by Julian Spivey

Judging by the reaction from vocalist Evan Felker, the Turnpike Troubadours put on one of their most-attended shows yet at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion in Rogers, Ark., on Saturday, July 25.
The sold-out crowd of dedicated Turnpike fans was entertained by 22 of the red dirt country group’s finest songs.

The band’s latest album, The Price of Admission, which came out last year, was heavily featured in the band’s set, which actually surprised me somewhat, as I’d last seen the band following its 2023 album Cat in the Rain, and they didn’t play many songs from that release. The Troubadours are kind of known for playing “the hits” in concert, which means a lot of songs from their first few albums. It was nice to see some new stuff on Saturday night.

Five songs from The Price of Admission, including my favorite songs from the album: “Heaven Passing Through” and “On the Red River.” Also featured were “A Lie Agreed Upon,” “Be Here” and “Ruby Ann,” which was co-written by Lance Roark, one of the show’s openers, who joined the band onstage for this performance.

“The Hits” were definitely featured on  Saturday night at the AMP, with “The Bird Hunters,” off The Turnpike Troubadours, kicking off the show. Potentially the band’s most popular song, it was the only selection from that album during the concert.

Diamonds & Gasoline, which is sort of the band’s de facto debut (they did have an album prior that is out of print), always features heavily during the band’s live shows, with six total tracks appearing at the AMP, including my all-time favorites “7&7,” “Kansas City Southern,” “Every Girl” and “Whole Damn Town,” songs I wouldn’t want to leave a Turnpike show without hearing.

Among my other favorite performances of the evening were “A Tornado Warning,” my favorite track off 2017’s A Long Way From Your Heart, “Mean Old Sun,” off Cat in the Rain, and “Good Lord Lorrie,” which is probably my second favorite Turnpike song after “7&7,” though the group did bring Arkansas native Waylon Wyatt, one of the show’s openers, out for the song, and honestly I’d have preferred a band-only performance.

The band finished the evening, tight on time, with an apparent curfew for the outdoor amphitheater of 11 p.m., with a rather lifeless cover of my favorite Robert Earl Keen song “Feelin’ Good Again,” the fan-favorite “Long Hot Summer Day” and the perfect show-ender of “Pay No Rent,” which, though initially written for Felker’s beloved Aunt Lou, doubles terrifically as a tribute to the group’s fan-base.

Turnpike Troubadours have come back from their few-year hiatus from around 2018-2022, while Felker was getting sober, bigger than ever with new listeners apparently finding their music while the band was away. This has led to the band going from small venues around the country to arena and amphitheater tours. The band’s intensity performing live seems to have lessened as it has gotten bigger, which is a little disappointing for me, who began my tenure as a fan of the group in the small venues, up close and with more raucous performances. It’s probably for the betterment of the group, especially Felker cleaning up, so it’s something I’ll need to learn to live with.

Roark was a fantastic opener, performing a short set of some of his finest songs like “Big Bad Heart” and “Oklahoma Blacktop,” both of which he co-wrote with Turnpike Troubadours bassist R.C. Edwards.
Wyatt, a 19-year-old singer-songwriter from Hackett, Ark., has seen a meteoric rise in the independent country music scene after his song “Everything Under the Sun” went viral on TikTok (you know, the way it’s done these days). His debut album, Dustpiles, was just released this month. I don’t quite get the uproar about him yet, but maybe I’m too old for what he’s putting out. 

by Aprille Hanson-Spivey

Noah Kahan has built his brand around diving “heart” first into the depths of despair with deep and sad lyrics — after all, most artists do not have a tour shirt that says, “I went off my meds at Noah Kahan’s 2026 North American Tour.” But the vibes were pure adrenaline and joy on July 14 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. It was the first of two sold-out shows, drawing about 40,000 fans each night at the historic venue. 

It was the seventh stop on his 22-city tour, fresh off performing a four-night run at his favorite venue, Fenway Park in Boston. 

It was my first time seeing Kahan, an artist I fell in love with after hearing “Paul Revere,” an extra recording on his 2023 Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever), expanded from 2022’s breakout Stick Season.

