The Musical Box

the decemberists: becky stark, shara worden, chris funk, jenny conlee, colin meloy, nate query and john moen.

Aided by a sense of stylistic division that was just shy of schizophrenic, The Decemberists made their local debut last night with a two set performance at the Singletary Center for the Arts that, had your eyes been shut, would have seemed like the work of different bands.

The first set was essentially rock theatre with singer Colin Meloy and company playing the recent The Hazards of Love album from start to finish. There were no stops, no chatty interludes and no real eccentricities outside of the music itself. And even then the frills came mostly through the fanciful - and, frankly, fairly indecipherable - storyline.

But the music was a wondrous slab of magic full of vibrant vocal color highlighted by  Meloy’s nasally but operatic leads, Shara Warden’s meaty bulldozer wail on The Queen’s Rebuke and Becky Stark’s folk-pop melancholy during Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga).

Instrumentally, though, was where The Hazards of Love got good and treacherous. Harpsichord-like keyboards gave way to a rich, tribal percussion groove on The Rake’s Song. Respiratory-like rhythms of accordion and mandolin peppered Annan Water. And during of a brief reprise of The Wanting Comes in Waves, Meloy and Chris Funk strapped on electric guitars and brought the suite into an anthemic, arena rock-savvy home stretch.

The second set was lighter, looser and vastly more pop friendly. It scanned The Decemberists’ past for the bouncy Brit-pop of The Sporting Life and surprisingly harmonic audience sing-a-longs at the heart of Billy Liar and the show closing, hurdy gurdy-infused Sons and Daughters. Top prizes go to the Indian Summer-flavored medley of California One and Youth and Beauty Brigade as well as a just-for-fun cover of the Heart hit Crazy On You with vocal leads quite rightly reassigned to Warden and Stark.

All in all, it was quite the display. For the first set, you sat attentively as The Decemberists served a feast of new music that was stylish and smart enough to merit active listening. For the second, you were on your feet for rock and pop that happily underscored a celebratory and, at times, refreshingly sillier profile.

Both were a blast.

elvis costello: imperial bedroom (released july 1982)

This might just be Elvis Costello’s finest hour - a lavish, ultra-summery set from 1982 that juggled British pop eccentricity, sweeping American soul and Costello’s still acidic gift for lyrical gab. Imperial Bedroom may have edged Costello closer to the pop mainstream, but songs like Beyond Belief, Shabby Doll and Man Out of Time retained the ragged literary darkness that defined Costello’s music over the preceding five years. The broader pop excursions, however - the Kinks-style Pidgin English, the grand orchestral pop nugget … And in Every Home, the after hours piano lament Almost Blue and one of the most vibrant but overlooked gems in the entire Costello canon, The Small Faces-esque The Loved Ones - illuminate the breadth of an ever expanding pop vision. Elvis lives, indeed.

bruce springsteen: darkness on the edge of town (released june 1978)

“Summer’s here and the time is right for racin’ in the street” proclaims Bruce Springsteen at the halfway point of an album that was pure rock ‘n’ roll salvation. Admittedly, he sings the lyric (and the tune it serves as title to) not as a blast of summery cheer but as a requiem. From the anthems (Badlands, Prove It All Night), to the Black & Decker rockers (Streets of Fire, Adam Raised a Cain) to laments that chime with Phil Spector-esque grandeur (the extraordinary title tune), Darkness was the album that made good on the pop promise of 1975’s Born to Run. It had to. Ensnared in managerial lawsuits, Springsteen was unable to record in Born to Run’s immediate aftermath. By 1978, the litigation lifted. Thus, The Boss returned and Darkness became a summer epic.

steve wariner, left, performing at his 1996 induction to the grand ole opry with the late guitar legend chet atkins.

There sits after Steve Wariner’s name three letters. It’s an initialized title that is as distinctive to the veteran country star’s line of work as M.D. would be to a physician or Ph.D. would be to a doctorate. But in Wariner’s case, the title is more a decree than a degree.

The letters are “c.g.p.” That stands for Certified Guitar Picker. Only one person could bestow such credentials on an artist. And that someone was pretty picky about his pickers: the late guitar pioneer and country music architect Chet Atkins.

Prior to his death in 2001, Atkins awarded “c.g.p.” status to only four players other than himself - famed Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, fingerstyle/classical guitarist John Knowles (who, by the way, also happens to have a Ph.D in physics), longtime Nashville guitar stylist and songwriter Jerry Reed and, in his final bestowment, Wariner.

