Playing against a handful of naysayers and doomsday ill wishers, Roanoke Rapids succeeded Thursday night.
We would simply rate the Old Crow Medicine Show concert at the Roanoke Rapids Theatre the best that’s been in the struggling venue in its history.
We may be biased because we like this band but there was proof all around Thursday night that we weren’t alone.
We saw it in the smiling faces of young, old and in between. We saw it in the smiling face of a young man, Tre Fromal, who got a personal invitation from the band to enjoy a hard driving, hard rocking, hard fiddling, hard picking show from a band that isn’t played on oldies stations and has earned stripes by doing what they did Thursday night, take a chance on a venue with a tarnished history because they just enjoy playing.
The estimates we got from law enforcement, which has a knack for head counts, and sources close to the show, put the crowd at 75 to 80 percent of occupancy and we were glad to see it because if any band deserves it, it is OCMS, which has made its living on the road and not on soft core, Nashville cookie cutter radio play.
The city also deserves this strong attendance because this theater has been beat up, battered and kicked around, to steal a line from another country alternative favorite, Hank Williams III.
Fans of the band also deserved it and we saw so many young faces in the crowd who turned the venue into what it should be, a place to enjoy themselves, let loose and not sit morosely in the audience, but get up and dance, sing and shout encouragement and favorite songs for the band to play.
Old Crow Medicine Show did everything we expected them to do and more. They used Roanoke Rapids as a proving ground for several unreleased songs and let the audience know they were appreciative they were asked to play at a place which has been vilified through bad press, bad jokes and bad management until Thursday night.
The volunteers we talked about earlier this week were smiling and they had a right to because they came together to help, not out of personal gain, but, as we said, civic pride.
The combination worked and now the hard part comes, for the temporary management of this venue to top what they did Thursday night.
We don’t normally respond to comments left on our website and we’re going to be kind, but one reader, responding to our volunteer editorial, said, “I did buy a ticket. Mostly (I admit) to satisfy my curiosity about how much of a train wreck this is going to be.”
There was no train wreck Thursday night, there was a near packed house and perhaps some understanding that, in the right hands, when the theater is not used as a bus terminal, it can work — Editor.
