Wednesday 25th June 2025

New Century Hall, Manchester, England

It’s a new song, the glittering centrepiece of the Turnpike Troubadours’ recently-released album The Price of Admission, but it sounds like a dyed-in-the-wool classic already. “Don’t take it personal,” Evan Felker sings from the stage, “the world don’t turn around you. Hold on to the moment like it’s heaven passing through.”

It’s the lot of the roots and country music fan in England that we don’t often get to listen to our favourite artists as frequently as our American cousins. Tomorrow night I will make the pilgrimage down to London to hear Kassi Valazza for her second of just two UK dates; in a week’s time I get the opportunity to see Nick Shoulders, another favourite, for the first time in almost three years. Tonight in Manchester is the first time the Turnpike Troubadours have played in England since the pandemic and their subsequent glorious revival as a band in 2022. The Colter Wall songs ‘Evangelina’, ‘For a Long While’ and ‘Thirteen Silver Dollars’ play from the speakers of the New Century Hall tonight, reminding me that there are still some artists I yearn to see live even once.

And this is a lot we accept without complaint. We know the world doesn’t turn around us. We know that England is not bountiful hunting ground for country musicians, and though there are enough of us here who are willing game, we’re used to feeding on the aftergrass. We don’t take it personal. Because when they do come, these artists, they often come in strong like stormclouds, making up for lost time. And because one of the not-so-secret advantages of being a country music fan in the UK or Europe is that you get to see them in smaller venues.

As much as I know the afore-mentioned Kassi Valazza and Nick Shoulders deserve to play for much larger crowds, I can selfishly enjoy the intimacy of hearing them amongst audiences of a few dozen in small pubs and bars and churches. And while tonight sees a few hundred enter the New Century Hall to see the Turnpike Troubadours – I don’t think the venue even sells out – to see these guys in the States you’d have to pack yourself into a crowd that runs well into the thousands.

The first Oklahoman I hear tonight isn’t Evan Felker or one of the other Troubadours, but a high school principal I meet in the queue outside. We talk – as one must – of the differences between Britain and America, and one thing we agree on is that we’re privileged to hear Turnpike tonight in a room of just a few hundred people. Such is the lot of the English country fan that I consider the New Century Hall a large venue, and this a large crowd, whereas it must look miniscule to the travelling Americans like my Oklahoman friend. He has come in from the Zach Bryan show in Ireland; a journey across the Irish Sea is not one I would take casually, but it’s a mere hop, skip and a jump for a man used to the vast distances of the Great Plains.

This difference between Britain and America is not only to the advantage of the English fans tonight, but also seems to energise the band. When Turnpike take the stage it’s to a smaller crowd than they’ve become used to, but no less fervent. After the fourth song, the beloved ‘Good Lord Lorrie’, Evan seems taken aback. “You guys are entirely too kind,” he says. It must be quite a feeling to hear your songs sung back at you, and while that’s something Turnpike have become familiar with, this time they’ve travelled across an ocean and the singers among the crowd are foreigners (give or take the odd American principal). And still they know all the lines.

Opening with ‘The Bird Hunters’ and thundering through ‘Every Girl’ and ‘Before the Devil Knows We’re Dead’, the band are clearly already enjoying themselves. By the time we reach ‘Good Lord Lorrie’, everyone in the room – both on stage and floor – is aware we’re in the middle of a special night. In such moments it feels like there’s no better place to be, that Evan Felker was wrong and the world does indeed revolve around you. “Sing it with me,” Evan says before the chorus of ‘Good Lord Lorrie’. He grins, showing a line of pearly whites. He already knows he didn’t need to ask.

With the band given their head, a raucous crowd tries to seize control of the reins. Lusty shouts for song requests pepper the interludes between songs throughout the night. “We’ll play it,” Evan says. “Don’t worry, we’ll play all the good ones.” All of them? Impossible. Turnpike are one of those bands with a rich and durable back catalogue, and Evan Felker stands out as one of the most sophisticated and literary songwriters of our era, with songs that are layered and enigmatic enough to warrant the sort of analysis that is normally reserved for the likes of Dylan. ‘A Cat in the Rain’, perhaps inspired by the Hemingway story of the same name and one of my favourites, is nowhere to be found tonight. Nor is ‘Pipe Bomb Dream’.

Nevertheless, the band gives it a damn good try, and it’s a testament to their wealth of songs that everyone in the crowd may well have a different favourite, from the masculine singalong that accompanies ‘7&7’ and ‘Heaven Passing Through’ or the female Beatlemaniac shriek that greets ‘Whole Damn Town’ and ‘The Housefire’. ‘Shreveport’? “I don’t know the last time anyone requested ‘Shreveport’,” Evan says. “You guys spend too much of your hard-earned money to ask us to play songs we don’t even know.” But they play it anyway – impeccably.

While they play “all the good ones” as Evan promises, and their second album, Diamonds & Gasoline, is the most-represented album tonight, it needs to be emphasised that this is no legacy band resting on the songwriting laurels of yesteryear. There are three songs from the new album and all of them – ‘On the Red River’, ‘Be Here’ and the afore-mentioned ‘Heaven Passing Through’ – fit in seamlessly among their more-established counterparts, as does ‘Mean Old Sun’, the only song from the A Cat in the Rain album. It would no doubt both gratify and exasperate the band to learn I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t hear more of the new stuff; a testament to the quality of those songs while also being a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” when it comes to crafting a setlist.