“I wound up being the last one,” said the Indiana born, Russell Springs raised Wariner, who will be tonight’s lone guest at the weekly taping of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour at the Kentucky Theatre. “That was in 1997. Chet got real sick after that, so I was pretty touched by the honor.”

Atkins, unassuming as he might have seemed to fans of his own flawless picking, didn’t select his four c.g.p. honorees simply because he appreciated their guitar tone or their technical prowess. He essentially mentored all of them.

In Wariner’s case, the tutelage was considerable. Atkins was the first person to record and produce Wariner. Atkins also hired him into his band in the late ‘70s and then, in essence, fired Wariner in order to encourage the young artist to develop his own career.

Equally important was the strong friendship that developed between the two guitarists.

“Making those records with Chet, being in the studio with him and just watching the way he carried himself… all of that impressed me so much.”

Wariner has since gone to earn three Grammy Awards, multiple gold albums and a string of No.1 country singles, the majority of which came in the mid-to-late ‘80s, that included Some Fools Never Learn, Life’s Highway and The Weekend. Now, as the head of his own Selectone Records, Wariner is paying special homage to the artist, guitarist and music industry executive that helped launch, shape and promote his career.

The title of his new album, which is due out June 23, says it all: Steve Wariner, c.g.p. : My Tribute to Chet Atkins.

“This was something I wanted to do for a long time - ever since Chet passed, really,” Wariner said. “But I kept thinking about the concept. How would you do something like this? There was no point in playing Chet’s songs halfway as good as he did. I was looking for a different slant.

“Then I came upon the idea of a concept album, a kind of timeline where I would play songs from different eras of Chet’s career and also write a few things that were kind of in Chet’s style.”

Two of Tribute’s most telling compositions begin the album. The Wariner-penned Leavin’ Luttrell is a trim trio instrumental (Wariner played guitar and bass while his brother Terry added drums) where the light but immensely alert tone of Atkins’s picking style simply glows.

But it’s the traditional John Henry that merges the Atkins inspiration with Wariner’s Kentucky roots. Wariner recalls his father telling how he used to pay a hard earned 45 cents during the late ‘40s to hear a young Atkins play John Henry with the Carter Family in a second floor performance room above a Jamestown, Kentucky auto parts store.

“I’ve heard my dad tell that story over and over,” Wariner said. “The last time I went home, my dad - he’s 81, now -and I drove to Jamestown and passed where that building used to be. It’s just recently been torn down, which breaks my heart. But to me that whole story is romantic. There were 12 kids in my dad’s family. I can only imagine how hard it was just to save up 45 cents.”

The most lasting lesson Wariner learned from Atkins, though, had nothing to do with music. It dealt with the need and ability to treat everyone, from celebrated heads of state to neighbors at a general store, with simple, honest respect.

“Chet never forgot his roots. I saw him carry himself graciously around presidents, vice presidents and real high level people. Then I saw how he carried himself with the average guy on the street. He always had just as much respect for the common man.

“He was also the guy who was at the very front for me. So this was an album that I really needed to do. It just became time. When I realized that, I just rolled up my sleeves and did it.”

Steve Wariner performs at 7 p.m. tonight at the Kentucky Theatre for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Tickets are $10. Call (859) 252-8888.

Over the past three decades, Joe Lovano and Jack DeJohnette have been as stylistically daring as they have been prolific.

joe lovano: folk art

Tenor sax giant Lovano, with a Blue Note catalog that now spans 22 albums, has recorded with combos, steller duos, rich symphonic sessions and more. Drummer DeJohnette, who is also a versed pianist, can be traced back to Miles Davis’ post bop electric records of the late ‘60s and remains, after a quarter century, the anchor to Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. But his dossier also reveals everything from collaborations with stellar guitarists (John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Bill Frisell) to recordings with world music and spiritual inclinations that have surfaced of late on his own label.

That’s the back story. The cool news is Lovano and DeJohnette have new recordings that are as experimental and as engaging as any of their past triumphs.

Lovano’s Folk Art is a conversational, flirtatious album that employs a novel instrumental lineup of tenor sax, bass, piano and two drummers.

In terms of timbre and design, it also borrows from the quietly gripping music Lovano has made over the years with drummer Paul Motian. Wild Beauty, specifically, reflects a spaciousness where Lovano’s warm tenor lead floats above his band’s wide open groove.