What is fascinating about Kahan is his ability to command a crowd of 40,000, while still feeling like a small-venue artist. Because his songs are so personal and lyrical, I was curious how they would feel in a venue that large. It was entirely different from what feels like individual musical therapy sessions guided by his voice coming through the car speakers. 

While he said during the show that he’s not there to spread optimism, helping people feel heard and seen through music brings hope, and that’s exactly what fans felt at his concert. The crowd’s bright, flashing wristband lights mirrored the hopeful energy woven into his entire setlist. 

With little talking, he blazed through 24 songs, including the typical fan favorites like “Dial Drunk,” “Orange Juice,” “The View Between Villages” and new favorites from his latest album, The Great Divide, starting with “American Cars,” “Doors” and later “Downfall” and “Deny, Deny, Deny.” 

Aside from the iconic “Stick Season” to close out the show, “Dial Drunk” seemed to be the most fun for both the crowd and Kahan, as he was “thrown” into the back of an old police car on stage, singing directly into the camera inside the car for a bit of the song. It was electric singing what’s considered for Kahan to be a banger, along with everyone in the stadium. 

But the moments that truly lived up to one of his tour T-shirts, “Noah Kahan Made Me Cry,” were his surprise song of the set, “Call Your Mom.” ‘Mom’ was an extra song from his 2023 extended ‘Forever’ album, and centers around the desperate lengths someone will go to to save someone they love from succumbing to suicide. It’s a song I hadn’t really listened to much before this concert, and it was the only one that made me cry. It’s a pleading song, emphasizing, “All lights turned off can be turned on.”  For those who have lost someone to suicide or know someone who has attempted, it’s a song that taps into both helplessness and hopefulness. 

“Orbiter,” off of ‘Divide’, performed with Kahan lit up in a spotlight on a part of the stage extended into the crowd right before “Call Your Mom,” set the tone for a quieter part of the set, with “Dan” also added to the mix. 

His three-set encore included “End of August,” “Homesick” and “Stick Season.” 

While there’s only so many songs he can add in, “End of August” has consistently been a part of his encore on each stop, which is a bit surprising. It’s the first song off of ‘Divide,’ but it seems a little too slow and new to kick off the encore. I would have loved to hear “Paul Revere,” “Everywhere, Everything,” “Headed North” or “Growing Sideways” (his surprise song the next day in Chicago) instead. 

But truthfully, it’s hard to create a more perfect setlist than what Kahan fashioned for this tour. It was the little things, like the wristband lights, his name, tour dates in Chicago and “sold out” spelled out on the iconic Wrigley scoreboard, his openers, Annabelle Dinda and Gigi Perez, setting the right tone for his fans in the blazing heat, that made the experience special. 

Jason Eady brought his blend of Delta blues and Red Dirt country to Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack in Little Rock, Ark., on Tuesday, June 16, for his first performance in Arkansas in more than a decade, according to him.

Eady has been a singer-songwriter I’ve been paying attention to since his 2017 self-titled album, when I first heard his song “Barabbas,” about the murderer who was pardoned in place of Jesus of Nazareth. That song featured at No. 6 on this website’s list of the Best Americana and Country Music songs of 2017.

I’ve paid attention to his releases since then, finding particular favorites in terrific story songs like “French Summer Sun,” off 2021’s To the Passage of Time, which ranked No. 10 on this site’s end-of-year list.

Eady’s 2023 album, Mississippi, is where he was at his best, in my opinion, as he mingled that great Red Dirt country songwriting with the music of the Delta South, of his home state that shares the album’s name. Songs like “Once Upon a Time in New Orleans,” which ranked No. 82 on my yearly list (admittedly low), and “Burn It Down,” No. 10 on the yearly list.

Eady opened his show at Stickyz on Tuesday night with the terrific one-two punch of “Once Upon a Time in New Orleans” and “Burn It Down,” which wound up being my two favorite performances of the set. He played five of the 10 tracks from Mississippi at the show on Tuesday, with backing from the talented Midnight River Choir, including “Way Down in Mississippi” and “Wayside.”

