Despite a broken tour bus and an unplanned reconfiguration of her stage show, Sierra Ferrell ensured her first headlining gig in Columbus, Ohio, will not be her last.
A packed and sweaty Woodlands Tavern was charged with electricity when Hull and her band returned to the stage to encore with “People Get Ready,” a 10-minute rendition that found the players engaging in round-robin solos and Hull leading the audience in a wordless refrain to end the evening.
It had begun nearly two hours earlier, when Hull, with one rhetorical question – “Shall we?” – began a blistering night of fiery jams and dime-stop rests and transitions. She’s a solo artist but, like Billy Strings, is so in a band context characterized by shared solos and harmony vocals directed by the ebullient, ever-smiling bandleader.
After booking last-minute flights, Eric Coveney played a rented bass, Mark Radabaugh made do with only snare and kick drums and Hull, guitarist Shaun Richardson and fiddler Avery Merritt shared a single mic. Rather than act flummoxed, the band turned the challenge into an opportunity.
“We’re doing it bluegrass-style; it’s so much fun,” Hull said shortly after previewing her forthcoming, as-yet-untitled LP with “Boom,” a strutting original that put Bill Withers-styled blues in the ’grass.
While such originals as the wistful “Ceiling to the Floor” and “Beautifully out of Place;” the modern take on Texas swing that is “Best Buy;” and “Out of My Blues” dominated, a diverse set of songs “we wish we wrote” also worked their way onto Hull’s Sept. 15 playlist.
So it happened that she and the band performed Del McCoury’s “I Feel the Blues Moving In” with Radabaugh on shakers, nearly converted Tears for Fears’ “Mad World” into a true bluegrass number, suggested what Jerry Garcia and David Grisman could’ve done with the Grateful Dead’s elegiac “Black Muddy River” and nearly caused an explosion with a rambunctious reading of Béla Fleck’s instrumental “Stomping Grounds.”
Acoustic music has rarely sounded so super-charged.
Sierra Hull in Columbus
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