Pat Green makes fans feel good

Pat Green is feeling just like he should, to paraphrase the title of his current country hit, and that's pretty darn good. His new disc, "Cannonball," debuted in second on the charts, and he's hitting the road as usual around the country.

For Green, the road seems to be his lifeline as he amply demonstrated during a likable, hard working set before about 1,000 of the faithful.

Green mixed up the 90-minute show with songs from various periods of his career, which started out in Texas where Green was the leader of the breed of musician who lived and worked only in Texas. But Green's ambitions clearly stretch well beyond the Lone Star State.

Most of the songs tended to cover the well-trodden territory of love. Green doesn't necessarily have anything all that new to add to the subject matter.

So that left him forced to have quality songs and be able to put them over as a performer.

And on both points, Green admirably succeeded. The songs generally tended to be catchy with Texas as a focal point, especially with "Southbound 35" and take Me to the Dancehall" rounding out the regular set. The ingredients to the songs, many written at least in part by Green, were a driving beat, with a lot of fiddle from Brendon Anthony, a steady drum beat courtesy of Justin Pollard, some stinging guitars from Jondan McBride that generally don't overwhelm the music and Green at the fore delivering the songs.

Anthony's fiddle playing was quite important in giving a country feel and a bounce to the Green sound, which tends more towards a country rock/rootsy sound than anything resembling traditional country.

Green did not have the smoothest voice going - he sang with a bit of a nasally drawl, but he was clearly in command of the songs and put them across with enough power and energy. That's easier said and done with uptempo songs like "the driving "A Guy Like Me" and "Baby Doll," but he also excelled on his next single from "Cannonball," "Dixie Lullaby," a ballad about the death of a father. And fortunately the soundboard guy deserved a lot of kudos for keeping Green's vocals well above the musical fray, guiding the songs along.

Green's been out there long enough how to relate to a crowd as well, although it wasn't all that hard given their ability to sing the songs back to Green, and not just catchy choruses either.

There wasn't any type of rocket science or something particularly innovative with Pat Green. But he made up for that by delivering pretty much what he set out to do - a comfortable type of country rock that went down pretty darn easy making everyone feel good.