Show Reviews

 

NASHVILLE'S MOST WANTED

Ft. Hannah Dasher, Heath Sanders, & Jesse Keith Whitley

Tuesday January 11, 2022

@ Scoreboard Bar & Grill in Nashville, TN

(Review by: Jeffrey Kurtis)

As the final quarter of 2021 rolled on, Cody Purvis’ weekly live music series ‘Nashville’s Most Wanted’ heated up and begin to catch fire in Music City.

The Tuesday night crowds got larger as the lineups that graced the stage continued to give them a healthy offering of the familiar with a great undercard featuring some of the country music genre’s best up and coming acts: William Michael Morgan, Dillon Carmichael, and Jake Hoot all made appearances, as well as Hasting and Co., Raleigh Keegan, and RT Johnson – to name a few!

With 2022 now underway, Purvis brought his Tuesday night party to Scoreboard Bar & Grill again this week and continued to build its reputation with another absolutely stellar lineup that featured Hannah Dasher, Heath Sanders, and Jesse Keith Whitley.

When I first moved to town some 13 years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Jesse Keith Whitley and hearing his music for the first time. While the inevitable questions of whether he sounds like his father will always come up, Jesse has continuously embraced his famous parents while bringing the ideals that their traditional country music carried into his own original body of work, which he put well on display throughout his hour long set.

He delivered solid country music like you’d expect from someone with his last name, which was chalk full of great storytelling and emotions wrapped into each word he sung, especially on originals such as “Try To Change Me,” “Red White and Blue,” and “I Can’t Drive You From My Mind,” the latter which he dug all the way back to his first release from 2011 to grab.

Whitley didn’t only pull the audience into his set through his original music, though, but he also endeared them with a display of who he is off the stage while aligning his beliefs with them. He put his country boy personality on his sleeve when he talked about the current deer hunting season not going so well for him, and earned ovations at the mention of loving family, God, and all the first responders and troops who keep us safe every day.

Take the great catalog of his original songs and smash it together with his every man personality, and then combine that with him never being one to shy away from his last name and Whitley wowed the crowd as he metaphorically wrapped a warm embrace around them while he honored his late father’s great music by playing three of his biggest hits: “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” When You Say Nothing At All,” and “Miami My Amy.”



When Heath Sanders, an oil field worker from Arkansas, went viral with a cover of Chris Stapleton’s “Either Way,” Nashville came calling quickly and he unexpectedly landed a record deal with The Valory Music Co. He’s since continued to have viral success with amazing covers of Journey’s “Faithfully” and Shenandoah’s “Sunday In The South,” while also hitting the charts with his own debut single “Old School’s In.”

In front of an enthusiastic Tuesday night crowd, Sanders immediately wowed everyone in attendance when he introduced his incredibly smooth vocals (though with just the right tints of gravel) through songs such as “Finding My Groove” and “Dying Breed” to kick off his set.

Admitting that he didn’t know they’d have a full hour to play, and that he thought they were just doing a songwriter round, Sanders took time between his songs to share his backstory with the audience.

“I grew up in a little town - Marshall, Arkansas. We was poor as dirt but I had a good life,” Sanders began. “My daddy really didn’t know how to do anything other than milk cows and preach the gospel, but I learned from watching him. I went back to my old town, and they’ve paved over the farmland with all this new stuff, subdivisions, like they always do…and that’s what this song is about,” he said before playing “Bury This Town.”

Likewise, he brought his further into his upbringing before playing “Blood Sweat, and Barbwire Fence” saying, “My daddy didn’t have a TV, and I didn’t have a cell phone until I was way out of high school. I grew up a lot different than most and I’m glad that I did.”

With several nods to the blue-collar work ethic throughout his set, an ode to family on “Bloodline,” and a few of the covers that helped make him a household name – the aforementioned “Sunday in the South” and “Faithfully,” Sanders then closed his set with “Raised on Red,” a song which he announced he and Justin Moore would be cutting together in just a few weeks.

With a decisively throwback sound that couples together perfectly with her vintage style, you can’t help but take immediate notice whenever Sony Nashville recording artist/Stand By Your Pan TikTok celebrity host Hannah Dasher enters a room – even when it’s a crowded one like Scoreboard was on this Tuesday night.

The moment that she took the stage with “You’re Gonna Love Me,” she instantly commanded attention with her 90’s infused country style and leaned it against a fresh perspective on classic country vibes that took the audience on a journey through bygone eras injected with a healthy dose of Dasher’s sass driven personality to create an overall sound that she can proudly call her own.

Songs like the very memorable “I’m Gonna Whoop Your Redneck Ass” and the catchy “Left Right” both had the crowd toe-tapping along with their rhythms, while “Stoned Age” and “1990’s Heartbreak” allowed Dasher to wear her strong classic country influences on her sleeve and pull the already entranced audience even further into her set.

With everyone’s attention completely captured and zoned in on Dasher, she took slight moments to inject her set with a few covers to showcase her southern rock tilted influences (ZZ Top’s “Tush,” and Charlie Daniels’ “Simple Man” and “Long-Haired Country Boy”) while later giving her band a quick breather towards the end of the set to tone everything down and deliver an acoustic version of “Girls Call The Shots” – a song which before playing, she thanked the audience for giving 5 million streams to.

With a true appreciation for all era of classic country music, Hannah Dasher has found a way to capture a throwback vibe in her own original music while still managing to retain a completely fresh sound for today’s modern era. However, when you take that throwback feel of her music and combine it together with rousing, energetic performances and her vintage look and ultra-likable personality, you get an artist that is the living, breathing embodiment of exactly who she is – in other words; Hannah Dasher is the total package!

 

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