Queens of Country
- a tribute to Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, and Patsy Cline.
@ the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham 12.2.01

(review by Jon Horne 2001)

© Touch Nottingham (internet magazine and What's On guide)

The mind boggles, I know. The first thing I should probably tell you is that this is a straight show. Despite the idea being camper than a Judy Garland night at the Mill, there were no cowboys with moustaches in the audience, more's the pity.

It would be very easy to laugh at the people who half-filled the Royal Concert Hall on Monday night. There were zimmer frames in the aisles, and there's no getting around the fact that many in the audience were old, disabled, and poor. However, I'm not laughing at anyone, because the show itself does a far better job of mocking its own crowd than I could ever do.

This is not to say that it is a bad spectacle. The singers, led by Kathryn Rooney as Dolly Parton, breezed on- and off-stage in a manner that kept the whole thing moving along. Each of them did a good, professional job of impersonating the genuine article. Occasionally the vocal tics and hiccups (an integral part of every Nashville singer's delivery) were overdone and seemed tacked-on, and the accents of the song introductions were sometimes closer to Lewisham than Louisiana - but overall, the impressions were remarkably well handled.

The choice of material leans toward the obvious - 'Nine To Five', 'Stand By Your Man', and 'Crazy' all make an appearance - but that is how it should be; this is a tribute show, and the point of such a performance is to give the audience exactly what they want to hear.

I'll be honest: as far as I'm concerned, the majority of country music is trite, sentimental nonsense, aimed at the dregs of white America. Its value lies in the fact that it doesn't matter a jot what I think. People living rotten, lonely lives listen to these songs of adult heartbreak, and love them. 'D.I.V.O.R.C.E.' might make you and me cringe, but it means an awful lot to some of the people who were there on Monday night.

Vanessa Barrett, playing Tammy Wynette (as she has done in the biographical show, 'Stand By Your Man') accepts this fact, and sings the song straight, emphasising the smoky tone of Wynette's voice, but underplaying the Dukes of Hazzard accent, which could have reduced the performance to mere parody. Avoidance of parody is more difficult for a Dolly Parton impersonator, since the real Dolly Parton is a parody of herself. Nonetheless, just as Parton leavens her own ridiculousness by writing songs of real emotional depth, so Rooney sang them with real conviction.

The problem lies in the attitude of the band. It would have been alright (just about) if there had been an orchestra pit, with the band hidden from view. The playing would still have been draggy and dull, but we would have been spared the sight of them nudging and winking amongst themselves, making the point that they were Proper Musicians, only reading the dots. To be fair, the pedal steel player (who looked like Blakey from 'On The Buses') displayed momentary interest - but that was as far as their commitment went. Even 'Lisa' the backing vocalist, whilst singing perfectly well, spent the evening grinning in(s)anely and doing a jerky one-movement dance which signalled boredom as effectively as the musicians' eye-rolling.

There was an audible gasp from the audience (no, I'm not kidding) when Daisy Moon, playing Patsy Cline, walked onto the stage with the lights low, and sang Willie Nelson's 'Crazy' - Cline's signature tune. In case you don't know Patsy Cline's music, k.d. lang has based her career on starting where Cline left off - jazzy country pop, in a cowgirl suit to simply die for. Now, 'Crazy' is a great song, regardless of genre, whether sung in Nelson's favourite-uncle-having-a-nervous-breakdown whine, or as a torch song, as performed by Cline and a million brassy housewives drunk at a karaoke night. The graceful tune lends dignity to the pain and shame of the words, and even a bad rendition can be a moving experience for anyone who is willing to give the singer a chance. Daisy Moon sang it beautifully. Handkerchiefs came out amongst the audience.

Then the lights came up, and the band went back to their sneering and sniggering.

Just finishing its run, next door to the Concert Hall in the Theatre Royal, is 'Leader of the Pack': an excellent show, based around the songs of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. Five belting singers lead a band which makes a fair stab at creating Phil Spector's wall of sound on-stage. The musicians all participate in between-songs skits, and the singers can all play something when called upon to do so. There is unconditional involvement from everyone in the show. That is how a tribute concert should be. As for Queens of Country: surely there must be a band out there who actually like country music, are willing to learn the songs rather than just reading their parts, and would be glad of the work.

There is something disturbing about a tribute concert where dead people are being portrayed. Why does every Elvis impersonator choose to play him as the walking cheeseburger that he became just before he died? That's fine if the whole thing is a sick joke, but it usually isn't. Similarly, despite having the pick of a series of looks from a 35-year career, 'Tammy Wynette' was given the 80s power-haircut (a cross between a Lady Di and a Rod Stewart) and the slinky dress which marked her final performances in the mid-1990s (when she was being paraded as a joke by the overgrown art students of KLF/JAMMs). Worse still, 'Patsy Cline' wore deathly-pale make-up and blood-red lipstick, which seemed to imply that she was performing after her plane crash, rather than immediately before.

Or perhaps I imagined that last bit, as a way to amuse myself during a fairly dreadful show. If this sort of thing is to your taste, then go and see a good pub singer.

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