A voice that big invites comparisons to the obvious dead legends, and the more interesting thing about this performer is that he knows it and plays the whole persona as barely-controlled theater — gold suits, a stage name for his own alter ego, gospel training underneath a catalog about excess and regret. He grew up singing in a Texas church and it is audible in every held note. Live the show swings between genuinely funny and genuinely enormous, sometimes inside one song, and the band behind him is tight enough to make the turns land. High desert saloon, early door, a crowd of locals and people who drove out from the coast. Music at 7:00 PM in Pioneertown, a Friday. Performers who commit this hard to a bit tend to be the ones people describe at length to whoever missed it.
A voice that big invites comparisons to the obvious dead legends, and the more interesting thing about this performer is that he knows it and plays the whole persona as barely-controlled theater — gold suits, a stage name for his own alter ego, gospel training underneath a catalog about excess and regret. He grew up singing in a Texas church and it is audible in every held note. Live the show swings between genuinely funny and genuinely enormous, sometimes inside one song, and the band behind him is tight enough to make the turns land. High desert saloon, early door, a crowd of locals and people who drove out from the coast. Music at 7:00 PM in Pioneertown, a Friday. Performers who commit this hard to a bit tend to be the ones people describe at length to whoever missed it.
A voice that big invites comparisons to the obvious dead legends, and the more interesting thing about this performer is that he knows it and plays the whole persona as barely-controlled theater — gold suits, a stage name for his own alter ego, gospel training underneath a catalog about excess and regret. He grew up singing in a Texas church and it is audible in every held note. Live the show swings between genuinely funny and genuinely enormous, sometimes inside one song, and the band behind him is tight enough to make the turns land. High desert saloon, early door, a crowd of locals and people who drove out from the coast. Music at 7:00 PM in Pioneertown, a Friday. Performers who commit this hard to a bit tend to be the ones people describe at length to whoever missed it.