Never Dies.” A fully staged pre-recorded Australian performance of the sequel will be screened in several Oklahoma movie theaters at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 and March 7. For more information, go to Ö www.fathomevents.com.
— BAM
Blu-ray review: “A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
“A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas”
No holiday custom goes unbesmirched, no ethnic or religious stereotype is left untapped, no boundary of good taste is untested in “A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas,” the third installment in the uproarious if uneven stoner comedy series.
The series’ screenwriters, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, deserve credit for letting their characters grow up — well, sort of — which means they have more on their mind than finding the nearest burger joint where they can alleviate the munchies.
To start, Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are no longer the close pals they were in their younger days. Always the more responsible of the pair, Harold has married and is trying to have a baby with the sweet and sexy Maria (Paula Garcés), plus he has moved into a fancy house in the suburbs and taken a Wall Street job. Sure, he has to dodge egg-throwing Occupy protestors when he leaves work, but his life is otherwise quiet, stable and complete with a new best pal, his fussy neighbor Todd (Tom Lennon).
Since his girlfriend Vanessa (Danneel Harris) dumped him, Kumar, meanwhile, has failed the drug test for a hospital job, befriended his much-younger horndog neighbor Adrian (Amir Blumenfeld) and is whiling his life away smoking pot in the crappy apartment he once shared with Harold. When a package addressed to Harold arrives, Kumar ventures out to the suburbs to deliver it and inadvertently torches the prized Christmas tree Harold’s frightening father-in-law (Danny Trejo) raised from a sapling.
Along with their new buddies Adrian and Todd and Todd’s toddler Ava, who will soon consume a holiday buffet of illicit drugs, Harold and Kumar go on a surrealistic quest to find a new Christmas tree, encountering a psychotic Ukrainian gangster (Elias Koteas), a popular seasonal toy called the Wafflebot, and of course, the always-debauched and hilarious Neil Patrick Harris. In the movie’s, um, high point, they even become clay animated.
The doped-up duo’s yuletide adventure doesn’t have the giddy freshness of their initial outing, 2004’s “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” but it boasts more inspired and consistent laughs than 2008’s “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.”
Bonus features: The theatrical cut and the six-minute-longer “Extra Dope Edition,” deleted scenes, comedic vignettes featuring Tom Lennon and a behind-the-scenes featurette about the claymation sequence.
— BAM
CD review: Dierks Bentley “Home”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Country
Dierks Bentley “Home” (Capitol Nashville)
After earning widespread critical acclaim with his 2010 progressive bluegrass album “Up on the Ridge,” Dierks Bentley returns to commercial country with “Home,” a solid collection of party songs, ballads and anthems anchored by the well-crafted title track.
The Arizona native wrote “Home,” his latest top 10 hit, with Dan Wilson and his album’s co-producer Brett Beavers in the days after the 2011 Tucson shooting spree that killed six people and injured 13, including former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The trio avoids both jingoistic chest-pounding and soppy sentimentality, creating a rare patriotic ode that promotes unity, expresses loyalty and still acknowledges the flaws in the “place that we all call home.”
Due out Tuesday, the album already boasts a No. 1 hit with the rollicking “Am I the Only One,” which Bentley penned with Jim Beavers, who co-wrote his previous party smash “Sideways,” and Jon Randall.
The funny warning “Diamonds Make Babies,” the swaggering come-on “Gonna Die Young” and the zippy toe-tapper “5-1-5-0” all show off Bentley’s fun-loving good nature. He drowns his worries about for sale signs on Main Street and low-yield farm fields with the bluesy country-rocker “Tip It on Back.”
The singer-songwriter makes romance with the seductive “Breathe You In” and walks the fine line between love and obsession with “In My Head.” He and Little Big Town singer Karen Fairchild beautifully blend their voices on the slow-dance ballad “When You Gonna Come Around.”
Bentley reunites with celebrated bluegrass musicians Sam Bush and Tim O’Brien on the album highlight “Heart of a Lonely Girl,” and his daughter Evie, 3, appears as a guest vocalist on the closer “Thinking of You,” his touching love letter to his wife and two girls.
