It’s been a good year for country singer-songwriter Brandy Clark so far. Not only will she be releasing a new album on July 31st, she was also ranked among the Thirty Greatest Living American Songwriters of all time by the New York Times in April… alongside longtime songwriting collaborators Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne.
To that point, for Clark’s sold-out show at the MIM on Sat. May 9, it was indeed all about the music. Kicking off her 21-song, 90-minute set with Crazy Women (from her 2013 debut album 12 Stories), it set the tone for an evening of tongue-in-cheek humor along with poignant commentary to match.
Something tells me that Clark’s music isn’t played on modern country radio stations, or at least, not as much as you’d hear someone like Lainey Wilson. In fact, Clark seems to have much more in common artistically with Martina McBride or even Emmylou Harris.
As far as her contemporaries, I’d say she is perhaps more along the lines of Kacey Musgraves, who she’s co-written with in previous years.
Either way, it gives you an idea why there are so many accolades over the past decade surrounding her music.
Earlier songs like Pray To Jesus, Big Day In A Small Town and Love Can Go To Hell went over very well with the audience. Going by all who were singing, Clark’s lyrics clearly resonated with the predominantly 50-something audience. Or at least, it appeared that way.
It was certainly apparent that Clark was incredibly proud of the band onstage that night as well. It consisted of bassist Amanda McCoy, guitarist Gabe Burdulis, and drummer Erin “Pepper” Nelson. In fact, as she announced the aforementioned new album release, she said “every musician you see up here on this stage plays on it”.
Clark then led the band into one of those new songs called Good Night Los Angeles. In case you were wondering, at press time, the upcoming album title is unknown.
Interestingly, for an all-acoustic band, one could say that they were playing with electric intensity. That’s how solid this band is overall.
Perhaps the highlight of the show was a spine-tingling rendition of a song called Buried (from Clark’s 2023 self-titled album). The band took a well-deserved break for a couple of songs while Clark took the stage solo.
Concluding the main set with Dear Insecurity, Get High and Stripes you could see the grins from ear-to-ear on the fans’ faces, and the band’s as well.
For an encore, it was pretty bold to perform another new song called American Roots. Clark saved Broke for last, which led to the third standing ovation of the night.
With that good readers, my final verdict is four out of five stars. Brandy Clark is the shot-in-the arm that country music has needed for at least a dozen years. Good to see her getting the recognition for it.
