‘Saturday Night Live’ music: Sturgill Simpson performs ‘Keep It Between the Lines,’ ‘Call to Arms’ (video)
This weekend, “Saturday Night Live” chose to do something a little bit different when it comes to the music of the show. Sturgill Simpson is such a throwback — he’s a little bit soul, a little bit rock, and even a little bit country if you put him in the right environment. He’s a true original, and he’s the guy who can really benefit from the air time that this show provides. Even in an era where there are so many ways to listen to music, performing on “SNL” still matters significantly.
First Song – “Keep It Between the Lines.” We love that Sturgill brought a full band with him in order to rock this song out on stage — trombone solo! We’re not that familiar with his musical stylings, but this felt like one big party. The only real critique that we’d offer up here is that we would’ve loved to see someone turn his microphone up. We couldn’t hear what he was saying for the majority of the song. We knew we dug it, but for these sort of shows you have to make sure that you get the acoustics just right — after all, we assume that the majority of the viewers out there were in the same class as us going into the show.
One more thing we’ll say is that this music almost meshed perfectly with the music the “SNL” band typically plays. By the end of it, it almost turned into a complete jam session, joyous in all of the right ways. A nice performance and, despite our one criticism, a good showcase for Sturgill on this stage.
Second Song – “Call to Arms.” This felt a little bit more like a rock n’ roll country jam with all of the solos, the driving beat, and the subject matter being discussed in the lyrics. The sound problem was still somewhat there, but it was during this performance we started to wonder if we were missing the point. Maybe you’re just supposed to enjoy the music and not worry about anything else? That makes even more sense given that the majority of his performance was instrumental.
A few random thoughts: The drummer wade our week, we’re surprised that the piano player didn’t fall over when he was standing on it, and everyone seemed like they were having a REALLY great time. That was infectious. Nice way for Simpson to end his set.
You can check out a full review for this weekend’s new episode over at the link here. (Photo: NBC.)