— BAM
Movie review: “The Grey”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman. 1 1/2 of 4 stars.
Movie review: ‘The Grey’
Director/co-writer Joe Carnahan’s attempts to mix pulp and philosophy just make a muddled mess of his grim survival thriller.
Director/co-writer Joe Carnahan’s attempts to mix pulp and philosophy just make a muddled mess of “The Grey”
For the grim survival thriller, “The A-Team” helmer reunites with late-career action star Liam Neeson, one of the few actors I can think of who can believably play a deeply depressed sharp-shooter who spouts poetry one moment and punches a wolf in the face the next.
Carnahan also gets stalwart performances from his supporting cast of where-have-I-seen-that-guy-before character actors, who with Neeson braved hip-deep snow, cutting winds and subzero temperatures to give the film its striking authenticity.
But the filmmaker either has no idea what kind of movie he really wants to make or doesn’t have the wherewithal to pick a tone and stick with it. “The Grey” plays too bleak and talky to qualify as a guilty-pleasure action-horror flick, but it relies too much on stock characters, laughably fake computer-generated wolves and gruesome nature-as-slasher-villain death scenes to be taken seriously as a meaningful existential drama.
Neeson plays Ottway, a reticent marksman hired to shoot the wolves that prowl too close to the remote Alaskan oil refinery where he is an outcast among the rest of the workers: ex-cons, fugitives and others he deems not fit for the rest of mankind. Devastated by the loss of his wife (Anne Openshaw), whom he remembers in many hazy flashbacks, Ottway teeters on the brink of suicide, but changes his mind when he hears the plaintive howl of a wolf.
Instead, he heads to Anchorage with a group of fellow roughnecks, but the small, rickety plane crashes violently on the way. The brutal crash — one of the movie’s most visceral action sequences — leaves just Ottway and a half-dozen others alive and stranded in the unforgiving wilderness.
For someone who had come so close to losing the will to live, Ottway soon proves he will fight fiercely to survive and emerges as the de facto leader of the ragtag group.
The survivors include the standard action characters, including the kind family man Talget (Dermot Mulroney, almost unrecognizable in thick glasses and a thicker beard), the sensitive introvert Hendrick (Dallas Roberts), the quiet, gentle giant Burke (Nonso Anozie) and the antagonistic ex-con Diaz (Frank Grillo), who challenges Ottway’s leadership until they come to an understanding. Each of the actors, especially Grillo and Neeson, get some meaty scenes in which they contemplate the harshness of nature, question the meaning of life or die spectacularly.
While the tundra poses many dangers, including a dearth of food, water and shelter from the frigid cold, one of nature’s perils soon emerges as the deadliest: a huge pack of marauding wolves that begins picking off the crash survivors one by one.
Unfortunately, the wolves have been augmented with CGI so cut-rate it makes the digitally crafted werewolves in the “Twilight” movies look like documentary footage by comparison.
But the canines’ shoddy appearance isn’t nearly as ridiculous or offensive as their use as a cheap plot device. Even forgetting for the moment that wolves have rarely been to known to attack humans, particularly a group of reasonably able-bodied men, because, hey, it’s just a movie, the pack in “The Grey” are an uncommonly strange lot.
Carnahan’s wolves have an interesting habit of surprise attacking just as the plot begins to lag. Then then snap threateningly at the heels of the men, almost catch them in their slathering maws and then retreat to yowl until Ottway and Co. have the chance to build a bonfire, muster their strength or deal with some other more pressing hazard. Convenient.
Filmed on location in British Columbia, Canada, Masanobu Takayanagi’s cinematography effectively sets the scene, making you practically shiver with the biting cold. But “The Grey” just doesn’t have a story worth getting lost in.
— BAM
CD review: Tim McGraw “Emotional Traffic”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Country
Tim McGraw “Emotional Traffic” (Curb Records)
After two years of waiting and a long-in-coming legal drama, fans of Tim McGraw finally have the chance to get caught in the country music superstar’s “Emotional Traffic,” his final album for Curb Records, the independent label he started his career with back in the early 1990s.