Us Five, which doubles as the name of Lovano’s new band, emphasizes the percussion tag team of Otis Brown III and Francisco Mela. But the groove splinters just as the tune’s boppish melody fractures into free jazz flavored passages.

Lovano certainly doesn’t shy away from sustained melodies. A lovely reverie led by pianist James Weidman emerges on Page 4. But like so much of Folk Art, the resulting improvisational sparring plays right into the album’s conversational charm.

jack dejohnette: music we are

DeJohnette’s new trio recording Music We Are features bassist John Patitucci and pianist Danilo Perez - all-stars singularly that together form the backbone of Wayne Shorter’s long-running quartet. But there is craftiness in the heart of the trio’s makeup.

To start with, each artist operates with two voices. Perez primarily plays piano, but accents this music with modest orchestration on electric keyboards. Similarly, Patitucci plays both acoustic and neo-funkified electric bass. With the piano chair ably filled, DeJohnette’s countering voice is on the portable mouth organ instrument known as the melodica, which provides accordion like colors.

Match all of that with DeJohnette’s vast world music vocabulary and you have Tango African. Here, melodica and bass create a light, harmonious groove. The music loosens for more instinctual interplay on the two-part Seventh D. From there, Music We Are reveals numerous ensemble voices, from the sunny, Pan-American strut of Cobilla to the beautiful acoustic balladry of Panama Viejo to a contemplative mix of chiming percussion, bowed bass and piano on Earth Prayer.

Music We Are and Folk Art are the works of two jazz giants versed in the ways of filling a room with sound. But their magic doesn’t come from showing off how pervasive or huge that sound can be. Instead, Lovano and DeJohnette turn their energies inward here. The resulting music is still plenty muscular. But it’s also enormously inviting and cordial.

Like much of the city, The Musical Box is without electricity this morning after yesterday’s storm transformed most of Lexington into the Yukon.  We’re searching out warmer, current-friendly grounds until the thaw is complete. So it may be later this afternoon or tonight before you hear from us again. But, as always, we have much to discuss.

First up is a concert review of the guy who drove eight hours through the storm to play The Dame when things were at their worst last night: Alejandro Escovedo. After that, we’ll check out the new Bruce Springsteen album. And on Friday, just so you know we don’t play favorites here at The Musical Box (well, not all of the time, anyway), we will talk with Jessica Simpson. So please stay tuned. The thaw is underway.

AC/DC's angus young in 2008: "angus is bad." photo courtesy of sony music.

One of my favorite tales from 28-plus years of writing about music centers around the first time I reviewed AC/DC.

Rewind to November 1981. Unlike now, Rupp Arena used to be a concert beast during the autumn months. The talk that fall dealt mostly with a sold out Rolling Stones concert that awaited in mid-December. But before that, Rupp and Lexington had to deal with AC/DC, which was already an arena staple having played the venue only 16 months earlier.

So, somewhat naively, I figured the Aussie rockers would trigger a respectable though hardly remarkable return turnout. 8,000, maybe? It was a Monday evening performance. Most arena rock bands would kill for a weeknight crowd that size.

Of course, guitarist Angus Young - who even then had turned his trademark schoolboy uniform/stage costume into a symbol that rock ‘n roll grows old but never quite up - and company were riding a hearty second wave.

In February 1980, AC/DC singer Bon Scott died of alcohol poisoning. By June, Scottish vocalist Brian Johnson was on board and Back in Black, an album that has since sold over 22 million copies worldwide, was in stores. A week before the 1981 Rupp concert, For Those About to Rock was released and was, by show date, sitting comfortably at the top of the Billboard charts. It would remain AC/DC’s only U.S. No. 1 album until Black Ice was issued last fall.

The crowd attendance for AC/DC’s Nov. 30, 1981 concert turned out to be in excess of 20,000. I was floored. Clearly, I had underestimated the band’s ongoing appeal. Feeling mostly ambivalent toward its music up to that point, I decided to ask the patron seated next to me what the big deal was about AC/DC that had so eluded me. Dressed in layers of denim and chains, my neighbor introduced himself as Spike.

“So, Spike, tell me something,” I asked. “AC/DC is cool and everything. But what is the draw? What accounts for a crowd like this on a Monday night?”

Spike looked at me like I was from Mars. He spoke only five words.

“It’s Angus.” he said. Spike’s eyes then narrowed as he shot me a steely look to possibly evaluate whether or not it was worth his while to continue. “Angus is bad.”