Eady’s latest album, Tulsa Turnaround, which was released on June 5, is another terrific effort from the singer-songwriter and evident chameleon of musical sounds, as he melds the Delta sound of his previous album with the Tulsa Sound, popularized by artists such as J.J. Cale and Leon Russell in the ‘70s. The album’s title track, the first from the new album he performed on Tuesday night, is already high on my list of favorite Americana or Country music songs of the year. “Tulsa Turnaround” is a tribute to great musicians of Tulsa’s past, as well as its musical institutions, such as Cain’s Ballroom and Mercury Lounge.

Among the other great performances from Tulsa Turnaround during Eady’s set were “Angelene,” “Work No More,” “You Make It Easy,” “Mean Spirits,” a good tune for today’s world, and “Mississippi Blues Man,” a tribute to the late J.C. Cannon, an old blues picker who taught Eady how to play.

Eady performed seven of the new album’s 11 tracks on Tuesday night. It’s an album you should definitely check out and will probably wind up as one of the best of the year in the Americana and country genres.

Among the other memorable performances from Eady’s set were “Why I Left Atlanta,” from 2017’s self-titled album, “I Lost My Mind in Carolina, off 2018’s I Travel On, and “Back to Jackson,” from 2007’s Wild Eyed Serenade, the oldest song from his repertoire he performed at Stickyz.

Eady finished the night off with one more track from Tulsa Turnaround, with “Stay Up or Get Down,” a song he told the audience that he set out to write in the style of Cale. I think he succeeded.

Addison Johnson, a country singer-songwriter originally from North Carolina and based out of Nashville, opened the night at Stickyz, and he’s a performer you must look out for. He performed a handful of tracks off his upcoming album, The State I’m In, which releases on June 26, and songs like the title track and “Flames” are proof that it’s going to be a must-listen.

Jason Boland and the Stragglers at The Revolution Room in Little Rock, Ark. has become almost an annual tradition for me – I’ve seen the group many times at the venue (and a few times elsewhere). The band’s most recent Rev Room stop was Saturday, June 13, after being delayed a month following the death of Boland’s bulldog, Gary. One of the first things I noticed upon the band taking the stage on Saturday night was that Boland has Gary’s name tattooed on his knuckles.

Boland and the Stragglers opened their Saturday night show with “Take Me Back to Austin,” one of the highlights off the band’s latest album, The Last Kings of Babylon, which came out in March of 2025.

The band would play four songs from that album throughout the night, with “Drive,” “One Law at a Time,” and “Irish Goodbye,” which came during the encore, also on the setlist.

When you go to a Jason Boland and the Stragglers show, you know you’re going to get a lot of the fan-favorites you’ll always hear, but that’s A-OK because you love them so much. You honestly probably wouldn’t want to go to a Stragglers show that didn’t include songs such as “Pearl Snaps,” “Comal County Blue,” “Dark & Dirty Mile,” “Gallo del Cielo” and “Somewhere Down in Texas,” which Boland actually joked he’d recently left off a set by accident and polled the audience if it was a song they needed to hear, which was a resounding yes.  

You can always count on Boland to throw in some beloved stuff that you may have heard live before, but not always. On Saturday night, my favorite example of this was “Obsessed,” off the band’s 2011 album, Rancho Alto, which was my introduction to the group. He also performed the rocker “Pushing Luck” off that record on Saturday night.

Stragglers shows always seem to ramp up in intensity as they go on, with so many of the fan-favorites coming in the second half of the show. The band will go effortlessly from “Pearl Snaps” to “Somewhere Down in Texas” to “Gallo del Cielo” and just keep things rolling with the best of their best through the end of the show.

My favorite moment of Saturday’s show was unexpected, mostly because I could see the setlist on the stage from my vantage point in front of it, and this wasn’t on it. Following a raucous performance of “Fuck, Fight, and Rodeo,” off 2015’s excellent Squelch, Boland turned to the band and informed them he was adding a song, which turned out to be Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher Than the Rest,” off The Boss’s 1987 album Tunnel of Love, which is one of his greatest deep cuts. It might be my favorite cover I’ve ever seen live from any artist I’ve ever seen.

