Blackberry Smoke at the Cooper Tire Stage in Vegas

The ACM weekend in Vegas was a lot of fun, lots of good country music
pretty much from 9am-230am daily. The last band to play the ACM Expo at the
Orleans Hotel was none other than Blackberry Smoke, who took the Cooper Tire
Stage at 1pm on Sunday. I have only seen BBS five times, but every time I have,
the venue has been packed. This time the venue was outside at a stage in the
parking lot with only about 75 people in attendance. I am going to chalk the low
attendance up to the fact that it was the last live show before the ACM Awards
that night. But no matter, because for the die hard fans that were there as well
as people who just stopped by to listen, it was a terrific set…kind of like we
had a private show. I saw almost all of the bands that played that stage
throughout the weekend and Blackberry Smoke was one of the few that actually got
people out of their seats to the front of the stage. They opened with one of my
favorites Lucky Seven and kept the momentum going with Pretty Little Lie, One
Horse Town, Six Ways to Sunday and Good One Comin’ On in addition to others.
They sounded terrific and even though the crowd was small, played like they
meant it. A pal who was with me (and seeing them for the first time) said “just
press record…they are really good.” The set was short, maybe 45minutes. There
were calls for “more” and “encore” but they really could not as they had to get
to the red carpet themselves. For sure though, this show helped #spreadthesmoke
and gain them new fans.