Now, to fully appreciate this miniature evaluation, you have to understand the phonetics applied to the last word. “Bad.” A three letter adjective. Spike drew it out to at least four syllables.

There. I had my answer. Angus was bad. What more need I know? Of course, it would take another decade and an additional four AC/DC performances (and subsequent reviews) to understand the real secret to Young’s appeal: humor. C’mon, a guy strutting around in a school uniform and makeshift devil’s horns as though 50,000 volts were shooting through him? How could I have missed the fun in that?

For all of its outcast, roughneck image, AC/DC, it turned out, was a glorified party band. It has never visibly aspired to be anything more. That’s why its music, right up to Black Ice and a sold out Sunday concert in Cincinnati, has been so resilient to change.

Over the years, the celebratory attitude has been mirrored as much by Johnson as Young. After interviewing the singer prior to AC/DC’s November1990 Rupp show (its last local appearance), he asked if I was going attend to the concert. After answering in the affirmative, he laughed and in a heavy Scottish brogue said. “Well, yeh’ better. Otherwise, I’m gonna git up on-stehge an’ call yeh’ nehmes.”

AC/DC performs at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnatil. The performance is sold out.

j.d. crowe closes the "bluegrass in the bluegrass" series.

Throughout the fall, our good pal Ron Pen at the University of Kentucky’s Niles Center has presented a golden little piggyback concert series called Bluegrass in the Bluegrass.

The idea was to book a noted string music act - be it old timey, Appalachian or, yes, even bluegrass - into the Central Library Theatre of the downtown Lexington Public Library on Thursday night and then have the same artist play the ultra-intimate Niles Center the following Friday at lunchtime. The performances, underwritten by LexArts and the IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association)’s Foundation for Bluegrass Music, have been free.

The series has clearly saved its biggest act for a finale. Bluegrass in the Bluegrass concludes this week with Grammy winning Lexington/Nicholasville banjo giant J.D. Crowe. As with the rest of the series, Crowe will perform at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Central Library Theatre and at 12 noon Friday at the Niles Center at UK’s Lucille C. Little Fine Arts Library. Again, both shows are free.

We’ll spare you the history lesson this time. But if you’re one of few string music enthusiasts unfamiliar with Crowe, may I refer to these earlier posts from The Musical Box… a crowe’s tale, In performance: j.d. crowe and the new south and counting crowe.

If you are a Crowe fan, then make it to these shows early. As Crowe can command hearty festival crowds, he will fill up these two modest-sized rooms in the blink on an eye.

Call (859) 231-5549 for info on the Central Library show and (859) 257-8181 for the Niles Center performance.

asylum street spankers. back row: charlie king, christina marrs, morgan patrick thompson, famous jake. front row: wammo, mark henne, nevada newman. photo by todd williams

With local performances that date back to the summer of 1996, has Lexington been able to succinctly sum up the music and performance strategies of the Asylum Street Spankers?

No? Then, let’s give it a try right here. Take an acoustic troupe of Austin, Tx. musicians with a taste for blues, ragtime, gospel, vintage country and more. Toss in songs that encompass everything from children’s tunes to bits of very, very, very adult humor (sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll only begin to encompass the latter). Now, unleash all that onstage with a vaudevillian air that is anything but nostalgic. You now have at least a suggestion of why a Spankers performance is unlike anything you have ever witnessed - unless, of course, you’re part of the devout fanbase that has followed the band’s shows in Lexington over the past 12 years.

“It’s truly a remarkable thing that this band has been together for so long,” said the Spankers co-founder, co-vocalist and washboard ace that goes by the name of Wammo. Just Wammo.

“Before this, I never had a band last more than eight months. Well, except my first band back when I was 16. They rehearsed for a year, played one gig and broke up. We didn’t know what the hell we were doing.”

As it was a regular at the long-defunct Lynagh’s Music Club and the more recently demolished Dame location on West Main, Lexington has gotten to know a lot about the Spankers’ music over the years, from Christina Marrs’ musical saw interludes to Wammo’s affectionate mix of Appalachian murder ballads and gangster rap (on Hick Hop, a tune as mischievous as its name) to such curious social sing-a-long tunes as Winning the War on Drugs and Beer to covers of the blues chestnut Got My Mojo Workin’ , Harry Nilsson’s Think About Your Troubles and The B-52s’ Dance This Mess Around.

