Best of Breed
With the possible exception of a Rolling Stones concert, it's hard to imagine a more lived-in love fest than the adoration of all ages that greeted Ray Price (81), Willie Nelson (73), and Merle Haggard (69) last night at Radio City Music Hall. Rolling through New York on their Last of the Breed Tour, these silver foxes opened up a large and laid-back sampler featuring a few dozen of their countless hits. The bill's value-added aspect lay in the show's creamy hour-long center, when Nelson and Haggard, backed by Ray Benson's Asleep at the Wheel and eventually joined by Price, picked and harmonized on one another's material.
Ray Price, who opened the show backed by his Cherokee Cowboys, sounded wonderful on "Crazy Arms," "Heartaches By the Number," "The Other Woman (In My Life)," and several other picture-perfect examples of romantic country realism. After a couple of Asleep at Wheel tunes, Merle Haggard ambled onstage, plugged in his fiddle, and warmed up with a few Western swing tunes before singing "That's the Way Love Goes," "Silver Wings," and "Big City" for the umpteenth time. A sunglassed relative leprechaun of a songwriting legend, Haggard actually came off as a tad older than his elders, phrasing haphazardly and playing guitar with almost ghostly economy.
Willie Nelson and Haggard sounded ragged but righteous on "Okie From Muskogee," "Pancho and Lefty," and "Reasons to Quit." It got even better when Price joined the duo for seven songs, particularly Bob Wills's touching celebration of childhood obesity, "Roly Poly," and Nelson's "Nightlife," which Price stretched out into a positively decadent jazz vehicle.
Between "On the Road Again" and "Whiskey River" (which at least one bandmember seemed to be praying to never have to hear again), Nelson introduced a pair of new songs he said he wrote during a physician-imposed four-month rest period for carpal tunnel problems. "Too many pain pills, too much pot/ Trying to be something that I'm not:/ Superman" went the opening lines to the first. The second, "You Don't Think I'm Funny Anymore," inspired a loud woman seated behind me to cry out, "I know how that feels!"
The Last of the Breed Tour winds down in Detroit, Milwaukee, and the Chicago area over the next few days.