By Travis Erwin

When I first moved to California from Texas, I hoped to find an even more expansive array of live music. And in sheer volume I did. But if I am honest, very few of the two hundred plus concerts I’ve attended throughout So Cal, have lived up to my expectation.

Outside of the Hip-Hop shows and a handful of Pop concerts the crowds have been tepid at best. Especially when it comes to Country or Americans shows. That all changed last night when 49 Winchester led a raucous Hillbilly revival inside the El Rey Theatre.

Country music is one of those gernes that sparks a love it or hate it response, and I get it if the only brand of Country you’ve been exposed to is the watered down corporate pablum churned out by Nashville to be fed to the masses via mainstream radio. That glossy formulistic Pop with a fiddle is about as legit as the plotlines to Yellowstone.

In other words, stereotypical bullshit created not to enlighten or entertain, but more to lasso cold hard cash from the undiscerning.

But there is good, great Country music out there. And spoiler alert, it isn’t always billed as country because that Mainstream stuff has tainted the well. There are many terms with nuanced differences, Outlaw, Red Dirt, Americana, Alt Country and one that I haven’t heard bandied about for a while but I always enjoyed, Y’allternative.

The El Rey Theatre played host to a couple such acts Monday night. Kelsey Waldon opened and put on a solid show though the vocal side of the sound wasn’t quite dialed in. Waldon said she was battling an illness and routinely used throat spray, though the issue seemed less about her voice and more on the sound engineering side given that some songs rang out vibrant and clear.

Waldon’s band, The Muleskinners, were lively and even when the vocal side went awry, the energetic performance more than made up for it. The crowd was into the show and a fair number of people knew the music well enough to sing along.

But everything ratcheted up once 49 Winchester hit the stage.

I knew a handful of songs from the Virginia based band, but they are still relatively new to my radar, so I was shocked by the size of the crowd and the almost rapture-like bliss they had for the music.

The crowd danced swayed and belted out damn near every line. The energy rivaled the frat boy fanatics of an early 90s era Robert Earl Keen show, and I haven’t seen any country concert, in any state that can compare to these two experiences.

Lead singer Isaac Gibson is a talented vocalist with the ability to emote in different ways depending on the emotions and energy a particular song calls for.

Lead guitarist Bud Shelton, who just might be Danny McBride’s long lost brother, kept the crowd going with his gesticulations and I’d love to see him show up as a guest star as such on The Righteous Gemstones ala Sturgill Simpson last season.

Talking to a handful of attendees it seems that Tik Tok played a big role in getting 49 Winchester’s music out to the masses.

Take that Cashville!