Released Tuesday, “Emotional Traffic” doesn’t live up to McGraw’s declaration of “my best album ever” boldly stickered on the CD case. Nor does it give any credence to Curbs’ lawsuit claim that the album didn’t have enough potential singles to warrant release. To this listener’s ear, the truth exists somewhere in the midst of those two extremes, and “Emotional Traffic” sounds like quintessential McGraw. In fact, current climbing single “Better Than I Used to Be” bears a bit too strong a sonic resemblance to his 2004 smash “Live Like You Were Dying.”
Despite Curbs’ contention that the album was recorded too early and would seem dated when it was dropped, “Emotional Traffic” is packed with the huge arena-filling country-rockers, sentimental crossover-ready country-pop ballads and intriguing boundary-pushing experiments that McGraw has long favored. In fact, thanks to Tim Tebow, the earnest religious anthem “Touchdown Jesus” has a whole new relevance, and McGraw, an avid sports fan, digs deep to send the metaphor soaring into the end zone.
The Louisiana native opens the album with the tour de force heartbreaker “Halo” that like the best of his hits matches cutting lyrics with equally aggressive electric and lap-steel guitars. But the momentum dribbles away by the second track, the insipid soft-rock love song “Right Back at Ya.”
From that junction, “Emotional Traffic” veers a bit erratically between hits and misses. More than a year after it topped the charts, it’s still great fun to sing along with the danceable “Felt Good on My Lips,” and McGraw and his superstar wife Faith Hill show off their easy chemistry and vocal harmony with their lively cover of Dee Ervin’s R&B classic “One Part, Two Part.”
“Only Human,” the country singer’s anticipated duet with R&B star Ne-Yo, doesn’t have much going for it apart from the interesting contrast in their voices, with the lyrics more or less taking the well-worn path of countless other empowerment anthems like it. McGraw turns down a similar road with “I Will Not Fall Down,” which he co-wrote with Martina McBride and the Warren Brothers; it is the only track to bear his songwriting credit.
With “Emotional Traffic” finally out of its jam, it will be more interesting to see what musical route McGraw sets now that he is finally free to pull away from Curb.
— BAM
Movie review: “Shame”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman. 3 1/2 of 4 stars.
Movie review: ‘Shame’
Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan again prove they are two of the brightest young stars working in the movie business in the decidedly dark drama, an NC-17-rated story of a spiraling sex addict.
Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan again prove they are two of the brightest young stars working in the movie business in the decidedly dark drama “Shame.”
If there was any justice in Hollywood — no guarantees there — Fassbender (“X-Men: First Class”) would win every major acting award this season for his daring lead turn in British director/co-writer Steve McQueen’s (no relation to the action star) unforgettable and unflinching look at sexual addiction.
Fassbender strips himself bare in every sense to play about Brandon Sullivan, who on the surface seems to be living the pop-culture version of every man’s American dream: He is successful in his high-class white-collar job (we never learn exactly what he does for a living, but we soon know all too well what he does with his life), he looks killer in an expensive, fashionable suit, and he lives in an expansive if spare New York apartment. Most importantly, he has a different pretty woman in his bed every night, and often he and the lady of the evening don’t even make it to a bed before he gets some action.
But Brandon isn’t happy. In fact, he is miserable and self-loathing and utterly alone. He is a sex addict whose well-ordered life has become devoted solely to feeding his compulsions. If he isn’t picking up a woman in a bar — his smooth ease at getting the girl constantly upstages his sleazy married boss’ (James Badge Dale) cloyingly flirty style — he’s hiring prostitutes or trolling Internet pornography. And Brandon’s facade is beginning to crack at the seams: His work computer has become riddled with porn-related viruses, and he’s started slipping into the men’s room at the office to abuse himself.
Brandon’s systematic spiral is disrupted when his equally damaged sister, Sissy (Mulligan, “Drive”), pays him a surprise visit. Since she currently has no other place to live, it seems she will be in residence for awhile.