Not coincidentally, most of those moments are captured on a new double-disc concert album with a title that borrows from the performance tradition and vernacular the Spankers long ago embraced: What? And Give Up Show Biz?

The record was cut last January when the band, with the help of two alumni members (clarinetist Stanley Smith and violinist/emcee Korey Simeone), performed a two week engagement at New York’s Barrow Street Theatre.

“That was a blast,” Wammo said of the residency. “First of all, you don’t have to load your gear everyday. The gear stays there. Then, of course, we had New York City to play around in for two weeks. It was big, big fun.”

As Show Biz was designed to chronicle an entire performance by the Spankers at that time, it boasts stories and between-song narratives that may prove insightful, entertaining and maybe even frightening for novice and die-hard fans alike.

One such instance is titled The Bus Story, a seven-minute tale that details how Wammo and the rest of the Spankers encountered near-death experiences while separately enroute to the same gig. Clocking in at just over a minute is Gig From Hell, a radio theatre style scrapbook of nightmare performance moments that includes roaches scattering from stage monitors, band members climbing fire escapes with their gear to get to the stage and audiences that chatter incessantly on cell phones during quiet songs.

“Ah, yes,” Wammo said. “The gigs from hell. We’ve played our share of them, I tell you. Every moment of that story is true.”

Of course, the one thing that is continually new about the Spankers whenever the band plays Lexington is its lineup. Augmenting the core group of Wammo, guitarist Nevada Newman and mandolinist Charlie King will be three new players: bassist Morgan Patrick Thompson, drummer Mark Henne and violinist Jakob Breitbach, who goes by the stage name of Famous Jake.

The big difference this time, though, is who won’t be with the Spankers - namely, Marrs. No, the only original Spanker other than Wammo hasn’t split from the ranks. But as she is soon expecting her third child, Marrs has bowed out of the Spankers’ final tour of 2008.

So to compensate for her temporary absence, Wammo and the remaining Spankers will be resurrecting some of the band’s earliest material. Which brings to mind another highlight from Show Biz - something called Medley of Burned Out Songs, a mausoleum of tunes Wammo and Marrs simply got sick of playing.

“Yeah, we’re going to be doing some of those songs, too, along with some of the really old ones like Funny Cigarette (from the band’s 1996 studio debut album, Spanks for the Memories). We’re also going to be singing some of Christina’s songs. Working them up has been a lot of fun.”

Wammo said sessions will begin in December on the next Spankers record, which will be devoted to blues material. “But it will be a Spankers version of a blues album, not the typical white boy blues stuff.”

“When you get down to it, we’re very permissive. Christina and I have to be the bosses. But all that means is that we try to keep everything in line as far as rehearsals go. We don’t really tell anyone in the band what they can or cannot do. That can be tough in a way, because when you’re putting a band together, you’re essentially constructing a family. But you haven’t really grown up with these people, so you don’t know what their idiosyncrasies are. You have to get use to their weirdnesses, their smells, all the human aspects that come along with working and traveling with somebody.

“Most of the time, though, the Spankers are all chiefs and no Indians.”

Asylum Street Spankers perform at 10 p.m. tonight at Natasha’s Bistro, 112 Esplanade. Cover charge is $15. For reservations, call (859) 259-2754

kristian bush and jennifer nettles of sugarland. photo by kim powers.

To flaunt clout and credibility in the world of contemporary country music, an artist has to first be a fan.

That’s the requirement set down by Kristian Bush, guitarist and co-vocalist of Sugarland. The country-pop duo, completed by lead singer Jennifer Nettles, returns to town for its first headlining concert at Rupp Arena on Saturday.

“You have to be a fan,” Bush said. “You need to engage in fandom.

“I was in Boston at Fenway Park for the second of the Police shows this year. I was up there. That mattered. I’ll never forget that experience. That’s why I want to have that experience be something that our fans can take home every night.”

In just over four years, Nettles and Bush have fashioned Sugarland into one of the leading new generation voices of pop-conscious, commercial-savvy country music. The duo has scored numerous chartopping singles (Want To, Settlin’ and the recent All I Want to Do) high profile side projects (Nettles’ 2006 duet hit with Jon Bon Jovi, Who Says You Can’t Go Home) and maintained consistent visibility at awards shows (Sugarland is up for five Country Music Association trophies in November, including honors for Entertainer, Single, Vocal Duo, Music Video and Musical Event of the Year).

But for Bush, maintaining a link to “fandom” means striving to offer a sense of discovery that ignites audience engagement with any music - country or otherwise.

