Live Review: Old Crow Medicine Show, Valerie June

There's an odd vibe in the gorgeous interior of The Tivoli tonight, the building which is currently celebrating the 100-year anniversary of its construction housing an event under the auspices of Tennessee Tourism to ostensibly turn Aussie audiences onto that American state's rich musical heritage.

To that end the posters all around the foyer are spruiking various state and city marketing and tourism organisations, rather than bands per se. Fortunately, the overt commerciality of this marketing matters nought once the entertainment itself gets underway.

The evening starts with a lengthy set from rising Memphis singer/multi-instrumentalist Valerie June, delivering what she likes to call "organic moonshine roots music" with the help of her accomplished band. June herself is a sight to behold, bounding onto stage in a dervish of red sequins and matted dreadlocks, diving into sultry country songs like The Hour and Man Done Wrong with complete conviction. Yet despite the routinely strong songs and adroit musicianship it's her voice that commands attention, swinging effortlessly from a deep soul pitch reminiscent of Bessie Smith or Roberta Flack to a shrill, warbling indie-folk vocal sound that echoes entirely that of Joanna Newsom, all while giving off a jovial, between-song front as utterly enthralling as Dolly Parton. Yet as a complete persona June proves completely unique and beguiling, clearly winning many new converts as she delivers a set heavy with cuts from her recent album The Order Of Time, authentic-sounding songs like Love You Once Made, Shakedown, Slip Slide On By and the gospel-tinged Astral Plane showing a complete mastery of the Americana aesthetic. She finishes with the contagious Got Soul, dancing around the stage with her banjo as if representing her musical heritage in this far-flung corner of the globe is the most natural thing in the world (which in some respects it probably is).

Tonight's headliners Old Crow Medicine Show are also on a mission to educate and inform, reprising their role from last year at Nashville's Country Music Hall Of Fame & Museum when the celebrated the 50-year anniversary of Bob Dylan's seminal 1966 double-album Blonde On Blonde by playing the full album in its entirety, an event so successful that it was later released on both DVD and as a double-live album. Blonde On Blonde was Dylan's first experience recording in Nashville and also effectively altered the world's view of the state capitol from its tradition status as a mecca for country music to a city synonymous with music in general, an important distinction for those with a vested interest in drawing visitors to the region.

It's a long, lyric-heavy collection of songs but Old Crow give it their distinctive, old school twist from the get-go, the jokey refrain of opener Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 ("Everybody must get stoned!") setting the fun, vibrant mood immediately. They've clearly been touring this a while as there's a well-drilled theatricality to their stage demeanour that adds both joie de vivre and heft to songs like Pledging My Time and Visions Of Johanna. The band's frontman Ketch Secor acts as master of ceremonies and provides the bulk of the vocals, although Chris "Critter" Fuqua steps up and takes the reins for One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later), which the band transform into a lovelorn ballad. The fact that all six members of the band are adept at so many instruments brings much diversity to proceedings, and they show such clear affinity and respect (and even love) for numbers like I Want You and Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again that it's completely contagious. Guitjo player Kevin Hayes steps into the spotlight to deliver a fun and raucous version of Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat - the whole band assembling for a line dance mid-song - before Secor offers a wonderfully plaintive take on Just Like A Woman to take us to the album's halfway mark, at which point the band leave the fray for an intermission.

With the night's template now established the second half seems to swing by in a blur, the fact that they even use a full drum kit for Temporary Like Achilles particularly jarring (they're usually a string band first and foremost), with even some edgy banter before Absolutely Sweet Marie (discussing how Cold Chisel were indebted to Sir Bob and then pretending to get us mixed up with Austria) not derailing the buoyant mood they've built already. They run through a magnificent country take on Obviously Five Believers, which sees the front of The Tivoli transform into a hoedown, and then finish with a fittingly epic cover of the classic Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands (which takes up the entirety of Blonde On Blonde's fourth side).

When the band are coaxed into running through a version of their own massive hit Wagon Wheel - which ironically is a co-write with Dylan - to farewell proceedings properly the venue goes completely ballistic, the previously empty air above the crowd suddenly a sea of mobile phones recording the action, and herein lies the only real problem with tonight's event: there's so much love for Old Crow Medicine Show as a band in their own right and they haven't been to Australia in some nine years, so it's kinda frustrating to see them doing two hours of cover material, even if it is all taken from the pointy end of the revered American songbook. Hopefully the heroes' reception they receive anyway will be enough to bring them back soon under their own steam, otherwise you could always head over and catch them in their adopted Nashville. You can only assume that that's what Tennessee Tourism is counting on.