Kevin Montgomery and The Road Trippers with Dean Owens

The Musician ~ Leicester ~ 6th January 2002

On Sunday 6th January 2002 I saw Kevin Montgomery and The Road Trippers and Dean Owens at The Musician Pub in Leicester. Dean Owens kicked the night off with a selection of songs from his excellent new solo album, ‘The Droma Tapes’. Dean was backed by the Road Trippers (Kevin Montgomery, Robert Reynolds, Paul Deakin, Al Perkins and Rune Kjeldsen) for some of the songs, including a cover of the Buck Owens (Don’t think he’s related to Dean!) song, ‘ Love’s Gonna Live Here Again’. This was a great start to what was to be a great night!

Kevin Montgomery then performed a short acoustic spot, which bought back memories of seeing Kevin at The Musician during his last tour with Al Perkins and Dean Owens. After a short break, Robert, Paul, Al and Rune joined Kevin on stage. They began with ‘Another Long Story’. Robert playing beautifully the melodic bass line that is such a strong part of this song. This song appears on Kevin's albums, 'Another Long Story' and 'Kevin Montgomery - Live'. We were treated to other live versions of tracks from these albums and also from the Paint EP, which is only available at the shows. It was during the intro to 'Melrose' (from the Paint EP and Kevin's first album 'Fear Nothing') that one of Paul's drumsticks broke - Which now has a good home!;-))! The band also played 'Tennessee Girl' from the EP, which was featured on the opening credits to last year's UK coverage of the CMA Awards and is also a favourite at the shows.

As a big SWAG fan I was thrilled when Robert took centre stage to sing and acoustic version of 'Near Perfect Smile' from the album, 'Catch-All'. Having listened to this song so many times on the album and on webcasts and radio shows on the Internet it was fab to hear Robert sing it live at the show! It was followed by a new song by Robert called, 'Dragonfly'. For this, the band returned to the stage and Rune played bass while Kevin played the electric guitar!

At the end of the night Dean joined the guys on stage for a medley of classics, including, 'Honky Tonk Women' and 'American Girl'/'Not Fade Away'. To use my word of the moment - It was 'rockin'!:-)