The band’s encore began with the aforementioned “Irish Goodbye,” before going into “The Bourbon Legend,” another frequent Stragglers tune, before wrapping up with “Outlaw Band,” which I have on at least one occasion in a review called the greatest set ender I’ve ever heard. It’s just one of those performances that is electric every time you hear it, with its wonderful lyrics, from Bob Childers, Randy Crouch and Layle Stagner, about a group of loners who form a band out of their mutual love of music, and its wonderful musicianship, which includes mesmerizing fiddle and mandolin numbers, currently played by Nick Gedra.  

I never tire of seeing the Stragglers live, but there was one little difference this time, and I have to assume it's on the part of The Rev Room. I haven’t been to the venue, one of my favorites, in nearly a year, but the sound on the vocals was harder to hear on Saturday night than I’ve ever experienced in more than 20 shows over the last 15 years of attending concerts there. Hopefully, it was just an off night for the sound system.  

5. “Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz
Typically, when musical guests appear on “Saturday Night Live,” it’s to promote their new music, but occasionally bands will perform a classic instead. That happened on two instances this season with Gorillaz performing their 2001 hit “Clint Eastwood” and Paul McCartney performing his 1974 classic “Band on the Run.” Now, I like “Band on the Run” better of the two, but McCartney has actually played the song twice on ‘SNL,’ and his 2010 performance was better. So, Gorillaz it is. The highlight of this performance was Del the Funky Homosapien, who was on the recording, joining the band and knocking his verses out of the park. 

4. “Dance No More” by Harry Styles
To be quite honest with you, Harry Styles’ “Dance No More,” from his latest album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, is the type of song I might grow to dislike if I hear it too many times, but his performance of it on ‘SNL’ on an episode in which he pulled double duty as host and musical guest was a lot of fun. The song, written by Styles and his producer Kid Harpoon, is a fun dance track about how dance songs seem to be fading from radio play. When Styles is at his best, he reminds me a bit of David Bowie, and this is the “Let’s Dance”/”Modern Love” era. 

3. “The Man I Need” by Olivia Dean
Olivia Dean’s “The Man I Need” feels like a throwback, which I mean as a compliment. It’s the kind of R&B-influenced pop sound that Whitney Houston popularized in her heyday. The English singer-songwriter hit it big with “The Man I Need,” a song about “knowing how you deserve to be loved and not being afraid to ask for it,” according to Dean. It’s a bit of a peculiarity for me in that I enjoy it but also find myself a bit annoyed by the repeated “talk to me” lines. 

2. “The Great Divide” by Noah Kahan
Singer-songwriter Noah Kahan is a bit of a curiosity, as he’ll perform something like “The Great Divide,” about struggling with things like mental health and how religious trauma can play a role in it, but he’ll do it with a smile on his face like it’s a party song. It’s a bit weird, but the song itself is touching and, from a songwriting perspective, might be the best song (other than McCartney’s “Band on the Run”) performed on the show this season. 

1. “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter
Sabrina Carpenter should annoy me. Most pop stars do. But she doesn’t take herself seriously, and I find that cheekiness to be charming, so she can get away with a song about how men are stupid without completely offending this man. Her performance of “Manchild” was a combination of fun performance mixed with theatrical staging (as if she’s performing in front of a mirror while bopping around her bedroom in her underwear) – something that isn’t a stranger to ‘SNL’ these days, but it usually doesn’t do anything for me. Bubblegum pop at its finest.  

“Excuse me. You look like you love me.”  
 
These were the first words I ever heard sung by up-and-coming superstar Ella Langley in 2024. “You Look Like You Love Me,” a duet with Riley Green, became a smash hit for Langley. The single would go on to win the CMA Award for Musical Event of the Year and the ACM Award for Single, Visual Media and Music Event of the Year. I listened to country music all the time growing up, but as an adult, I gravitate more toward pop music. However, songs like this bring me back to the genre that was the soundtrack of my childhood. 