Evan Felker is the central figure tonight, the singer-songwriter statuesque with his ten-gallon hat behind his Gibson acoustic guitar. But Turnpike are very much a band. Not only do they provide a wave of gorgeous harmonies to many of tonight’s songs, but every member gets his own chance to shine. Kyle Nix is closest to my side of the stage, and I get a front-row view of the distinctive searing fiddle he provides to each of tonight’s songs, drawing whoops from the crowd as he plays a coda to ‘Be Here’.

Nix often trades lines with Ryan Engleman’s electric guitar, with Engleman also providing some particularly rowdy guitar on ‘Gin, Smoke, Lies’. Supplementing them is Hank Early who moves between a variety of instruments, whether that’s the pedal steel used to great effect in ‘On the Red River’, the banjo of ‘Mean Old Sun’ or the Hohner accordion on ‘Be Here’. Gabriel Pearson’s drums crash through ‘A Tornado Warning’ and provide a steady beat throughout, while bassist R. C. Edwards has the honour of taking the mike himself for the self-penned ‘For the Sake of Loving You’.

But Rooster’s loving call to his wife is not the only time Evan shares his mike. For the following song, he invites Noeline Hofmann back to the stage. One of tonight’s two support acts, Noeline is fully kitted out in a rhinestone suit and hat and had previously delivered a well-received set of honky-tonkin’ with her own five-piece band, including ‘Purple Gas’, ‘August’ and a cover of the Johnny Cash song ‘Big River’. Now she joins Turnpike in a cover of John Hartford’s ‘Long Hot Summer Day’. Her own mike is dead, so she moves to use Evan’s while he steps back and slaps his thigh in time with the music.

Between the six men of Turnpike and the five-piece band who backed Noeline, musical troubadours abound, and such has been the effusive goodwill between floor and stage that the night has had the feel of a sort of travelling revue or barn-dance. That’s before we even mention J.R. Carroll, the opening act, who brought slide player Read Connolly with him for a strong set that included ‘Waiting’, ‘Hometown Hero’ and ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’. J.R. also includes a cover of the Oasis song ‘Half the World Away’. It fits him like a glove – but the Manchester crowd didn’t need such a fillip in order to be won over. They’ve been locked in since the very start. Considering I’ve previously had cause to criticise my hometown crowd when a gig has been ruined, it’s only fair that I remark upon this tonight. It’s one of the best audiences I’ve had the privilege to be part of.

Evan Felker seems to recognise it too. Shouted requests for ‘Pay No Rent’ are immediately followed by an exquisitely-delivered version of ‘Pay No Rent’ from the band. I’m sure every smitten audience feels this way, but it does feel like they don’t want to leave the stage, don’t want to lose this goodwill. These are the sort of nights they must enjoy being musicians. Evan wants more. He gestures off-stage for the time – there’s an 11 p.m. curfew – and raises seven fingers for confirmation. It’s 10:53 p.m.

“Ok, we’ve got time for one more song,” he says. The band huddle as they decide what to play. The crowd shouts out various songs, proving my earlier point about the wealth of favourites fans find in their catalogue. The band break apart. “We’re gonna play ‘1968’,” Evan says, to cheers.

And for one final song, as Turnpike play and Evan sings of “a dark-haired girl in a Cadillac”, the world seems to revolve around the few hundred people in the room. Another moment worth holding on to. Another piece of heaven passing through.

Setlist:

(all songs written by Evan Felker, unless noted)

  1. The Bird Hunters (from The Turnpike Troubadours)
  2. Every Girl (Felker/John Fullbright) (from Diamonds & Gasoline)
  3. Before the Devil Knows We’re Dead (Felker/R.C. Edwards) (from Goodbye Normal Street)
  4. Good Lord Lorrie (from Goodbye Normal Street)
  5. A Tornado Warning (from A Long Way from Your Heart)
  6. Kansas City Southern (Edwards) (from Diamonds & Gasoline)
  7. On the Red River (Felker/Ketch Secor) (from The Price of Admission)
  8. Be Here (from The Price of Admission)
  9. Mean Old Sun (from A Cat in the Rain)
  10. 7&7 (from Diamonds & Gasoline)
  11. Shreveport (from Diamonds & Gasoline)
  12. Heaven Passing Through (from The Price of Admission)
  13. Gin, Smoke, Lies (from Goodbye Normal Street)
  14. The Mercury (from The Turnpike Troubadours)
  15. Unrung (from A Long Way from Your Heart)
  16. Whole Damn Town (from Diamonds & Gasoline)
  17. Diamonds & Gasoline (from Diamonds & Gasoline)
  18. For the Sake of Loving You (Edwards) (unreleased)
  19. Long Hot Summer Day (John Hartford) (from Diamonds & Gasoline)
  20. The Housefire (from A Long Way from Your Heart)
  21. Pay No Rent (Felker/Fullbright) (from A Long Way from Your Heart)
  22. 1968 (from Diamonds & Gasoline)

My other concert reviews can be found here.

My fiction writing can be found here.