I haven't been writing much about the Redstone Room in downtown Davenport lately. There's been some recent upheaval at the River Music Experience, of which the Redstone Room is part of. Right now, the RME and the Redstone Room are a ship and a dingy trying to find their direction.
With that said, they've again begun to book some acts that we would like to see and recently they had guitar-man extraordinare Marty Stuart perform his solo act for a nearly packed house.
Stuart has been a longtime fixture on the Nashville scene, combining country, blue grass, rock and folk into his music. The Mississippi native has been playing professionally since he was in his early teens and was considered something of a prodigy when he was as young as nine.
Before going out on his own, Stuart played with a number of legendary music figures including Lester Flatt, Doc Watson and Johnny Cash. Stuart actually ended up marrying Cash's daughter, Cindy, in 1983. They divorced five years later. Stuart is now married to one of the greatest voices in Country Music, Connie Smith.
Stuart said this would be only the second solo show of his career in an article in the Quad City Times. He usually is backed by a three piece band when he tours on the road. I was kind of hoping to see him with his band, but sometimes those solo shows work out to be pretty good.
In any event, Stuart was the second renown Nashville guitarist to come to Davenport in as many days. The night before, Vince Gill played at the renovated Adler Theater in downtown Davenport. I would have liked to have seen them both, but I thought seeing Marty Stuart in an intimate setting like the Redstone Room would have been more enjoyable.
Opening for Stuart was 26-year-old Stoll Vaughan, a Kentucky troubadour who has opened for the diverse likes of John Mellencamp, John Fogerty, Def Leppard and Journey. Vaughan had sort of a "Bluegrass Bob Dylan"-style to him and he was accompanied by a great mandolin player by the name of Harris Gardner. He was a pleasant surprise, to say the least.
After about a half hour break, Stuart came out with his trademark rooster haircut (only slightly more gray these days) and an acoustic guitar. He went right into "Streamline Lover." The only problem was that you could only hear his guitar and not his vocals. After a minute or two of fussing around by The Redstone Room's sound guys, Stuart's voice boomed through the P.A. speakers, much to the delight and loud applause by the crowd.
As much as I would have liked to have seen Stuart backed by his three-piece band, it turned out to be a great experience as he whipped through a number of songs, pausing only to acknowledge the applause from the crowd.
Finally, Stuart began to tell a story about his old friend and mentor, Johnny Cash. Stuart bought the house next to Cash's house outside of Nashville and he talked about how he missed his old friend since Cash died in 2003. Stuart talked about how he was wanting to write a song in tribute to his friend, but he couldn't come up with the right words.
He said one day he was watching a crow eat some of the fruit off the trees that Cash had planted on the property between Stuart's and Cash's house (a plot of land where the home of Roy Orbison once stood before it burned in 1968). Stuart said that Johnny Cash used to remind him "of a big ol' crow", and that's how he got the inspiration for the song "Dark Bird". And he proceeded to play it.
Stuart soon changed from his acoustic guitar to his mandolin. He played two instrumentals and one vocal selection which was a bluesy number. Let me just say that it was the first time I'd ever heard a mandolin played on a blues tune.
Changing again to his electric guitar, Stuart played his mid-90's hit, "Tempted". Then he spoke about his relationship with the Lakota Sioux tribe at Wounded Knee, S.D., and how he has been working to bring to light the perils the tribe faces in the form of drug abuse, alcoholism, low income and gang problems. He said he was adopted into the Lakota tribe, he and his wife were married there in 1997, and he continues to visit the area and play concerts for their benefit.
Stuart then played a couple selections from his 2005 album "Badlands" that was produced by the son of Johnny Cash and June Carter, John Carter Cash.
A couple more songs and Stuart called it an evening. However, a raucous standing ovation from the crowd brought him back out. He proclaimed, "Well, I didn't have anything planned after this point. What do you want to hear?"
Favorite Stuart tunes through the years were called out and he said, "OK, that's fine. I play a few more. But you all need to get up closer to the stage."
(That's one of the problems with The Redstone Room. They have a nice dance floor that's about 15" X 20" in front of the stage and they usually don't have chairs or seating on the dance floor when these acts come through. So the artist is playing to people seated about 18 feet from the stage.)
So, we went up from our seats toward the back of the room and Stuart played four more songs including his hit, "High on a Mountain Top" and finished with a rendition of the traditional "Will the Circle Be Unbroken". You could tell that Stuart was having a genuinely great time up there by himself.
Afterward, he had a small meet and greet by the side of the stage. I went to the bathroom, but Cindy got an autographed picture of him - for $5 bucks. She said, "If you can have autographed pictures of people, I can have them, too."
I said, "But, yeah, I don't think I had to pay $5 bucks to get an autographed picture before though."
It was a fun night of great music at The Redstone Room. I'm hoping they get more acts like Marty Stuart in there to help keep the place going.
Comments