By way of introducing a song Saturday night - to his band as well as the audience, from the looks of it - Jamey Johnson would step to the microphone and start signing it. It's one thing to claim outlaw status. It's another to stake a claim to it with lean, gritty songs and a take-no-prisoners performance. That's what Johnson did Saturday night at Ruth Eckerd Hall before a rowdy crowd of 1,127.
Early in the set, Johnson raised his red Solo cup to the crowd, which was about it for small talk. Johnson said what he needed to with his voice and guitar, and that was plenty.
Johnson's penned hits for other performers, but there was little of the light-heartedness of "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," a Johnson co-write that scored a hit for Trace Adkins, in Saturday's show.
There was plenty of real life, though - heartache, poverty and righteous anger. "Poor Man's Blues" was class warfare made personal, while "You Can't Cash My Checks" was about a country boy surviving, but just barely.
Johnson opened with a blunt story of addiction, "High Cost of Living," with one of the best couplets in recent memory - "The high cost of living ain't nothing like the cost of living high."
Two songs by Vern Gosdin - "Set 'Em Up, Joe" and "Chiseled in Stone," not only saluted one of country music's under-sung greats, but revealed a major influence on Johnson's songwriting.
Johnson's seven-piece band was dead-on regardless of where he chose to lead them. A drummer and a percussionist tied the sound to the more progressive end of Southern rock, while thick-as-syrup pedal steel lines kept one boot in the honky-tonk.
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