Last Saturday night I went to Stuart's Opera House in Nelsonville, Ohio. Its an old Opera house that has been completely restored and rebuilt after a major fire. I went to see Woodie Phillips and the Log Train Band an it was a great show. Woodie is around 60 something and started out with Hank, Lefty, Merle and kept right on going for the whole show. He sure is some showman and talkd a lot about the direction country music is going in, but he still does the classic country. It was really nice to have a full evening of that type of music.I think the Opera house seats around 350 - 400 and he got a standing "O" for Jambalaya.
His steel player is Jerry Manning from Newark, Ohio. I got to talk to Jerry and his wife at intermission, very nice people and he does a great job on the steel. Woodie sang "Murder on Music Row" and when he sang the line "steel guitars no longer sing" Jerry came up out of the background like a High Rolling freight on the main line. He really made that old MSA do the job.
All told it was a great evening and all for $5. The Opera House puts on a variety of shows through the year so I got my 2 cents worth in before I left. The way Woodie and the band was received I am sure they will be back. Almost forgot to tell you, Woodie has some visual problems and he jumped off the stage thinking it was about a foot down. He jumped into the pit in front of the stage and its about 5 feet down to the floor, I was talking to him after the show and he said it scarded the crap out of him as he thought it was just a step off the stage. He said he thought he had jumped out of the building. Lucky he wasn't hurt and the crowd thought it was great.
Real Country
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