Keith Anderson headlined at the Win-River Casino in Redding, CA on January 15, 2006. Opening the show was Kevin Marcy, of the Marcy Brothers. I guess they're mostly local, although they did have a couple albums out in the late 80s. Really liked his voice. He says he's a fireman now. He got a great response from the sold out crowd, and my friend Dianne said "Keith's going to have to work hard to get the audience even more fired up than they were for Kevin," who received an ovation and came back once more for a few more songs.
There was about a 15 minute break between Kevin's set and Keith's set. When the intro music for Keith started playing, the crowd started getting into it and everyone was glued to the stage, hoping for a glimpse of Keith. First the band took their places to happy applause, and finally Keith joined them, starting the night with "Podunk."
Dianne and I had the second table from the stage and were really close. While the tickets said no cameras, we weren't searched coming in, and we took a couple pics and then put our cameras away when they came and told us no cameras. I was bummed as I was so close and was really looking forward to getting some good shots, but figured, well, I have a couple pics between Dianne and myself, so while not a lot, it was something.
Another album cut was next, with "Plan B." Next, Keith went into his description of his big family, saying his father had 13 brothers and sisters and mother had 7 brothers and sisters and they're all really big people. Many of them over 350 lbs and he even has some aunts that are 400 lbs, so he described his family get togethers as "a lot of polyester and muumuus." He talked about when he wrote the next song, it was just after 9-11 and that back then, the guys that were the biggest heroes were the big, hunky firefighters and policeman that rescued the people in New York. He and his writing partner, Bob DiPiero wanted to write a song about the big guys, and that is where "XXL" came from.
Keith told another story of having moved to Nashville, and becoming friends with George Ducas, and they had written some songs together back then, and were told that someone wanted to record this one particular song. Keith and George said, "Great!" only to be told, "but.. they want to change the lyrics, the rhythm and the melody." Keith said, "being a songwriter, all you have is your lyrics and rhythm and melody, and so we stood on our integrity, and said to the guy, 'If these people want to record our song, they'll record it as we wrote it, 'cuz we know it's a big hit, and that's that.'" The guy told them, "Well, the guy is Garth Brooks." Keith then says, "Oh.. well, you know there were some things about that song we wanted to change." So, they rewrite the song and get it all together and present it again, and the guy comes back and says, "They love the song, but they'd like to change the title." Keith's a little peeved, since the title is all he had left from the original. Then, the guy adds, "and the song is going to be a duet with the great George Jones." Keith says, "Oh, there was some things about that title that we really thought we could change." Everyone is laughing so hard at this story. So, Keith says... It's called "Beer Run (B-double E-double Are You In?)," and they proceeded to sing the first verse and chorus, but then stop and Keith says, "You know, I think we're cheating these people by not letting them hear how the song was originally supposed to be. You guys wanna hear the original version?" Of course, everyone screams "Yes," and so they play that version. And, I really don't see what was wrong with the original. I really liked it too.