McRae who has been interviewed and reviewed here and elsewhere by your
humble author, performed with her Buffalo backing band of Doug Yeomans on
guitar, Jim Whitford on bass and vocals and Randy Bolam on drums. Whitford has
recorded and toured with McRae, first well known for her time as bassist and
vocalist with Spirit of the West.
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| Linda McRae belts out a song aided by Jim Whitford. Photo by Val Dunne/Barkloud Productions |
McRae plays banjo and guitar along with her singing in her band and solo
act, and while she started rather talented, her musicianship and storytelling
continue to improve, including on the set’s opening song, “This Winding Road.”
She sings of the country and folk musicians who traveled the highways of Canada
and the U.S., and of the places they played, including some her family
operated; the band fell into a strong country groove, and Yeomans supplied
strong bluesy country guitar work. McRae followed this with “Living in the Past
With You,” a lovely soft country waltz with some cool yodeling. She next sang
one of several songs she has written with her husband, poet, writer and rumored
roadie extraordinaire James Whitmire, “Doing Life Without Parole.” Many of
their collaborations are clever, occasionally funny stories of relationships
and why they work as much as don’t work. She dedicated the next song, “Three
Midnights,” about a person fighting for their sobriety, sanity and life, to
Whitmire, who will soon celebrate his 27th year of sobriety. The
song contains a great line first pointed out to me by my lovely wife Val,
“Darker than three midnights in a jar.”
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| Linda McRae singing, yodeling and banjo picking; sweet. Photo by Val Dunne/Barkloud Productions |
McRae has taken to performing some wonderful Hank Williams covers, and
included two this night, the first “Rambling Man,” with some more yodeling and
fine guitar solos by Yeomans and banjo by Linda. She later sang, with some
yodeling, a cover of “Long Gone Lonesome Blues,” and slipped in a portion of
J.J. Cale’s “Call Me the Breeze” in the middle of it. McRae did not play a bad
song that night, and among the more interesting tunes were “Flowers of
Appalachia,” a lovely tune she wrote music for lyrics written by Ken Blackburn,
an inmate she collaborated with in a program she and Whitmire are working with
in several prisons, in particular here New Folsom Prison. She sings of missing
the beauty of nature in Appalachia from a cell, accompanied by only her banjo.
A clever tribute song of sorts is “Bad Boy Bad Girl,” a tune about people in
trouble with the law she said was inspired by an episode of “Cops” and sounded
very much like a nod to the Rolling Stones “Faraway Eyes.” Other excellent song
were “The L&M Doesn’t Stop Here Any More” and a new song, “Jesus or Jail,”
sometimes the only choices for some people in rural areas, and not only the
South.
Opening the show were the Cactus Blossoms, from Minneapolis, made up of
Jack Torrey on lead guitar and vocals and Page Burkum on guitar and vocals. The
band has been gathering a serious buzz, including a performance on Prairie Home
Companion, and for good reason, The duet’s vocals were excellent as leads and
amazingly beautiful in harmony with each other; the sounded like a slightly
more countrified/bluegrass Everly Brothers, playing both a fine selection of
covers and some original material.
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| Page Burkum, left, and Jack Torrey, the Cactus Blossoms. Photo by Val Dunne/Barkloud Productions |
The Cactus Blossoms opened with Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms,” and their
covers included songs by Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams (Your Cheatin’ Heart”) and
the Beatles (“This Boy”), as well as, naturally, the Everly Brothers, while
their originals included songs such as the humorously dark “Slow Poison” and
“Change Your Ways or Die (The Buffalo Song).” Along with the great singing,
Torrey’s guitar playing blended jazz, blues, country, folk and early rock and
roll that never turned flashy despite his obvious talent. Torrey and Burkum
quickly warmed up to the audience and told some road stories, including
spending time with Dale Watson on his tour bus in NYC before heading to
Buffalo, the whole time flashing modesty between some jokes. The band can be
contacted at thecactusblossoms.com.
Also on the bill was
John and Mary and the Valkyries, normally led by John Lombardo and Mary Ramsey
of 10,000 Maniacs and John & Mary fame, but Ramsey, as well as the band’s
regular drummer, Rob Lynch, were not present. We had to leave early in the set,
but the band did get the crowd going with a cover of “Brand New Cadillac.”
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