Trick Pony more rock than country at fair

Thursday night's grandstand concert by Trick Pony at the SEMO District Fair was relatively lightly attended, as all the grandstand events have been since Tuesday morning's national tragedy. Against the backdrop of a huge American flag, that didn't stop Trick Pony from raring back and letting it rip.

Starting with the band's first hit, the drinking song "Pour Me," the band ran through an unpredictable set that included bassist Ira Dean's impression of John Anderson singing Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" and a loping version of the Fleetwood Mac classic "Rhiannon."

Longtime SEMO fairgoers accustomed to straight-ahead country music might have wondered if they took a wrong turn on the midway. Country music is tonight, when Neal McCoy performs, and Saturday night, with the venerable Charley Pride.

Wacky band

Trick Pony is a rock 'n' roll band -- a very good if slightly wacky one -- with country accents. In black hat, black T-shirt and jeans, acoustic guitarist Keith Burns keeps a permanent two-day growth of beard and has a bow-legged bearing more common at rodeos than on stages. Bassist Ira Dean, who once attended SIU at Carbondale, looks like Kid Rock and sometimes plays a too funky bass for the music. But his oddball humor is welcome in these days of pasteurized country music shows.

Each of the three members of Trick Pony gets time in the spotlight, but Newfield holds the band together. A 5-foot-no-inch fireball of talent and energy, she sang in a voice that both growled and soared, danced playfully and played harmonica on five or six of the band's songs.

Newfield's harp playing is no gimmick. She played like a bluesman, bending notes until they wailed, and straddled the stage the way the hardworking Bruce Springsteen does.

"We're just gettin' warmed up, ya'll," she promised, wiping sweat from her forehead halfway into the two-hour show.

"On a Night Like This," the band's current hit single, was a high point of the concert, showing off both Newfield's voice and her sexy charm. "A little rendezvous, a little mystery," she sang. "It's just what I need."

Trick Pony's lone tip of the hat to the traditional country the band members say they love was their faithful rendition of Johnny Cash's "Big River."

Dean gave his former jazz teacher at SIU-Edwardsville trouble for predicting he'd end up playing for a country has-been. Dean relished telling the crowd about calling his old teacher up from the Fox Theatre in St. Louis one day while playing with a has-been named Johnny Cash.

Trick Pony is working on making that teacher eat more of his words.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182