Sissy is as uninhibited and desperately needy as Brandon is closed-off and taciturn. The siblings clearly have an unhealthy relationship, although the movie doesn’t get into the specifics of it. Sissy at one point tells her brother, “We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place,” never revealing what circumstances shaped them. Judging from the results, they must have been pretty bad.
While Sissy delves into an ill-advised fling with Brandon’s serial-cheater boss, Brandon desperately tries to embark on a normal romantic relationship with a fetching co-worker (Nicole Beharie, also excellent).
While much of the attention given to the film has focused on its NC-17 rating, which it earns, “Shame” isn’t at all a sexy film. It is a graphic, visceral depiction of sexual addiction, which too often is treated like a punch line.
“Shame” reunites McQueen, who co-wrote the script with Abi Morgan (“The Iron Lady”), and Fassbender, who played an Irishman on a hunger strike in the auteur’s fact-based 2008 debut “Hunger.” As Brandon, Fassbender exudes a palpable sense of despair and danger.
But Mulligan’s slow, sorrowful crooning of “New York, New York” lingers as one of the most memorable cinematic moments of 2011.
Although the movie made my top 10 list for the year just past, “Shame” is one of those films I will probably never watch again. For those who are able to handle the explicit content, “Shame” is certainly worth seeing even if it’s hard to watch.
— BAM
DVD review: “Real Steel” Blu-ray + DVD
A version of this review appears in Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
“Real Steel” Blu-ray + DVD
“Real Steel” wins in a surprising decision on the strength of its one-two punch: hard-hitting robot action crossed with a tender father-son story.
Directed by Shawn Levy (the “Night at the Museum” franchise), the action-drama puts a sci-fi, near-future twist on the timeworn but still entertaining underdog sports movie formula. The sport of boxing has some particularly mighty forays into the genre under its belt. While “Real Steel” doesn’t measure up to champs like “Rocky” and “Cinderella Man,” it is a solid if not spectacular contender.
Hugh Jackman stars as Charlie Kenton, once a modestly successful journeyman boxer who had the No. 2 fighter in the world on the ropes but missed his shot at glory. He never got it back, since in 2025, human boxing was replaced by high-tech, action-packed robot boxing.
A few years later, Charlie is lugging out-of-date robot fighters to two-bit fairs and underground bouts across the country. Prone to rash decisions and perpetually in debt, he is only able to keep up his borderline existence thanks to a cagey ability to dodge creditors and the largesse of former flame Bailey (Evangeline Lilly), who owns the gym where he trained as a boxer and helps him maintain his beat-up metal warriors.
When another of his exes dies, leaving behind an 11-year-old son (Dakota Goya) Charlie has rarely seen, the caddish former fighter wants to offload the responsibility as soon as possible. The boy, Max, has an aunt eager to adopt him, but a rich uncle willing to pay Charlie big bucks to keep Max until the couple returns from their summer vacation and then sign over the rights to the child.
Although Max resents his father, he loves robot boxing. When the boy unearths an old sparring ‘bot in a junkyard, he persuades his cash-strapped dad to get the droid, named Atom, a fight. Fortunately, Atom has a rare shadow function that allows him to learn Charlie’s boxing moves, and father and son have enough technical savvy and spare parts to update the tough robot into a strong fighter.
After winning their way through the bush leagues, naturally, Charlie, Max and Atom earn a spot in the championship bout against the undefeated powerhouse Zeus and his wealthy owners.
A consummate entertainer, Jackman makes you want to root for Charlie even when he acts like a jerk, and young Goya brings a wide-eyed, contagious enthusiasm to the proceedings. Plus, the filmmakers, including producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, make the canny choice to combine built-to-scale robot puppets with computer-generated effects, giving the fight sequences a believability and finesse superior to the nausea-inducing “Transformers” action scenes.
