Early in her opening set at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium, country up-and-comer Brandy Clark acquainted herself with the audience, admitting gleefully that she stayed at Athens' Baymont Inn before her Thursday show.
"We were treated so well," she said.
Some familiar with the country music business predict it won't be long before the rising singer-songwriter is treated to cushier accommodations.
“I think Brandy is going to go places,” said Andrew Holzaepfel, director of the Ohio University Campus Involvement Center. “She’s a talented songwriter, we know that because she has her top hits. Other people are singing them, of course. … She’s in the vein of Kacey Musgraves where she’s not doing the normal Nashville thing.”
Clark, one of the minds behind The Band Perry's "Better Dig Two" and Miranda Lambert's "Mama's Broken Heart," warmed up the crowd for headliner Gretchen Wilson — everyone's favorite "Redneck Woman."
Wilson, sporting six-inch black heels and a shining silver buckle, kept the fun pumping, posing for photographers and answering calls from the crowd for her first several songs before settling into her set list. Introducing her fifth song, John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery," Wilson got to the heart of why she recently released Under The Covers a collection of her favorite rock tunes.
"This song has been covered by a lot of different people and has a lot of different meanings for a lot of people, but we just hope it means something to you," she said.
Wilson's show was split between covers and original music, and it was up to a listener's discretion, which incited a louder cheer: Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" or Wilson's signature songs "Here For The Party" and "Redneck Woman.” Regardless of personal preference, Wilson made it clear she hadn't lost a step (or an octave) since her last major-label release in 2007.
“She knows how to rock out,” said Kelsey Redick, a junior studying biology who had a front-row seat to the show. “She knows how to keep the music lively. Everyone is involved.”
Still, she didn't take herself too seriously, taking time between songs to record a cellphone crowd shot and shoot six T-shirts into the crowd using a cartoonish, shoulder-mounted cannon.
But she sure wasn't afraid to belt it out, going note-for-note with her 2004 No. 1 hit for an audience of 1,074 — 60 percent more than prior OU Performing Arts Series country act Kacey Musgraves and only 214 fewer than the turnout for Thompson Square. The show cost $27,000, Holzaepfel said.
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