CONCORD, N.C. _ Any fan of The Avett Brothers knows the guys didn't have to travel very far to get to Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord on Saturday night because, well, any fan of the Avetts knows they live just a few miles up the road.
Perhaps to underscore this point _ although more likely just because it was apropos, given 1) the automobile-focused setting and 2) the fact that this was a drive-in-style concert _ the show opened with the venue's giant video board displaying a live drone shot of the band literally driving to the show.
As seen on the screen, Seth Avett, Scott Avett, upright bass player Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon all piled into Seth's 1965 Ford Galaxie in Victory Lane and Seth eased the car out onto the oval before proceeding to hit the gas through Turns 1 and 2. He then glided into a spot in the middle of the backstretch, where the foursome got out, removed their masks, and ascended the stairs to the stage.
It was an endearing gimmick to kick off an event that was more than a bit of a gamble: one of the largest public gatherings in the Charlotte area since the start of the pandemic, and easily the most significant exhibition of live music in these parts in six months.
Did it feel "normal"? Hardly. Social distancing certainly dilutes some of the energy that you'd feel at a traditional concert in a traditional venue.
But if this is how it's going to have to be, at least for the time being, I can't imagine drive-in concert-going gets much better than this.
Sure, a little of it was luck. Ideally at an outdoor concert, you don't want to notice the weather other than to say, "Wow, it's a perfect night"; and it was indeed a perfect evening weather-wise Saturday, with temperatures dipping into the 70s, helped by an occasional light breeze.
A lot of it, though, was just-plain solid execution. On everybody's part.
"Everybody" includes the event staff at the speedway, which was a model of efficiency upon entry, upon exit, and in communicating guidelines to fans in the more than 1,500 vehicles. It also includes the fans themselves, who paid $100-$300 per carload and were models of following those guidelines (and who didn't transform into wild animals when it was time to navigate towards the exits, like fans do at, ahem, PNC Music Pavilion after shows in "normal" times).
And, most importantly, it includes The Avett Brothers.
If any rust has formed on the band since its last major live performance _ on a beach outside of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic on March 1 _ it didn't show.
In fact, over the course of two hours and 26 songs, the Avetts seemed to have even more passion and delight than usual as they played a set that represented every segment of their oeuvre, from the first track off their first CD ("Pretty Girl From Matthews" from 2002's "Country Was") to three cuts featured on brand-new album "The Third Gleam" ("Victory," "Untitled #4," "I Go to My Heart").
They copped to having more nerves than usual, too.
"We're really happy to be here," Scott told the crowd five songs in, before adding: "But I'm pretty nervous, too."
"After that little half-lap around the track I'm not nervous anymore," Seth said. "I'm still a little nervous, but not as nervous as I was before that little half-lap around the track."
"Now look," he continued. "I know that everybody's seen different times lately, and we know that a lot of people have gone through really hard times in the past months. We've even lost people. Very special people. And we're here tonight just to say that we don't want to lose any of y'all. We're so glad you're here _ that we haven't lost you. ...
"More important, we don't want you to lose your joy, and we hope that we can share some joy tonight."
Joyous moments abounded on Saturday night, though in some cases they manifested differently than they would at a traditional Avett Brothers show.
For instance, during the raucous crowd-pleaser "Talk of Indolence" (from 2006's "Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions"), instead of the thunderous foot-stomping you'd hear at an arena or amphitheater show, you could hear the thunk of palms slamming against the roofs of pickup trucks and see vehicles being deliberately rocked back and forth.
On this night, Seth _ who, at 40, is four years younger than Scott _ served as the de facto frontman, and as such provided most of the banter and did all the hamming around with the lyrics.
For sweet 2007 ballad "Go to Sleep," he elicited approving cheers upon punctuating "Well I wish things were different, true, and deep / But everything that's so shallow is everything about me / If only I could just take all my money and leave" with "I hope the people out in their cars will understand" (instead of "I hope the people on the ground will understand").
Later, on his 2003 ode to reckless driving, "In the Curve" (an acoustic solo), he put emphasis on Concord as he otherwise-softly crooned, "And now we're just talking / We're hitchhiking walking / We'll see you in Concord tonight." Then he got even louder whoops when he changed the final refrain to "We'll see you (pause) in thebeautifulstateofNorthCarolina tonight."
But while those bonus lyrics got the crowd fired up, those are pretty standard playing-to-the-crowd gimmicks. Meanwhile, it's actually the words that the brothers didn't have to change that resonated the most in this strange time.
