BY TOM NETHERLAND (SPECIAL TO THE HERALD COURIER)
hen Saturday morning dawned, banks of clouds filled with rain made their presence known throughout downtown Bristol. None of which deterred those who attended Saturday’s Rhythm & Roots festival.
Indeed, day two of the 21st Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion proved quite soggy. Particularly during its opening early afternoon hours, rain curtailed crowd sizes during outdoor performances.
There were Bluff City’s bluegrass vets in Breaking Tradition with the brilliant Dan Boner on fiddle aboard the Piedmont Stage at 12:30 p.m. Same time and a short walk away, Johnson City’s Florencia & the Feeling entertained mightily on 6th Street.
By about 2:30 p.m., the day’s downpours slowed to a trickle. When long-bearded Dallas Moore led his four-man, honky-tonking band on the Piedmont Stage, a large crowd filed in to witness what became one of if not the day’s finest performances.
Moore began with “Bottle and a Bible.” Culled from his 2015 LP, “Dark Horse Rider,” it projected themes of redemption and rowdiness that threaded throughout his hour-long, 17-song set. From the same album revved “Raisin’ Hell and Slingin’ Gravel” which prefaced his fiery rendition of Jimmy Martin’s “Freeborn Man.” Guitar picking fluid and hot, singing gritty and country grand.
“Just look at the crowd,” said Jon Houser of Bristol, Virginia. “When they heard Dallas, they’re coming to hear that music.”
If Moore was a cook and the crowd a bunch of ravenous diners, he gave them a bounty of outlaw country-branded beef to chew on. He sang of a mama who “had a Bible in her kitchen” and a daddy who had “a bottle in his hand” in “Mama and Daddy” from 2019’s “Tryin’ to be a Blessing.”
Moments later Moore introduced a new song from a forthcoming album. With a jukebox-jolting “21,” he popped the top of a tall bottle of country swagger. Moore’s grit-and-grimy voice, one that seems hewn from miles on the highway aboard his beloved Harley, recalled days of “faster cars and faster women” back when “I thought I knew it all so I threw caution to the wind.”
Even on a rainy Bristol afternoon, one could feel the ramblin’ days and honky-tonkin’ ways that exuded through the lines sang and grooves-rich melodies played by Moore and the band. The songs straddled essences of wild Saturday nights on the road or in the bars, and Sunday mornings in the pews seeking forgiveness of what came on Saturday night.
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