Popular country music serves as a certain form of escapism. In a genre where stage presence often trumps lyrical complexity, likeability and familiarity are just as important to country performances as the musical intricacies are.
Saturday's Travis Tritt/Trick Pony concert at Peden Stadium provided escapism for an audience of about 3,000, who filled the bleachers and playing field with dancing and a few cowboy hats.
I hope you left all your cares and your problems and your troubles behind you
Travis Tritt told the audience.
Trick Pony, a three-piece act comprising female lead singer/guitarist Heidi Newfield, bassist Ira Dean and guitarist Keith Burns, is an example of the more youthful, energetic country acts. The group is both helped and hindered by Newfield's voice, which carried well throughout the show but is not as palatable to a mass audience as Tritt's is. She addressed the audience often and provided good-natured brashness, telling them, Now if your butt's getting sore stand up by all means.
High points of the group's performance included a sing-back of Ain't Wastin' Good Whiskey and the cleverly written The Bride
which details a novel take on the old always-the-bridesmaid cliché.
Trick Pony broke from its original structure toward the middle of the 50-minute set, moving into solo performances from each member of the backing band as well as having Dean and Burns trade instruments, then switch back later over Newfield's head. Continuing with the structural break, the band ended its set in an unorthodox manner, with no encore and Dean scaling a stage support.
Changing the tempo, veteran Travis Tritt brought a carefully organized performance to the Peden crowd. In a generous first move, he promised the crowd that he would not let them leave with the desire to hear any missed songs. He followed through, performing 25 songs over a nearly two-hour-long set.
Tritt, whose career spans 11 albums and 15 years, performed songs varying from ballads such as the quiet Anymore and the upbeat hit T-R-O-U-B-L-E. For the most part, he maintained a tight performance of pleasant, clear vocals and accessible songs, though his covers in the encore could have been skipped. Tritt's vast catalogue of songs and the audience's obvious recognition of his own hits should have prevented him from doing a mediocre Johnny Cash cover as well as the go-to country-rock cover, Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama.
Tritt's stage antics and winking sexuality provided entertainment throughout the show He swiveled his hips and acted out lyrics with his hands sometimes as much as he played his guitar. Tritt also managed to reference God, children and Jim Beam in his set, a testament of his abilities to appeal to a mass audience and to include a variety of subjects and emotions in his performance.
Peden Stadium, in its first outing as a live-music venue, served as an excellent space for both performers. The show progressed with generally good acoustics and only a few problems that occurred when instruments mixed too loudly, such as the backing banjo during Trick Pony's set. The surrounding hills nestled the audience in for the show, isolating everyone into an early summer, country atmosphere.
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Megan Chew