In "High Steppin'," for instance: "And there in the dark if you can try to see the light / In the most pitch black shape of the loneliest shadow / Well then you ought to sleep well / 'Cause there's hope for sure."
Or in "Locked Up: "So I can roam, so I can bounce / So I can roam out of this town / I can't be locked up like this, I can't be locked up like this / I can't be locked up this way, oh, no, I can't be locked up like this."
Songwriting has always been one of the Avetts' key strengths; as a result, the drive-in format accentuated it nicely _ by bringing the sound directly into your personal space. The speedway didn't pipe the audio from the show through its PA system and the band didn't set up speakers near the stage specifically to encourage people to stay with their vehicles.
That meant the source of the audio was right next to us, and that meant the audio was far cleaner and clearer than what you'd get out of a show at, say Bojangles' Coliseum (where the Avetts perform New Year's Eve shows) or PNC Music Pavilion (where they played in 2018 when they opened for Willie Nelson).
The video at the show couldn't have been beaten by much, either. Our group was fortunate to be just nine car-rows back from the stage, directly in front, but even so, without the aid of binoculars the band members looked to be about a centimeter tall. So we spent almost the entire time looking at the 200-foot-by-80-foot video board, which _ while it's now 10 years old and in need of some minor repairs _ remains a technological marvel just in sheer size.
And getting back to that just-plain-solid execution, that goes for the production team, too. In part because the performance was also being simulcast to fans sitting at home (I'm told more than 9,000 paid for the pay-per-view privilege), a camera crew that included a roving drone gave the visual component of the show the slick look of a concert film.
Pretty amazing, considering the Avetts told us before the show that they were going with a bare-bones crew in the interest of social distancing and safety. (They also typically do big live shows with three additional touring musicians, but for this one just kept it to themselves along with the exquisitely talented string section of Kwon and Crawford.)
"Instead of trying to play to the scale of a big room or a big venue, we'll just stay intimate, you know, stay with the songs," Scott told the Observer last week. "The reality is the speedway is too massive to try to fill with your personality."
Yet, on Saturday night, their personality shined through the darkness as the slightly nervous veterans of thousands of live shows tried to make conversation with a field full of people standing in pickup-truck beds, popping out of sunroofs, and sitting inside the trunks of SUVs.
"I have to say that looking out here at this incredible space with all you beautiful folks out here in front of us," Seth said, "it's hard not to think about growing up and driving past this place so often and never imagining that we could ever _ that it would ever make sense for us to play music here. ... Coming to car shows with Scott and our dad, and walking around and just getting baked _ "
Here he earned a good laugh from fans, without realizing why _ he meant "by the sun"; many in the crowd, for a second, thought he was referring to, um, a "higher" purpose.
"Somehow Scott always making dad so angry," Seth continued.
"And dad's out there," Scott interjected.
"And dad's out there, somewhere," Seth said. This time, he was hyper-aware of the fact that what was said could be misconstrued.
"He's still alive," he clarified. "He's actually here. ... I mean, as far as we know. We saw him this morning. ... We saw him alive."
And suddenly, the massive speedway was filled with his personality.
Two months ago, I went to the drive-in and watched a prerecorded concert by Garth Brooks in a lot full of about 800 cars. The show was overly rehearsed, overly polished, and because the singer wasn't really there and couldn't really interact with the crowd, it felt flat. It fell flat, for me.
I wrote then that if this is what the future of "concert-going" looks like, to go ahead and count me out.
For obvious reasons, Saturday night was so much different. So much better.
For one night in the middle of the summer of 2020 _ in the middle of what I hope is the worst year we ever have to collectively experience in our lifetimes _ we as fans of live music (and, particularly, as fans of The Avett Brothers) were gifted with two hours that came closer to making us feel like things were right with the world than we've felt in months.
We're not there yet.
But, hopefully, we're on our way.
THE AVETT BROTHERS' SETLIST
1. "Ain't No Man"
2. "Denouncing November Blue (Uneasy Writer)"
3. "Living of Love"
4. "Go to Sleep"
5. "Talk on Indolence"
6. "Victory"
7. "I Wish I Was"
8. "Distraction #74"
9. "Will You Return?"
10. "Shame"
11. "High Steppin'"
12. "I and Love and You"
13. "Locked Up"
14. "Murder in the City"
15. "Untitled #4"
16. "In the Curve"
17. "I Go to My Heart"
18. "Paranoia in B-Flat Major"
19. "Live and Die"
20. "Satan Pulls the Strings"
21. "Laundry Room"
22. "The Fall"
23. "We Americans"
24. "Pretty Girl From Matthews"
25. "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise"
26. "No Hard Feelings"
