At the peak of Alan Jackson's
honky-tonk hit Don't Rock the Jukebox, the singer
became so caught up in cathartic emotion that he made
his most dramatic move of the night. He sauntered to the
side of the stage in his bow-legged way, pointed and
nodded to the audience and slowly walked back.
For Jackson, the country superstar who has sold more
than 40 million records in his 15-year career, that move
was the height of showmanship.
Although he's
statuesque in his tall, white, cowboy hat and matching
cowboy boots, the deep-voiced singer from Macon, Ga.,
doesn't really do flash. He just sings his songs.
They're excellent songs. In two hours, Jackson
covered much of his two greatest-hits albums, starting
with the loping beat of Gone Country. He nicely
juxtaposed the tearjerking ballads Where Were You
(When the World Stopped Turning) with the old-school
rockers Summertime Blues, made famous by '50s
rockabilly star Eddie Cochran and, later, the Who).
Jackson is perhaps most renowned for his plainspoken
style. Where Were You, a hit after Sept. 11,
captures the disbelief and anguish of that day better
than any other popular song this side of Bruce
Springsteen's The Rising.
He's so down-to-earth that he gets away with the
lyric: "I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you the
difference between Iraq and Iran."
But it's a mistake to dismiss Jackson as purely
simple. His arrangements draw from many diverse portions
of country music's rich history, from Johnny Cash's old
railroad rhythms to the smoky balladeering of George
Jones to the big, sappy '70s hits of Kenny Rogers.
Jackson and his 10-man band of fiddle players and
electric guitarists jumped with deceptive ease from the
old-school country honk of I Don't Even Know Your
Name to more modern balladry like the tearjerking
Livin' on Love.
This is a singer and songwriter who knows exactly
what he's doing, and if he doesn't want to wear spangles
on his untucked shirt or tell long stories to the
audience, well, he can still make it work.
He did, however, recall one funny anecdote about
playing Denver in his early days.
The gig turned out to be an Alcoholics Anonymous
meeting. Nothing wrong with that, Jackson said in his
Southern drawl. "It was just odd," he added. "We were
playing bars all the time. (The sponsor) introduced
himself as an alcoholic, and then he introduced me, and
we played all these drinking songs."
Much more demonstrative, and polished with the stage
moves, was opening singer Martina McBride, another
veteran singer with a solid track record of country
hits.
McBride, unlike Jackson, has a point of view; her
early hit Independence Day, a take-back-the-
night approach to abusive relationships, is a rare bit
of woman- first social consciousness in modern country.
But she's fun, too, with rock 'n' rollers like
This One's for the Girls and My Baby Loves
Me. She also hits - and holds - all the high notes,
struts around the stage, and generally does everything
Jackson doesn't.
Home
)