Unfortunately, I did not check out her debut album, Hungover. However, Langley made her next album, Dandelion, released on April 10, a must-listen with the release of the lead single, “Choosin’ Texas.”

“Choosin’ Texas” continues to break records, the most impressive being the country song with the most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song tells the story of a Tennessee girl who falls in love with a Texas boy and makes the mistake of taking him back home, where a former flame awaits. The love between them is undeniable, and she realizes she will lose him because he will choose the girl from Texas. The song has become one of my favorites of the last few years.

I am officially an “Ella Fella.” In today’s country music, there are two routes a female artist can take. It is the “Taylor Swift” way or “Miranda Lambert” way. Country music is either country-pop or sticking to traditional country music as much as possible. I personally like both routes. Examples of the “Taylor Swift way” are Kelsea Ballerini and Megan Moroney while examples of the “Miranda Lambert” way would be Kacey Musgraves and Ashley McBryde.  Langley is going the Miranda Lambert way. She sticks to traditional country storytelling, using traditional country instruments and arrangements, and does it brilliantly. 

One criticism I tend to have of country music is the lack of originality in its storytelling, or its unwillingness to tell stories that are not about drinking or falling in love. On Dandelion, Langley shows us that she has lots of stories to tell and we are going to want to hear every single one of them. She introduces us to her in the single, “Dandelion.” She gives us a love triangle in “Choosin’ Texas,” a look into her religious background in ”Speaking Terms,” tells a man to label their situationship in “Bottom Of Your Boots,” tells us she still likes her smalltown life in “Somethin’ Simple,” and how she is growing in “Butterfly Season,” featuring Miranda Lambert. The three songs that are the most similar are “We Know Us,” "Low Lights” and “Last Call For Us.” What Langley does, though, is give us different perspectives and more insight with each song.  

Growing up, when listening to country albums, I noticed that while there were hits, there were also songs that just felt like filler. It seemed like the singer just needed to fill more space and chose something of lower quality. This is something Langley does not do. Every song she wrote has a purpose, a fresh perspective, and deserves to be there, making this album a no-skip one. I felt every song was fresh, current and refreshing. It is difficult for this “Ella Fella” to choose a favorite, but my top picks would be ”Choosin’ Texas,” “Speaking Terms,” “Bottom Of Your Boots” and “Loving Life Again.” “Loving Life Again” is a song you must listen to on a difficult mental health day. It is very uplifting.

Dandelion has been almost on repeat for the past month. Langley has proven herself in a short time to be a country music powerhouse. As soon as I get over my obsession with Dandelion, I will be going back to give her debut album, Hungover, as well as her EP Excuse The Mess. I cannot wait to see where her career takes her.   

Sometimes the best thing you can do with a free Friday night is search out a band and just have some fun.

I’m no stranger to going to concerts, but Friday (May 1) at the White Water Tavern in Little Rock, Ark., was a rarity for me. Usually, the shows I go to are for musical acts I know and like, but on Friday, I took a chance on a band I wasn’t very familiar with (I had heard the name and maybe a song or two in passing) … Jenny Don’t and the Spurs.

I get that, with concert tickets skyrocketing, this might not be something people can do much of, but one of the many great things about the White Water Tavern and small-venue shows is affordability.

Jenny Don’t, and the Spurs are a four-piece out of Portland, Ore., whose website calls them cowpunk, but I would call them surf-western, which may not even be a thing, but it certainly fits the sound and groove of this outfit.

The band consists of frontwoman Jenny Don’t, the stage name for musician Jenny Connors, who was given the nickname as a child for her rebellious attitude and independent nature, which I absolutely love, bassist Kelly Haliburton (who has been married to Jenny Don’t since 2022), guitarist Christopher March (who was celebrating a birthday on Friday night) and drummer Buddy Weeks. Jenny Don’t said the band had recently surpassed 1,000 live shows together, and you could tell they’ve been at it for a while, as in tune as they are with each other.

I was instantly enthralled by the group’s surf-western sound, which was like a mix of Dick Dale’s surf-rock guitar and the classic country music of someone like Ernest Tubb, but with the look and feel, especially at times, of Patsy Cline. The closest thing I’ve ever heard to their sound was Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives' excellent 2017 album Way Out West.  

