This is the show that the community needed and this is the show I feel certain will show what can be held at this theater.

I write this after reading several rrspin.com Facebook comments, mostly positive, about the announcement that Old Crow Medicine Show is playing the venue.

You cannot get me to say anything bad about this concert because I have been following this band since first hearing them on X-Country on XM radio and on the Internet radio station Boot Liquor on Soma FM.

This is the band that will show how the Roanoke Rapids Theatre is supposed to work: Pulling fans of groups like this in from different areas, a mix of folks from frat boys and sorority girls and folks who like myself are tired of formula bubble gum country pop acts like Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts and others you hear on mainstream country radio. These acts are anything but country, they are the new pop music for people who don’t appreciate real songwriting and would rather hear yet another Brad Paisley novelty song about fishing, water and being a star when they’re every bit the star they are trying to trash.

Old Crow Medicine Show will show the theater was not designed to appease the tastes of Roanoke Rapids. It was designed to appease the tastes of fans who follow groups like the Drive-by Truckers and performers like Wayne “The Train” Hancock and Dale Watson wherever they may play.

I predict this show will be a sellout or near sellout and if I’m wrong I will say so.

OCMS is Roanoke Rapids, a hardworking band like many of the people here, a group who sing about real issues and don’t expect the good things in life to fall in their laps.

Their latest album Tennessee Pusher is as gritty as you can get for a string band, exploring the dirty and dangerous world of the meth trade through the song Methamphetamine.

These guys sing about life, hitchhiking through the South and don’t pay homage to what current Nashville songwriters stereotypically think is the South like cornbread and sweet tea and thinking a tractor is sexy. Most of these writers and artists have probably never sat on a tractor, except maybe for a publicity shot, and I believe their delicate diets prohibit them from having even a spoonful of sweet tea.

OCMS is real and I believe they are going to show how this theater is supposed to work.

I see this at shows I go to. Fayetteville — Hank Williams III. People from Roanoke Rapids are there. Drive-by Truckers. Richmond. People from Roanoke Rapids are there.

If it works there it will work here if you get groups like OCMS who have devoted fans. I believe you will see folks drive from those areas to see OCMS because they have sold more than 500,000 albums not from doing formulated, “This is what I think country music is,” but by relentless touring and taking country, string band and bluegrass music to where it’s never been before.

I am glad to see there are people from here who know their music. A friend already told me he will at least buy two tickets, if not four for the family.

This is the formula that’s going to work for the theater and that’s not to say you won’t see the bubble gum country acts come in, too. You have to remember, this theater was not built to entertain all of Roanoke Rapids but to bring in fans and I hope we will see more of this.

Like any music, there are going to be people who don’t enjoy this genre and, sadly, people who refuse to enjoy this genre because they don’t want to see this venue succeed.

I am one of those people who enjoy this genre of music and want to see the theater succeed and I say this is the show — Lance Martin.

Lance Martin is editor and publisher of rrspin.com