Just Saw George Jones

Got a call from a good friend tonight. Said he had a spare ticket to see George Jones in an hour, did I want to go? It was an awesome show!

The opening act was "Conway Twitty, The Musical." http://www.conwaytwittymusical.com/ Never had heard of it, but liked it a lot. Two daughters of Conway's introduce and narrate a performance by a Conway Twitty impersonator, with "Loretta Lynn" showing up for part of it as well. The daughters also sang a bit, and I'd say Conway did a fine job of making good looking kids. The musicians were first rate. The guitarist did a good job of getting steel guitar sounds out of a Strat without a slide. Impressed me. The bass player doesn't really look much like, but for some reason reminded me of, the young guy in the "Free Credit Report Dot Com" ads. He boogied around as he played, sang harmony and was entertaining. When "Conway" sang "Slow Hand," I swear that bass player sounded like a Pointer Sister! He had that voice nailed!

George is of course a classic. Just can't beat hearing someone like that do his own stuff. And he's in fine form. His musicians are first rate, too, as one would expect. He had a lady singer along with him named Brittney Allyn. (Hope I spelled that right.) She sang a couple of songs before George came out, backed him up, and sang several of the Tammy duets with him. She's really good. His keyboard player, whose name has escaped my aging mind, is really great! His bass player also sang backup. He had a young fiddle player named Hank Singer who reminded me of the young Ricky Skaggs. His drummer is also the tour manager and clowned around with George a bit, as they all did. The guitarist is a ham and danced wildly several times. I was most impressed with the steel guitarist, Tom Killen. I watched him setting up, tuning his twin 10-string necks and playing a while through ear buds before the show. He can do some fancy fingerpicking. On the opening song, he was doing a lot of stuff where he'd hold the bar in one place precisely over a fret and pump pedals to bend notes in chords, but through most of the songs he did a lot of playing like one would on a nonpedal steel with moving up and down the fretboard, bar slants, and he did some hammering on and pulling off with a bullet bar. A very versatile steel player! I just Googled him and found he's played steel for George for 25 years or so.

George has many hits, and he sang most of them. Too many to recall them all. My favorite of course was "He Stopped Loving Her Today."

I didn't have enough cash on me for a T-shirt and a CD, but I got a CD of "Hits I Missed And One I Didn't" autographed by George. Bought it from Mrs. Jones.

All in all a great fun night. Put me off schedule getting ready for my Bible lesson tomorrow night, I'd planned to get that done tonight. Tomorrow's going to be tight.