The music was stellar from the beginning of the show, but for some reason, it was hard for me to make out Jenny Don’t’s vocals for the first few songs from my perch near the stage (an issue I’ve never had in my many shows at WWT). I was worried it wouldn’t be a very fun evening if I couldn’t make out what she was singing, but luckily, when I moved to the back of the small bar venue, I could hear just fine.

The band has released four studio albums and an EP dating back to 2015 and performed material from all of them throughout the set.

A lot of the set’s most memorable tracks can be found on the band’s rip-roaring live album, Live at the Jenny, from last year, like the opening “Flying High,” “Trouble with the Law” and “Is It Too Late?”

Among the band’s other highlights were “California Cowboy,” off 2021’s Fire On The Ridge and “One More Night,” off the band’s most recent album, Broken Hearted Blue (2024).  

I’m thrilled to have a new band to keep an eye out for, both for their live performances and for whatever music they have coming out in the future. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night on my own.

by Julian Spivey
 
Singer-songwriter David Allan Coe died on Wednesday, April 29, at age 86, and I have to say, I don’t care.
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Many see him as a legendary performer; I’ve always seen a vile person. The reasons I’ve always been convinced of for both are the same.

I grew up in Northern Arkansas listening to a bit of everything the local radio stations played. I loved the oldies station and the classic rock station. At times, I would listen to the modern country station and the top-40 pop station.

In high school, I got really into classic country music and became a huge fan of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, so I was into the kind of stuff that would make one think I might also love David Allan Coe. But I hadn’t heard of him.

I don’t really know how the group of people I spent the most time with in high school developed. Looking back on it, I only really liked two or three of them, even at that time, but it was a sizeable group. I don’t know what you’d call us… We weren’t jocks. We weren’t popular. With the exception of maybe two of us, we weren’t all that smart or nerdy. But as it goes in high school lunchrooms, we all sat together every day at lunch.

Somehow, David Allan Coe would come up with this group – I don’t understand why that would happen in 2005-2006, but probably because a handful of us liked older country music. These idiots would cackle and giggle about his disgusting songs, many of them bigoted and racist, including slurs like the “N-word,” which these guys sitting near me would repeat, acting as if that sort of thing was cool.

These guys didn’t seem to care about the good songs Coe had written, like “Take This Job and Shove It” for Johnny Paycheck or “The Ride,” his own tribute to Hank Williams; they just liked that he used the “N-word” in his songs.

To these guys, Coe made racism and racist language cool, and he made it acceptable.

I was quiet, even more so than I am today, but I’ve always let it be known when I didn’t appreciate something, and I did with these guys, which just made it worse for me. It was a racist joke palooza after that, with me being too cowardly at the time to just walk away.

And that’s why, even though I know these songs only make up a small percentage of Coe’s discography, it’s the main reason I’ve always viewed him as a racist loser, and even worse, someone who made people like the ones I grew up with believe that it was just fine to be one, cool even.

David Allan Coe is dead. I hope his legacy goes with him.

While sitting in the darkened over-100-year-old Rialto Community Arts Center in Morrilton, Ark., I was told for the first time in my life that I was going to Hell. 
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“If you’re trusting in the made-up, man-made system that Rome has built, and by the way codified in 1546, you have no hope of Christ,” a Baptist preacher spouted on stage to a sold-out theater partly made up of Catholics like me. Later, he called the Catholic Church a “demonically influenced system.”

I was covering a debate on May 22, 2025, as a freelance reporter for the local diocesan newspaper between a priest and a Baptist preacher. An online rant by the preacher calling the late Pope Francis the “anti-Christ” following his death sparked the debate, culminating in two hours of mercy and truth preached by the priest, combating the condemnation and hatred spewed by the pastor. 

It was the first time someone so fervently and publicly stood in front of me, believing and saying I was bound for Hell. My body tensed, my blood pressure certainly rose and I remember thinking, how dare this man, who does not know me at all, stand up on that stage and pretend to know where my soul is destined to go? 

