Bo Bice and Me

This afternoon I will be headed to Delta Downs for a little gambling and then a Bo Bice concert this evening with Terry, Melissa and Destiny. If I don't come back, don't look for me. I'll blog from the road.


Edited at 12:08 a.m. - Brief Concert Review

Bo Bice and his band Sugar Money put on a kick-ass southern rock concert. Bo has an excellent voice nicely suited to either ballads or rock and he sang some of both. The band consisted of two lead guitarists and Bo would occasionally play guitar himself. Three excellent guitarists onstage made for quite an entertaining show. (Note: One of the guitarists might have been a rhythm guitarist and the other a lead guitarist, but, quite frankly, I've never been able to tell the difference. I do know that both guitarists had several solos. So, my guess is that they traded off between rhythm and lead guitar duties.)

Bo did a short acoustic set which included a nice solo rendition of Southern Cross. Why someone would sing Southern Cross without the harmonies is a mystery to me, but that's the way he performed it. All five members of the band joined Bo for a beautiful a cappella verse of a song (sorry, can't remember which song) later in the program and it again made me question his decision to do Southern Cross alone.

Bo is an energetic and charismatic performer although I really don't understand the whole mic stand twirling thing. It makes me want to yell at him, "You're gonna to put someone's eye out with that thing, kid!"

Richie Sambora wrote a song for Bo and the band and it was a good song. However, the best songs of the night by far were, Sweet Home Alabama, Freebird, Pink Houses and Whipping Post. While Bo does a fine job with the American Idol-ish pop vocals, I hope he and his band start putting out some original music with more of a bluesy, jazzy, rock and roll attitude to them.

I highly recommend a ticket to a Bo Bice concert if he's ever in your area, even if you weren't an American Idol fan. In fact, if you're looking for the American Idol version of Bo Bice, you'll get a taste of that but the meat and potatoes of the show is the aforementioned kick-ass southern rock.

Review correction:

The acoustic song he did solo was not Southern Cross, it was Seven Bridges Road. I get those two songs mixed up. My wish to hear it sung in 5-part harmony still stands though.

Review addendum - The Venue:

This was my first concert at the Delta Downs Event Center at the racetrack in Vinton, Louisiana. It's a fairly small venue consisting of about twenty rows of floor seating and about thirty rows of stadium style seating. I would compare it size-wise to a small high school auditorium (total capacity 887).

The chair rows weren't overly crammed together and the seats were pretty comfortable. My seats were toward the top of the middle section and I had a great view and the sound was good. My sister was sitting over to one side and she said the sound wasn't so good from there. All in all, I liked it because of the small size but I reserve judgment on the sound until I sit in other areas of the event center.