Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 10, 1995 TAG: 9504120024
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Indeed.
For country music's top duo, Brooks & Dunn, having a good time is what it's all about. There is no pretention about any grand musical statement, no grandstanding dramatics, no pretending that they are anything but what they are - shamefully and unabashedly entertaining. It has been the key to their success.
Saturday night at the Roanoke Civic Center coliseum was no exception.
Brooks & Dunn came to give the audience of 7,495 exactly what it came for - a mostly high-energy 90 minutes of the duo's best-selling brand of hard-rocking country for the "hard-workin', honky-tonking, boot-scootin'" man (or woman). Nobody else in the business does it better.
Kix Brooks, as usual, jumped and leaped around the stage like a cowboy with an electric cattle prod in his pants, while the more subdued Dunn handled a majority of the lead singing, particularly on most of the pair's bigger songs.
Highlights included "Little Miss Honky Tonk," "We'll Burn That Bridge," "That Ain't No Way to Go" and, naturally, "Boot Scootin' Boogie," which was their last encore song.
As for the second act on Saturday's bill, what more can be said about David Ball that wasn't said the last time he appeared here as an opener for Sawyer Brown way back in ... December.
"Decent enough, but not electrifying or particularly original," the review said.
Again, Ball was catchy, danceable and oh-so commercial in his 45-minute set. The question is: How many of these cookie-cutter hat acts does Nashville plan to crank out before someone gets a new idea?
And is it necessary to bring them around every four months?
Opening Saturday night's concert was the Tractors, kind of a goofy bar band with an impressive blues-rock pedigree that has gone country.
Well, sort of.
To call the upbeat and offbeat Tractors country wouldn't be exactly right. More like it would be good-time party band that plays a little bit of everything - country, boogie-woogie, blues, rock, swing, whatever - and doesn't take itself too seriously.
Like a lot of bar bands. Only among today's country mainstream, the group comes across as wonderfully refreshing, even original. It helps, of course, that the Tractors is a top-notch band with a musical pedigree that may explain why.
Members Ron Getman, Walt Richman, Steve Ripley, Casey Van Beek and Jamie Oldaker all logged road miles as touring players for such heavies as Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, Leon Russell, Linda Ronstadt and the Righteous Brothers.
Appropriately, in its 30-minute set, the group played tightly and stayed true to the rocking, boogie-woogie bar band style that has made the group's infectious song "Baby Likes to Rock It" a hit.
by CNB