Casey James at the Cadillac Ranch

Sunday afternoon, the Cadillac Ranch in Southington, CT celebrated their 20th anniversary with Casey James as the headliner.  Since the country genre generally isn’t “my thing”, this was certainly one of the more interesting shows I have been to in a while.  Doors opened at 3pm (where we had to pay $10 instead of the advertised $5!!) and from 3-4:30 everyone danced. Line danced and couple danced and whatever else it might be called.  I was beginning to think that the show wasn’t going to end up being as early as I had thought, but at 4:30 the first band Little House, took the stage.  But then they played one of their songs over the PA and everyone danced while the band stood on stage and watched!

After Little House was Kiley Evans.  I always know when I am super excited for the headliner when the opening acts set feels like it goes on for 100 years.  This was one of those times. Kiely was good, but I really wanted to see Casey.  Kiley is from Massachusetts and is currently supporting her latest single “One More Spin Around” which will be availble on iTunes in early May.  You can find out more about her at her official website: http://kileyevans.com/

Then it was finally time for Casey!  He had a full band with him this time and was just freaking AWESOME.  At times I was unable to see because of the positioning of my chair – but it didn’t even matter because he sounded great.  However his stage banter kind of made it seem he wasn’t all that sure of himself and he kept making jabs at himself.  At one point he said that our listening faces looked like this – and then made a kind of mean face and he was wondering if it was maybe something he did or if he should sing on key. Another comment he made was that he sounded much better after people had been drinking.  Casey – I didn’t have anything to drink and you sounded wonderful to me so don’t sell yourself short!

His set was 13 songs – made up mostly of songs from his current album which came out last month.  He also did some covers as well – Tab Benoit’s So High, Long Tall Texan and Polk Salad Annie.  The last cover was also his last song and for 5 minutes (or more, maybe, I didn’t exactly time it) him and the band just jammed. It was incredible!

He talked a bit  about his life – he is almost 30 and for a long time was playing bars in Texas and a lot of times everyone had their backs to him so it was nice that now people were facing forward.  He talked a bit about how he went on a TV show and didn’t even have a TV and he didn’t think he would make it this far but he did and now has a record deal.  He also joked about how if you follow him you know he only has about 7 shirts (the guys next to me thought that this was a terrible idea for a pick up line) and how they had shrunk in the wash so he had his sleeves rolled up because they didn’t come down as far as they had used to and he is very particular about what he wears.

Casey is really just a phenomenal talent – both with singing and guitar playing and he was saying how he was about done with his first single and it was quite possible we’d never hear from him again!  I certainly hope that is not the case because he is definitely one of my favorite Idol contestants and I would love to see him do really, really well and I think he deserves that.

I didn’t hang around to see if he came out to meet anyone after the show as by the time his set was over it was 7pm and I wanted to get home.

The Good Life
Crying on a Suitcase
She’s Money
Love the way you Miss Me
Let’s Don’t Call It A Night
Workin On It
So Sweet
So High
Undone
Long Tall Texan
The Apartment Song
Drive
Polk Salad Annie