It was also the moment I got a brief glimpse of the religious trauma so many of my friends endured growing up. 

As a born-and-raised Catholic, I’m consistently taught that Jesus loves me. I have never once heard a priest condemn anyone to Hell because they can’t — it’s not Catholic teaching. In fact, the Church can only say for certain that the saints are in Heaven. Everyone else is left to God’s mercy. Regardless of if you agree with everything the Catholic Church believes, it always teaches a consistent message of human dignity and love for God’s creation. It’s one of many reasons I believe there was an uptick in the number of people joining the Catholic Church this year. I won’t pretend people have always had positive experiences with Catholicism — priests are people, and people can sometimes be the worst. But it’s certainly not what Jesus intended when he instituted the Church. 

I have many close friends who no longer attend a church because of what they were told and the hypocrisy they saw. I would not want to sit in a pew week after week, hearing what I heard from that preacher in that theater. And I know now that for some friends, that was their reality. No wonder they left. 

It’s why songs like Noah Kahan’s “The Great Divide,” the first single off his much-anticipated album of the same name, should pierce the heart of every Christian. 

I was drawn to Kahan’s music a few years ago after hearing “Paul Revere” pop up on my husband’s playlist. I immediately wanted to know who sang it, and quickly devoured the music from Stick Season. 
While there were moments on that album that addressed religion, “The Great Divide,” both in song and as a full album, speaks more to religious trauma. 

When I first heard ‘Divide,’ I felt uncomfortable the first time I heard the chorus lyrics: 
“I hope you settle down, I hope you marry rich / I hope you’re scared of only ordinary shit / Like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin / And not your soul, and what He might do with it.” 

I wasn’t sure where to go with this. How could I sit here and sing this song, which felt like an insult to Jesus, who is all good and merciful? Because a person should be concerned about their soul, not from the perspective of being terrified of God, but from a healthy understanding of his love and what it means to follow him. 

And then I remembered that preacher’s words.

There’s a difference between hearing preaching about following God’s will and bringing our sins to God in his great mercy and being told you’re going to Hell if you don’t repent. It’s not the same, and these song lyrics are a direct result of the latter. 

Our misunderstandings of this and what we say to people can ultimately lead to lyrics like, “I hope you threw a brick right into that stained glass.” The lyrics should make Christians uncomfortable. 

Jesus told us, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” And how good are we as Christians at sharing our personal story of Jesus and how he is our way, truth and life? Are we trying to get people to convert, or are we radiating the light and love of Christ by our actions? 

The great divide in how Christians share their faith in today’s society is between judgment and mercy. Each person has to make the daily decision to let Jesus judge and work in someone’s life, or try to take that power away from the Lord and become a judge themselves. I have not always done a good job with this call, but God is ever patient, working on my heart each day. 

Now, when I hear the lyrics, “And not your soul, and what He might do with it,” I think of all the people hurt by a human distortion of God. As I listen, it’s a gut-check for me and how I’m doing walking the walk as a sinner, but also a beloved daughter of Christ in the way I interact with others. It’s a chance for me to pray each time I hear it for those who are listening and no longer follow Jesus because of the pain they’ve experienced. I pray that people are not terrified of what God may do with their souls, but instead that they get to know him in this life and understand how deeply they matter to him. 

Having that perspective is how we can begin to lessen the great divide. 

by Julian Spivey

It’s weird. ZZ Top isn’t a group I think would rank in my 100 favorite musical acts of all time, but they have been the one group I’ve been chasing longer than any to see live in concert. However, because of family outings or work or what have you there has always been something that comes up every time ZZ Top has been in my neck of the woods over the last 15-plus years that has kept me from seeing them.

When it was announced they would be co-headlining on the Dos Amigos Tour with one of my all-time favorite country music artists, Dwight Yoakam, and making a trip to the Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock, Ark. on Friday, April 17, I knew this would likely be the last chance I had to see the group.

ZZ Top still sounds great, but it’s not really the same ZZ Top that became a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame act, or the same one I had the chance to see in the past. Bassist and original band member Dusty Hill, one of the big-bearded duo up front on the stage, died in 2021.

