Laid back Texas troubadour Hayes Carll was in a mellow mood for an intimate and sold out show at the Geomatic Attic, March 10. He ended his latest tour by beginning his show with “All The Way To Beaumont,” which he followed up by asking if anybody in the audience had a capo.
Fortunately long time friend and musical collaborator Corb Lund was in the audience, who rushed out to his car to fetch a capo and a spare guitar for Carll to use. As he played crowd favourite “Little Rock,” and noted he and Lund had heard each other play for a long time, he was about to tell a story about him when he returned with the capo.
Travis Linville added extra dobro and switched to mandolin for a couple of songs while adding vocal harmonies.
Carll told long, humourous stories, then spoke about his son who is a budding magician before playing a brand new, sweet and tender song he wrote about him on this tour called “Magic Kid.” Carll, whose voice and sense of humour are very similar to Todd Snider’s, played harmonica on a couple songs as well.
He talked about how much he respects rappers for being able to talk about how great they “And I’ve written all of these songs about how depressed I am and how life is bad and it’s starting to take its psychic toll on me,” he laughed before talking about forming a band called the Ego Brothers which would sing nothing but songs about how great they are.
“We only came up with one,” he laughed before inviting Lund up on stage to sing the“second” song, a hilarious one called “When my mom had me she should have had two or three.”
He ended his first set with another funny crowd favourite called “One Bed, Two Girls and Three Bottles of Wine.”
He began his second set by playing Lund’s battered Gretsch electric guitar and playing a couple easygoing songs “I’m Going to Change Your Mind” and “ Easy Come, Easy Go,” then said I “I feel safe here,” before launching into another story about playing a regular gig at a bar “that was the complete opposite of this” in Crystal Beach, Texas on the Gulf of Mexico which lead to a story about a hurricane there and a really good song about the experience called “ I Got a Gig”
He followed that up by playing several tracks from his new CD including the exceptional title track “KMAG YOYO,” which sounded a lot more laid back played acoustically.
After that he asked the audience if anybody could sing the sassy duet from the new CD “Another Like You” from the new CD.
“It’s either that or Travis sings it,” he said, which resulted in bringing Michelle Walbaum up on stage to blow everyone away.
“ What do you do for a living,” he asked her when she left the stage.
“Do you like to travel?”
He ended his show by bringing back Corb Lund to help sing “Bible on the Dashboard,” which they co-wrote for Lund’s latest Cd “Cabin Fever.”
— By Richard Amery,L.A. beat Editor
