I can’t help but think of Luke Bryan treating rehearsals like science experiments.
“No, we cannot start the song that fast, it’s got to build into a party crescendo,” he shouts at his a rent-a-band like a composer.
Quick side note, the band’s appearance was somewhat comical. You have long haired blond older guy on bass, blond guy wearing a white bandana on keyboards, spiky dark haired guitarist, wiry violinist in a silly hat, bald banjo player and bearded guy with sleeves of tattoos on drums – he might as well of gotten them out of Backing Band Magazine.
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Bryan won’t win a Noble Prize for his scientific efforts, or a Grammy most likely, but I think he has cracked the formula to get people to drink copious amounts of alcohol -- right on the edge of blacking out -- and then have sloppy, partially clothed sex on the floor of a dirty hotel room. He is the pied piper of binge drinkers.
Contrary to his party boy image -- I’m sure at this moment he is strategically flipping around his cap around for emphasis -- he did not come by this musical concoction by accident. It took practice over many Spring Breaks and the study of different types of drinking music.
The covers Bryan’s band chose were an interesting window into this analysis. They threw in a little bit of AC/DC, a little bit of Metallica, a little bit of Mark Ronson and the theme for the “Fresh Prince of Bell Air (because that's a song everybody knows the words to).” Now, AC/DC and country are similar – about good times; you know “Have A Drink On Me.” But I thought “Enter Sandman” would be out of place, since the song is about a demon invading the nightmares of a child.
Wrong. Metallica may be a different type of drinking music – drunk to the point of destroying things – but it’s still drinking music. Then you’ve got Mark Ronson, which gets the country girls to shake their butts in a little bit of a different way.
You can hear some of these different influences in songs like “That’s My Kind of Night” and “Country Girl.” Also, all of his songs seem to build but start with a good, up-beat groove. The simplicity of his songs makes them easier and more fun to play live. In general, he is better live than in studio.
Fight breaks out and he’s unfazed – “Fighting ‘aint gonna stop this good time,” he said Thursday. His band took one break … one, and they played for almost two hours. That was impressive; there was no talking in between songs -- just bang, bang, bang one after another.
What I’m saying is that people should not be sad that he may not play another Spring Break; he’s spreading his wings. He can bring his drunk music to stadiums of inebriates instead of clubs not designed for the size of crowd he can draw.
Who knows, Bryan may be happy to have a gig during Spring Break if he finds out party music is a young man’s game. However, no one thought AC/DC would be playing the Grammys in their 60s.