“Especially within commercial country music, most people get it wrong,” Bush said. “They think that what you’re selling is a CD, a concert ticket or a t-shirt. What you’re really selling, what you’re really exchanging with people, is the discovery of something. I know that when I get a new record, I’m up and down the hallways backstage going, ‘Hey guys, have you heard this?’ You get to a point where you want to turn your friends on to what you have discovered. That’s what being a fan is all about.”

That sense of discovery has definitely carried over into two of Sugarland’s more high profile performances of late.

At an event dubbed the Orange Peel earlier this month at Oklahoma State University, the duo headlined a concert/pep rally where it confronted a largely uncommitted demographic: a college audience.

“You never know what a bunch college kids really think about you,” Bush said. “As a commercial country band, things could go horribly off track. You don’t know if all they really want is (indie pop fave) Margot and the Nuclear So-and-So’s. But it was unbelievable how the crowd raised the roof off that place.”

The other concert was at Colorado’s famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre in August, when Sugarland was billed with Sheryl Crow and the Dave Matthews Band. While the performance served as a kick off for the Democratic National Convention, its theme was environmental awareness. That, not an endorsement of a political party, was what put Sugarland on the Rocks.

“It’s pretty fascinating that environmental issues are part of our political process now and have a platform at a convention - any convention,” Bush said. “But imagine what it’s like for us to pop our heads above into pop culture and be billed between Sheryl Crow and Dave Matthews. I had to go. ‘Are these my peers now? If so, I own all my peers’ records.’ ”

Sugarland’s infatuation with fandom also plays out in two very different tunes from its recent Love on the Inside album.

The first is called Steve Earle. Take a wild guess at what that one is about. Turns out Bush, an avid fan of renegade songsmith Earle, began work on the tune largely as a lark with Nettles.

“Jennifer is a fan, but I’m an absolutely stupid fan,” he said. “I started to explain to her, ‘I think he is on wife no. 6 or 7 now, even though wives 1 and 4 were the same woman.’ Jennifer just said, ‘Really, this dude is a country song.’ ”

And has there been any response - good, bad or vitriolic - from the none-too-soft spoken Mr. Earle?

“We wish. We sent it to him, but thought if the song pisses him off, let’s not put it on the album. We are bigger fans than we are insistent songwriters. The response we got was that Steve doesn’t read anything - reviews, anything at all - about himself, so why would he listen to a song that has been written about him? We thought, ‘Genius! We love him even more.’ But his manager explained to him what we were trying to do. We were told he laughed. That, in itself, is a triumph.”

The other fan-savvy tune, included on Love on the Inside’s “deluxe edition,” is a cover of the 1985 pop hit Life in a Northern Town by England’s The Dream Academy. Performed with help from fellow country popsters Little Big Town and Jake Owen, the song couldn’t be more removed from country tradition. It was penned by Dream Academy chieftain Nick Laird-Clowes, who initially co-produced the tune with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour as a tribute to fabled British folk songwriter Nick Drake. Sugarland’s version earned the duo its Musical Event of the Year nomination at the upcoming CMA awards.

“Country music isn’t so much about where you live anymore as it is about a certain attitude of celebration, of sharing an appreciation for a certain kind of story. Country isn’t a sub culture anymore.

“Our version of Life in a Northern Town is a translation. It’s an American take on a British song. I was maybe 14 when I first heard it. Even then I thought it was magic.”

In this case, the response from the song’s composer was immediate and favorable.

“Nick from The Dream Academy wrote us a really beautiful letter. He said the song was a creation that could only ever exist in a studio and that he didn’t think anyone would ever be able to cover it. Then he said, ‘You have proven me wrong.’ ”

Perhaps the final word on Sugarland’s sense of fan devotion is being reflected on its current tour. Nettles and Bush regularly include cover tunes in their shows. But among the more recent entries have been songs by The B-52s (Love Shack) and R.E.M. (Nightswimming), bands that share a common thread with Sugarland. All three hail from Georgia.

“The nod to both of those bands was intended,” Bush said. “Cover songs are supposed to give you a frame of reference for yourself and the music you have listened to. You get to feel at least a distillation of who that artist is - providing you’re a fan, of course.”

Sugarland, Kellie Pickler and Ashton Shepherd perform at 7:30 tonight at Rupp Arena. Tickets: $35.50 and $48.50. Call (859) 233-3535.