Turnpike Troubadours Return to Arkansas for First Time Since Hiatus for Nostalgic Night of Classics, Avett & Wood Bros. In Tow

by Julian Spivey

Julian Spivey Photo

​The Turnpike Troubadours brought their brand of red dirt country music to Simmons Bank Arena in Little Rock, Ark. on Friday, February 24 for their second concert of 2023 and their first in Arkansas since the band announced they were going on an indefinite hiatus in 2019.

The band returned to performing music in April of 2022 and performed 33 shows last year.

Friday night’s concert in Little Rock was a co-headlining show with The Avett Brothers, which struck me as a bit off when the pairing was announced. They aren’t too dissimilar to make it a really strange concert, but they are different enough with Turnpike being more honky tonk country music with Americana-style songwriting and Avett Bros. being more indie folk that it was a small head-scratcher. I’m not sure how much overlap there is between the fan bases and I wasn’t sure what kind of crowd I’d be walking into on Friday night, but it didn’t take more than a few seconds into the first Turnpike song to realize it was primarily at Turnpike audience.

The Turnpike Troubadours wasted absolutely no time getting into the swing of things on Friday night. My wife, Aprille, and I had collaborated on a list of our favorite Turnpike songs for this website in anticipation of the show and the band played four of our top five songs within the first five songs of their set (“The Mercury,” No. 4 on our list, didn’t make the set for the show).

The band kicked off their set with “Every Girl,” a fitting choice as it’s the first track on their 2010 album Diamonds & Gasoline which saw the band initially take off in the independent and red dirt country music subgenres. They continued with two more tracks from that album, “7 & 7,” my personal favorite song of theirs, and “Shreveport.”

The band would then go into their nostalgic, story song “The Bird Hunters,” from their 2015 self-titled album, which truly shows off vocalist and main songwriter for the band Evan Felker’s skills at essentially placing short stories to music. “The Bird Hunters” is my wife’s personal favorite Turnpike song, so we might have been satisfied with those first four songs alone on Friday night. It would surprisingly be the only performance of the night from that terrific self-titled release.

But Friday night was a bit of a homecoming for us and I’m sure many other longtime fans of the band prayed and hoped and dreamed they would one day get back together. Hopefully, it was a baptism for the many fans whom no doubt came to find and love the band’s music during their hiatus, of which I’m sure there were many on Friday because this band wasn’t filling arenas before their hiatus.

The band would continue their set with “Good Lord Lorrie,” from 2012’s Goodbye Normal Street, which ranked No. 1 on the aforementioned list my wife and I published on Friday before the show – we both ranked it as our second favorite Turnpike song, so it averaged out in the top spot.  It was certainly one of our favorite performances of the evening, but really that whole first five songs may have been the greatest concert run I’d ever seen had I not just seen Bruce Springsteen & the E Street band do “Badlands,” “Thunder Road,” “Born to Run” and “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” six nights before it in Kansas City. Sorry, country music fans, but nothing can top that foursome in a row by “The Boss.”

“Good Lord Lorrie” would be one of four songs from Goodbye Normal Street performed during the evening. The others were fantastic performances of “Gin, Smoke, Lies,” “Before the Devil Know We’re Dead” and “Morgan Street.”

Nearly half of the band’s set on Friday night came from their de facto debut Diamonds & Gasoline. The band released their debut Bossier City in 2007, which is out of print, and I only have a copy via a download the band offered in a bundle deal on their website when I believe the self-titled album was released.

Among the Diamonds & Gasoline tracks included the night’s first three songs, “Whole Damn Town” (a crowd favorite), “Kansas City Southern,” one of my favorites which was written by bassist R.C. Edwards, and the main set ending “Long Hot Summer Day,” a John Hartford-penned track that’s one of the few songs ever recorded by the band that they didn’t write.

The band’s most recent album was 2017’s A Long Way From Your Heart, which came out after I had last seen the band at The Revolution Room in Little Rock that same year (though they did perform three or so tracks from it that evening). “Pay No Rent,” a stand-out from that album, but it’s one of the songs they did that ’17 night at The Rev Room. So, my favorite cut from the album on Friday night turned out to be “A Tornado Warning,” which is my favorite track on the album with its supremely realistic telling of a beautiful day altered but not necessarily in a bad way by stormy weather. The group also did “The Winding Stair Mountain Blues” off the latest album, which I must admit was the song I knew the least on the evening – the only one I didn’t even act like I could fake my way through singing.

Something that band has always done that was nice to see continue on Friday was giving Felker a moment to shine on his own – this time with the title track from Diamonds & Gasoline, which is an absolutely lovely love song about a guy who’s not sure he’s good enough for his love but will give everything he has. Then the band gave Edwards a chance at the vocals on a nice cover of one of my favorite Dawes songs, “All Your Favorite Bands.” This typically would’ve been the time in the past for Edwards to perform one of his own writes but the choice of a song that features the lyric, “may all your favorite bands stay together” was too perfect for what was likely a reunion for the band and many of its fans.

The band performed a three-song encore of “The Housefire,” “Something to Hold On To” (both off the latest album) and then finished the evening with “1968,” from Diamonds & Gasoline. It was a serviceable encore for sure, but the truth is the band had pretty much done all of the fan favorites (or at least mine) already by that point.

This was my fifth time seeing the Turnpike Troubadours live with three of the previous times being at one of my favorite venues, the small club/honky tonk style The Rev Room. I must say the vibes were just different on Friday night in an arena. It’s terrific for the band that they’ve formed a fan base and interest so large that they must play larger venues these days, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it wasn’t as exciting and intimate as seeing them much closer (and much cheaper) in a smaller crowd of fanatics. Sharing the band with thousands of folks in an arena is awfully cool too, but the sound probably wasn’t as good as the smaller venues.

Ultimately, though, there wasn’t enough time to focus on the venue with all the wonderful nostalgia flying around and being thrilled one of our favorite bands was back together with Felker, Edwards, Kyle Nix on fiddle, Ryan Engleman on guitar, Gabe Pearson on drums and Hank Early on steel guitar and guitar all sounding like they hadn’t missed a day together.  

The Avett Brothers have never been an act that I’ve really gotten despite trying multiple times because they’re similar in genres to other bands and artists I really enjoy. I felt many of their songs and lyrics were a bit pretentious. I have to say after listening to some of their most played tracks leading up to the show and seeing them perform in person I get the appeal a bit more now. I still hate the song “Vanity” quite a bit, but songs like “Laundry Room,” “Murder in the City,” “Ain’t No Man” and “I and Love and You” (which initially grated on me a bit) are pretty cool.

The Avett Brothers song I find myself liking the most is “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise,” which really fills up a packed arena nicely.

The group is filled with immensely talented musicians as well, including stand-up bass playing by Bob Crawford that truly thumped against all of our chests in the building. Scott and Seth Avett do a good job switching out lead vocals and performing multiple instruments apiece with Scott on guitar, banjo and piano and Seth on guitar and piano.

I was perhaps more taken with the performance of The Wood Brothers, who performed for about half an hour before The Avett Bros. starting right at 6:50 p.m. before much of the arena was filled. The Wood Bros., a trio featuring Oliver Wood on vocals and guitar, his younger brother Chris on upright bass and Jano Rix on drums, were really energetic – especially Chris with his dance moves – performing their American roots rock with wonderful performances of “Postcards From Hell,” “Happiness Jones,” “The Muse” and my personal favorite of their set “Alabaster.” If you’re not familiar with The Wood Brothers please check them out.