originally posted to NUVO.net | Indy’s Alternative Voice
The temperature was well above 90 degrees by mid-morning. Charlie Daniels and his band were getting ready to play a Brickyard 400 pre-race gig at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2008.
Daniels came on stage at noon that day and captured the sweaty crowd with 75 minutes of hits from the past 40 years, from “Uneasy Rider” to “The South’s Gonna Do It Again,” “Long Haired Country Boy” to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”. The show (loud and arena-like in presentation) also reminded why Daniels is a country music legend – he commanded the stage with a catalog of songs any songwriter would envy, and was able to create a big-but-intimate show, cranking up the volume on his songs without losing their core.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Indiana Music: Gypsy Revival
In the end, it’s the final song, “Days to Come”, from the new self-titled Gypsy Revival EP, that gives a listener reason to think these guys are worth following. Clearly the rootsiest, most country rock take on the record, it sounds like they’ve been listening to Old Crow Medicine Show, as they make the line “Back then, everybody was living to be laid; today, everybody is living to be laid” sound tossed off and brilliant at the same time.