Elwood Francis, who was Hill’s longtime guitar technician, replaced Hill and Hill’s request in the trio following his death.

Drummer Frank Beard, though technically still a member of the band, has missed time over the last few tours with ailments and injuries, and was not part of the Dos Amigos show in NLR on Friday. Michael Monahan filled in for Beard and did very well.

The band opened up Friday night’s show with a performance of “Got Me Under Pressure,” off what’s potentially their most well-known album, 1983’s Eliminator, with Francis playing a bright yellow 17-string bass that’s probably the most ridiculous-looking instrument I’ve ever seen performed live in concert. It was the only song in which the bass was used.

The classic blues-boogie rock band performed most of their hits on Friday night, the ones that made the band famous with their comical music videos on MTV back in the day, which featured scantily clad women and a famous 1933 Ford Coupe hot rod (the one on the Eliminator cover). These are the songs that I, as a novice ZZ Top fan, appreciated hearing – the kind you hear often on classic rock radio formats.

It was these Eliminator tracks I had the most fun hearing live, like “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man,” but potentially my favorite ZZ Top song of the night was “Cheap Sunglasses,” which the band released four years prior on Degüello.

They, of course, played some of their standards from earlier in their career, like “Waitin’ for the Bus” and “Jesus Just Left Chicago,” from 1973’s Tres Hombres, which I frankly should be more familiar with than I am. It was the stuff I was less familiar with in their repertoire that I struggled with during the show, as vocalist and guitarist Billy Gibbons’ growly, gravelly voice isn’t the easiest to hear over blaring instruments, and Gibbons, Francis and Monahan were louder as a trio than most live acts I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing.

Other highlights from the band were their covers of the Sam & Dave classic “I Thank You” and the Merle Travis-written country standard, “Sixteen Tons,” which I’d certainly never heard performed in quite that way (though sans some of its original verses).

One of the disappointments of the set was the lack of collaboration with Yoakam, who had told the audience during his portion of the evening that he and Gibbons had considered doing this joint tour for years. Yoakam had memorably covered ZZ Top’s “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” for his 2004 covers album, Dwight’s Used Records, but when the band performed it on Friday night, he was nowhere to be seen.

ZZ Top ended the evening with a two-song encore that began with “Brown Sugar,” off the group’s 1971 debut aptly titled ZZ Top’s First Album, and finished with the epic “La Grange,” which might be their most famous song ever, and one of those that certainly was on my “to see live” concert bucket list.

Yoakam is an artist I’ve seen, I believe five times now, and had seen as recently as last September when he powered through food poisoning to finish a show in Jonesboro, Ark. He’s one of my all-time favorite live performers, and he was in great spirits on Friday night, with his frilly, rhinestone denim jacket and his side-to-side leg-shaking dance moves.

His set was remarkably similar to the one I’d seen in Jonesboro last year but was truncated a bit because this was a co-headlining tour.

Yoakam performed most of his “greatest hits,” some deep cuts that he must really love, like 2005’s “Blame the Vain,” which he performs often, and some newer stuff from his latest release, 2024’s Brighter Days.

Among my favorite performances were hits like “Guitars, Cadillacs,” “Streets of Bakersfield,” “Little Ways,” “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere” and “Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose,” which I’ve probably seen him do every time I’ve seen him live. They’re classics that just don’t get old.

A surprise from the show was hearing “Bury Me,” off his 1986 debut, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., one of the greatest country music albums ever, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last month. This was my live debut as a fan. It’d be nice to see Yoakam do his debut from start to finish sometime.

Yoakam finished his set with a rip-roaring performance of “Fast as You,” off his 1993 album This Time, much to the approval of the audience.

The night’s music kicked off right at 7 p.m. on the dot with a performance by country-rock band Southall out of Oklahoma. The music sounded good, but unfortunately, not being familiar with their work, I couldn’t make out much of what frontman Read Southall was singing, especially with the old folks behind me yakking it up the entire set after a day of day drinking.