Bonus features: Deleted scenes, blooper reel, two making-of featurettes and an ESPN-style fictional mini-documentary about Charlie, along with Second Screen, which allows viewers to see behind-the-scenes content on their iPad or computer while watching the film.
— BAM
CD review: Cory Morrow “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas: Acoustic”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Country
Cory Morrow “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas: Acoustic” (Smith Music Group)
Texas country star Cory Morrow turns one of his home state’s best-known honky tonks into an intimate setting ideal for sharing earnest ballads, fervent spiritual odes and rowdy story-songs with his “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas: Acoustic” CD and DVD.
Last June, the Lone Star State standout became the 40th performer to record a live album on the famed Fort Worth stage. He also made there a dynamic electric album, which I reviewed last week.
The acoustic CD includes just eight songs and runs almost 33 minutes, while the DVD includes an additional bonus track — a cover of the patriotic classic “America the Beautiful” that he dedicates to the military men and women in the crowd — plus extended versions of the other tracks, pushing the runtime closer to nearly 45 minutes.
The DVD opens with Morrow going truly solo and showing off fleet fingers on a 3 1/2-minute guitar interlude that unfortunately gets left off the CD. Lead guitarist John Carroll joins him, taking one of the kitchen chairs arranged in a semi-circle on the stage, for the pretty slow-dance “Beat of Your Heart.”
Morrow and his talented cohorts keep the romantic mood with the passionate ballad “The Way I Do,” which he dedicates on the DVD to his wife, and the hopeful anthem “Love Finds Everyone,” which he penned with respected songwriters Lee Brice, Doug Johnson and Walt Wilkins.
He pays loving tribute with “Just Like You (Grandpa’s Song),” and on the DVD, he shares more remembrances of his late grandfather to go along with the vivid details already in the song. His original hymn “He Carries Me” proves even more powerful stripped down to its acoustic bones.
The Austin-based singer-songwriter again pays homage to the military with the top-tapping “GTMO Blues,” a fact-based story-song he co-wrote after a 2001 visit to Guantanamo Bay.
The guitars stay unplugged, but Morrow still closes his acoustic set on a party vibe with the raucous and admittedly stupid fan favorite “Big City Stripper.”
— BAM
CD review: Cory Morrow “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Country
Cory Morrow “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas” (Smith Music Group)
Texas country standout Cory Morrow may be barefoot, but he gives a boot-stomping performance in the latest installment of the long-running “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas” CD/DVD series.
Known for his high-energy but shoeless singing and strumming, the Lone Star State star becomes the 40th performer to do a live album at the Fort Worth honky tonk. He also made at the famed venue an acoustic album that I’ll review next week.
Recorded last June, the Austin-based singer-songwriter opens his 30th concert at Billy Bob’s Texas with his hit troubadour’s ode “Ramblin’ Man” and revisits life on the road later in the show with the soulful “21 Days.” With “All Said and Done,” the Houston native pays tribute to great old country songs like “Whiskey River,” “Big Balls in Cowtown” and “I’ve Been Everywhere,” channels The Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and even scats through a bit of Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher.”
The entertainingly ornery “Good Intentions,” which Morrow wrote with Ray Wylie Hubbard, Radney Foster and Patrick Davis, uses a playful melody and vivid lyrics to tell the story of an absolute scoundrel who freely declares “the road to Hell knows me well.”
Punctuated by an urgent fiddle and exotic percussion, Morrow gives his best vocal performance on the passionate ballad “Spinning Around the Moon (Fly).”
On the DVD, Morrow reveals that the March 2011 birth of his son, Bear Allen Morrow, prompted him to record contemporary Christian singer-songwriter Matt Maher’s love song “Hold Us Together.” The fervent cover is Morrow’s latest single.
The set closes with a rollicking countrified version of Pete Townshend’s hit “Let Me Love Open the Door” and a rowdy rendition of Reel Big Fish’s “Beer” that has Morrow crawling across the stage, rolling on the floor and assisting on cymbals. The Texas country star sends his fans home with instructions to “go in peace and make love” and conveniently provides them a great soundtrack for doing just that.
— BAM
