Friday, September 17, 1999
CONCERT REVIEW
Lonestar serves up pop-tinged country
BY CHRIS VARIAS
Enquirer contributor
In the hit “Everything's Changed” the country band Lonestar laments the passing of small-town America. “The old drive-in is a new Wal-Mart,” goes the song's most memorable line.
“Everything's Changed” was one of the crowd's favorite songs during Lonestar's concert at Coyote's Wednesday night. After all, it had two of country music's most embraced themes, syrupy sentimentality and syrupy romanticism: the chorus read, “Everything's changed except for the way I feel about you.”
The problem is that Lonestar is the equivalent of a Wal-Mart. A '90s department store is a lot like a '90s Nashville country band —— cookie-cutter, consumer-friendly, safe, soulless. Lonestar would be more believable complaining about Wal-Mart stock prices going down than about a new store going up.
None of that seems to matter. Coyote's was doing business like a Wal-Mart grand opening. The show was a sellout, 1,500 people.
Except for the Dixie Chicks, the seven-man Lonestar is the hottest new group in country music. (They're promoted as a foursome, and the three other guys are permanent sidemen. Septets don't sell in country.) The band has gotten over on a mix of midtempo country-pop like “Everything's Changed” and ballads like “Amazed,” which garnered the biggest crowd response.
It has been said that '90s country is nothing more than '70s rock. It's no wonder then that “Amazed” immediately brought to mind Paul McCartney's 1977 hit “Maybe I'm Amazed.” The band also played a medley of songs by two of their favorite bands, the Eagles and Alabama.
Nashville bands of this ilk are so far beyond just adding pop-rock touches here and there. It's almost as if Lonestar dislikes real country music, despite the group's use of lyrical themes taken from the country tradition. They do employ a steel guitar player and fiddler, if only to wash the sound with country touches for the sake of market-positioning.
The only exception to this was “You Walked In,” a bluesy strut that had, unlike most of the night's songs, a measure of grit. It also had a genuine fiddle solo by Kurt Vaumer.
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