by Jon Turner
Charley Crockett brought the Blue Drifters to Stern Grove on Sunday, July 19, atop a rig of bare incandescent bulbs lining vaudeville-style. The band played an hour and a half of Western swing, leaning on his latest album Clovis, which had only been properly available for sixteen days after a spring of label trouble.
There were devil horns scattered through the crowd. Ten days earlier, the duo Twin Temple had announced that Crockett cut them from two West Coast dates over their satanic imagery, and Crockett had answered in the press with “Not today satan.” Onstage he didn’t touch it. He said he’d let the songs do the talking, and they did.
Nicki Bluhm opened with a band drawn partly from ALO. It was one of my favorite sets of the season. While grooving to timeless wisdom of songs like “To Rise You Got to Fall” I had to stop myself from dancing and singing along, more than once, to get the shot.
