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.
​
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. 
​
“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.

 
While Coachella is often headlined by the biggest stars in pop music – like Sabrina Carpenter and Justin Bieber this year – it also highlights legends of the past, like David Byrne and Iggy Pop.
​
There was only one Coachella set I made the time to check out on the California festival’s YouTube channel during this busy weekend that included spending time with old friends and watching the Masters Tournament, and that was Byrne’s delightful 13-song set that featured heavily on Talking Heads greatest hits.

Byrne was, of course, the frontman for the Talking Heads, the art-pop group that mostly met at an art school in Rhode Island before taking New York City by storm in the late ‘70s with its unique sound and Byrne’s beguiling on-stage presence with his unusual dance movements.

Byrne has been performing with a large ensemble of musicians, backup vocalists and dancers, who all stroll across the stage in unique ways, often with instruments like drums and keyboards strapped to their bodies so they’re not stationary. The artists dress the same, and the show is as much an art installation as a rock concert, making for a unique blend of the arts you’ll likely only see from someone like Byrne.

At almost 74 years old, Byrne has the on-stage stamina of someone much younger than himself, of which the majority of his bandmates are.

Byrne’s set opened on Saturday night at the Outdoor Stage of the Indio, Calif., festival grounds with a performance of “Everybody Laughs,” a single off his most recent album Who is the Sky? (2025).

Byrne’s set began 30 minutes late (for reasons unknown to me) and was opposite of Saturday’s headliner, Justin Bieber, which, according to reports from the festival, led to many, unfortunately, missing out on this wonderful performance.

I can’t imagine people wanting to see Bieber, whose set was reportedly super lackluster, over an artist of Byrne’s magnitude.

The first of the Talking Heads classics came early with “And She Was,” off 1985’s Little Creatures. Byrne told the crowd that the song was inspired by a former classmate who was always happy and used to lie down in a field near the Yoo-hoo chocolate beverage factory and just drift away. He added that the reason was that she was on acid.

Among other notable Talking Heads performances during the first half of Byrne’s set were “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody) and “(Nothing But) Flowers.”

Among his most recent works, a highlight was “When We Are Singing,” which I first heard the week before, when he appeared on CBS’s “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and performed it. It’s a lovely piece of work.

Following this, Byrne finished his Coachella set in the most epic way imaginable with what could very well be the four greatest (or at least maybe most known) Talking Heads hits: “Psycho Killer” (1977), “Life During Wartime” (1979), “Once in a Lifetime” (1981) and “Burning Down the House” (1983).

“Psycho Killer” was my favorite performance of the set, overall, as it’s always been my favorite Talking Heads song, as one who’s admittedly a novice when it comes to the Talking Heads' complete discography. Byrne has always been an interesting figure to me, and the more I learn about him and the more I listen to his music, the more of a fan I become. Maybe I won’t be a novice for long?

I forget which song Byrne prefaced with a wonderful anecdote of which he heard from filmmaker and actor John Cameron Mitchell when Byrne said: “[Mitchell] said that love and kindness are the most punk things you can do right now. It was a little confusing for me; I thought, ‘Oh, loud, angry music, love and kindness.’ I didn’t quite get the connection. And then I realized: yeah, he’s right. Love and kindness are a form of resistance.”

There was a lot of love and kindness from Byrne on Saturday night, of course, it was in addition to that great song about a psycho killer.

by Julian Spivey

Charles Wesley Godwin returned to The Hall in Little Rock, Ark., on Friday, April 10, for his first headlining show of 2026 after taking the last few months off.

When I saw him at The Hall in 2024, it was an electric night of music with one of the best club shows I’d seen from an act in a while, with him and his band, The Allegheny High, on absolute fire that evening.
​
Friday night’s show didn’t quite have the same feeling – partially due to a decision on Godwin’s part and partially due to the crowd within the venue.

Don’t get me wrong, there were still magical moments throughout the set, as Godwin’s deeply personal songs hit on themes and feelings that are universal, and he has a bunch of stuff in his repertoire that should already be considered his greatest hits, despite only having three albums under his belt.

When he was performing stuff the crowd knew and loved like “Strong” and “Jesse,” off his sophomore album How the Mighty Fall (2021) or “Another Leaf,” “Miner Imperfections” and “The Flood,” off his most recent release Family Ties (2023) he had the whole room eating out of the palm of his hand.

Before Friday’s show, I saw a post from Godwin on his Facebook page saying there would be “lots of new music in the set.” Typically, if an artist breaks out new songs in front of a live audience, it’ll be like two or three songs, but Godwin performed seven songs that, by my account, are previously unreleased.
From what I can tell, these songs will be fantastic when his fourth studio album is released. Undoubtedly, he must have one coming out sometime soon with this much new material. However, a live club show on a Friday night, when, unfortunately, too many of the audience members would rather drink and chatter than listen to new stuff, makes it hard to make out exactly what the singer is saying. So, I’m sure when that album is released, I’ll love new songs like “Try Again,” “Better That Way,” “Hey There Son” and “I Caught the Sunrise,” but on Friday night, I was struggling to comprehend.

Another thing I can’t comprehend is how these artists, who are pouring their heart and soul on stage, feel when folks in the audience are acting a fool, doing just about anything but listening to the music. It’s a real downer for those of us who attend shows for the music. If you want to drink, chat and party, there are plenty of other (and cheaper) places you can do this. It feels like ticket prices aren’t the only thing rising for live music; so are poorly behaved concertgoers.

When Godwin and the Allegheny High were at their absolute best, and the crowd was most into the show, were during those greatest hits of his I mentioned earlier: “All Again,” “Family Ties” and a stirring solo acoustic performance of “Seneca Creek,” a highlight from his 2019 debut Seneca, which ended the main set.

This energy ran through to the encore, which began with “Cue Country Roads,” which had been his show opener the last time I’d seen him, and into “Hardwood Floors,” which may be his biggest song overall with his fan base and finishing with a terrific cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which showed off his pride of being a son of West Virginia.

Jason Scott and the High Heat opened the show on Friday night, and things started out pretty well with some fun stuff like “If We Make It Til the Mornin’” and “High Country,” before throwing some real stinkers out toward the end of their set like “Cowboy Cold Beer” and others I don’t know the name of. The group feels like it could do some good work if they set their mind to it.

​