Concert Review: Old Crow Medicine Show and Minglewood get ovation

Old Crow Medicine Show and the Felice Brothers were the billed attractions, but the popular Americana bands ended up sharing the spotlight with the very venue in which they performed Sunday night as Memphis’ newest music room, Minglewood Hall, opened its doors for business.

Located in Midtown along Madison Ave. in the old String & Things music store, Minglewood actually made its public bow two days earlier with a performance of “The Vagina Monologues.” But ever since the Memphis-based DeHart Group announced their $5 million development two years ago that included offices, retail space, and a soon-to-open restaurant, it’s been clear its raison d’etre is live music.

Old Crow Medicine Show performs at the newly opened Minglewood Hall on Sunday.

Photo by Brandon Dill

Old Crow Medicine Show performs at the newly opened Minglewood Hall on Sunday.

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The night’s headliners, Old Crow Medicine Show, are the most unlikely stars to arise on the roots music scene in recent years. Currently based in Nashville, the group seems to embrace the entirety of early American music traditions. Bluegrass and Appalachian string band music are the obvious elements, but the sextet also incorporates country, pre-war blues, and classic and country rock.

If that makes the band sound like some sort of staid music history lesson, it most assuredly is not. The band’s show Sunday was as wild and raucous as any rock show. Drawing on the full cast of musicians they had at their disposal, including openers the Felice Brothers, the band filled the stage with music, creating the Americana version of the Wall of Sound. Players switched off instruments freely, attacking whatever they were playing with near punk vigor.

The group broke their show into halves separated by a brief intermission. In the first half, the band emphasized their more traditional, old timey material, showcasing frontmen Ketch Secor and Willie Watson’s co-lead vocals on “Fall On My Knees” and delivering a modern take on Louvin Brothers-style mountain balladry with “The Greatest Hustler Of All.”

By the end of the first set, the group started to open up the sound a bit, giving a nod to their host city with the country Martin Luther King, Jr. number “Motel In Memphis” and to the venue with a version of “Minglewood Blues,” the 1928 song by Memphis group Cannon’s Jug Stompers.

In the second half of the show, things got progressively wilder through performances of fan favorites such as “Mary’s Kitchen” and “We’re All In This Together,” with the group introducing first drums and then the entire lineup of the Felice Brothers into the proceedings. As the show rumbled to a close, with an encore heavy on covers such as “C.C. Rider,” Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night,” and closer “Ziggy Stardust” by David Bowie, the stage was filed with more than a dozen musicians sawing away and beating on steel tubs.

Show openers, the Felice Brothers, a New York group fronted by brothers Ian, Simone and James Felice, also enlisted help in their set, tapping frequent tour partner A.A. Bondy to swell the quintet’s ranks as well as bringing out members of Old Crow Medicine Show on some songs.

Minglewood’s opening night as a concert venue was not without its hiccups. Construction crews were reportedly working right up to the opening weekend, and there are finishing touches to be done that will carry over into March. And indeed, the facility had an incomplete feel to it.

On the plus side, most of the complaints from this first night are things that are already slated to be addressed in the coming weeks: Sound-baffling curtains that will cover the room’s cinder block and drywall perimeter should help smooth out the inconsistent sound. More LED lights scheduled for installation will illuminate the front of house. A second bar with five servers will alleviate the long beer lines.

Even the uncommonly long box office line, which, as the 8 p.m. showtime approached, snaked through the facility all the way out the door and into the parking lot, moved quickly and should become shorter as the kinks in the ticketing/will call system are worked out.

Where there were no lines at all were at the restrooms. In the run-up to opening, Minglewood developers had boasted of their plentiful facilities, and there was no overflow this night.

With room for 1,500 people, Minglewood has been touted as filling a niche among Memphis concert venues between the 1,000-capacity New Daisy Theater on Beale Street and the 2,100-seat Cannon Center. One important difference between the Minglewood and those other venues, however, is that the new room is not a theater. There is no sloped floor. Instead the room is more like a ballroom, a flat, wide-open rectangular space with a stage in the northwest corner.

And while the stage’s high elevation resulted in generally good sight lines throughout the hall, it’s inevitable that some shorter concertgoers will have to jockey for a good view.

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