At WYRK Fall Acoustic Concert, 3 rising country singers draw cheers
Man, do Buffalonians love themselves some country music. Sitting in the midst of the rambunctious, sold-out crowd at the “WYRK Acoustic Series” show on Wednesday night, it was clear that our region has a voracious appetite for that contemporary Nashville sound.
This concert featured three up-and-coming country singers — all with a hit or two under their belts, but none a household name — together on stage, trading songs on their acoustic guitars. And the jampacked audience in the University at Buffalo’s Center for the Arts cheered them on like they were Travis, Strait and Brooks.
To the left of the stage sat Bucky Covington, probably the most well known of the trio thanks to his stint on “American Idol” a few years back.
Justin Moore, an Arkansas native whose self-titled debut was released in August, took center stage.
Chris Young, the 2006 “Nashville Star” winner with a couple albums to his credit, commanded the right side.
The guys had a pretty good rapport between songs, interrupting each other’s stories with playful barbs before putting their heart and soul into stripped-down versions of their tunes.
Well, Moore and Young had heart and soul.
Covington’s abilities were suspect from the get-go, when he opened the proceedings with his breakthrough hit single, “A Different World.” The guy was strumming his guitar during the song, a pedestrian pop exercise about how life isn’t the same after growing up, but it was really tough to hear him — and I was sitting right in front of him, in the third row.
Covington had two accomplished players backing him up, whereas Moore was all by his lonesome, and Young had a fantastic lead player lending beautiful accents to his strumming. As the night progressed, and Covington continued to leave his guitar by the wayside, it was clear that it was just a prop to make him seem more credible.
And I can’t really blame Bucky for feeling intimidated, because Moore and Young are polished singer/songwriters with big, twangy voices and some real command over their instruments. Young was especially impressive, performing songs with truth and tenderness, like “Voices,” in which the narrator can’t help but hear the great advice he has received from family members over the years ringing in his head.
Moore gave a gutsy rendition of a new tune, “Outlaws Like Me,” a song so new that he didn’t really know the chords. As he flubbed one progression after another, the guy just sang louder and harder instead of giving up, proving that sometimes the most moving art comes chock full of mistakes.
It was unfortunate that his first song, “Good Ole American Way,” contained a hateful lyric about foreigners “flooding into town” and stealing jobs, but that’s the kind of ideological divide that people with common sense have to deal with when listening to some country artists.
And hey, at least he wasn’t Covington. While delivering another one of his hit singles, a saccharine ballad called “I’ll Walk,” the artist walked down into the crowd and serenaded a woman in the front row. It was obvious that this guy was about the show, and the other two were about the songs.
Concert Review
WYRK Fall Acoustic Concert
With Bucky Covington, Justin Moore and Chris Young, Wednesday evening in the University at Buffalo Center for the Arts.
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