I will admit to not being overly familiar with Caitlin Rose‘s material before her show at The Garrison this past Friday night, but I liked what I had heard from her and after seeing her live, I was converted to a fan. The Nashville-based, Dallas-born country singer is a charming and totally assured performer and the songs from her latest, The Stand-In, are quite catchy. And her stage banter, while a little hit and miss at the beginning of her set, was often quite humorous.
“This is a pop song, I think. I’ve never wrote one before,” she said before playing “Silver,” and while it’s not quite a pop song in the strictest sense, it was certainly poppy enough. On a side note, Rose’s mother also happens to be a songwriter who has co-written a few songs for Taylor Swift, so Rose likely does have it in her to write a big hit pop song. For selfish reasons though, I hope she doesn’t become so big that she starts playing much larger rooms; I like her just fine at the club level.
Also knowing a thing or two about songwriting was opener Andrew Combs, who fits well within the tradition of Southern singer-songwriters. And who is, like Rose, Dallas born and Nashville based. Not sure if that was a prerequisite for the tour or not. Sharing a band with Rose as well as backing her up as part of her band, Combs also had a pretty good sound, although my favourite song from him came during Rose’s set when she gave him a spot centre stage to sing “Too Stoned To Cry.” The rest of the band were also pretty talented players and also kind of funny too, as seen in a series of goofy videos they made earlier that night at Golden Turtle, the nearby pho restaurant to which Rose gave a shout out onstage. Watch at your own peril though; terrible pho puns abound.
Other highlights included “Sinful Wishing Well,” her version of The Felice Brothers’ “Dallas,” and “Only A Clown,” which she prefaced by discussing the “national fear of clowns” in America. “I don’t know what it’s like up here,” she added before somebody shouted out something like “look at our mayor, we love clowns.” Not sure why that guy thought Caitlin Rose would have any knowledge of our mayor, but this did lead to an amusing situation where she misheard it as “look at your hair, you look like a clown.” Although, having seen the video for her cover of Arctic Monkeys’ “Piledriver Waltz,” I can attest that Rose makes for a rather nice and not at all fear-inducing rodeo clown.
