Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 1, 1994 TAG: 9410220022
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But it was still good.
Thursday night, Clint Black brought his "Up Close ... In Concert" tour to the cozy setting of the Roanoke Civic Center auditorium. Although billed as half-electric and half-unplugged, the show leaned much more toward electric.
"Unplugged, but plugged-in so you can hear it," Black called the acoustic set.
It was plenty loud, that's true. It also wasn't just a few acoustic guitars with Black singing some sleepy country ballads. It was Black and his full eight-piece band. About the only changes were that the lead guitarist traded his electric Fender for an acoustic guitar and the steel guitar player switched to dobro.
The bass player played a different bass, but the bass still pounded. And the drummer didn't hold back much, either.
Still, in the 2,300-seat auditorium, unplugged or not, the intimate setting set the show apart from the standard 10,000-seat coliseum concert. "It's nice to be so close to you," Black said.
It was nice. In the smaller venue, the sound was better, the view of the stage was better, and there was more of a rapport between Black and the audience.
It's too bad Black couldn't pack the place. The audience totaled 1,793. It is puzzling given Black's solid string of country hits over the past five years. And once again Thursday night, he proved he is one of the most talented singers currently working in country music.
In the first half of the show - the electric set - Black ran through many of his radio staples: "No Time To Kill," "Good Run of Bad Luck," "Burn One Down," "One More Payment," "Nobody's Home" and others. His voice was in fine form as he handled the slow songs and the uptempo material equally well, and he showed vocal range far superior to most of Nashville's recent offerings.
Several times, different women stood up in the audience and sang along to the music. Black clearly enjoyed this and encouraged it in his between-song banter. "As long as the person next to you doesn't mind," he said.
In the acoustic part of the show, Black mixed several new songs in with a few of his lesser-known songs and two of his early hits, "Walking Away" and "Nothing's News," which didn't sound much different from the electric versions.
At one point, a man in the balcony yelled out a request for "Where Are You Now."
"Roanoke, Virginia," Black responded on cue. "And I don't like those trick questions."
His stand-out song, however, came with a cover of the Eagles song, "Desperado," a song he contributed to a country tribute album to the Eagles last year. It was a showstopper. "It should be obvious who got the first pick of which Eagles' song they got to sing," he said. "I scarfed that one right up."
by CNB