Country flame burns bright at Bluebird Crossing
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Michel Goff, center, and Broken Spoke, render their version of “Amarillo by Morning,” a 1983 country hit by George Strait, during their show and dance Saturday night at the Bluebird Crossing events center in Quitman.
When it comes to country music, this is the way it used to be.
No light shows, no synthesizers, no fancy hair and fake tattoos, no twangy faux hip-hop raps or showy Eagle-esque guitar solos, no lame love songs to tractors clearly written by Los Angeles hipsters who have never spent a day on one.
Nope. When Michael Goff and Broken Spoke play at their homey little bandstand in Quitman — a former church now called Bluebird Crossing — it’s the real deal, what legendary Nashville tunesmith Harlan Howard famously called “three chords and the truth.”
On the second Saturday of each month, when the band doesn’t have a road date, Goff and his picking partners set up at Bluebird Crossing and play straight-ahead beer-hall country for three hours.
There are some rough edges, as there should be with a little honkey-tonk band from northwest Missouri, but the formula is classic. Guitar, harmonica, bass and drums, and a soulful, barrel-chested singer with leather lungs and a knack for telling a story.
They draw a crowd, about 60 people this past weekend, mostly older folks with a sprinkling of young families.
So except for the occasional “cheatin’ dog” song, this is a thoroughly G-rated affair, with popcorn, soda pop and hot dogs standing in for whiskey and cigarettes. Little girls in princess dresses whirl across the dance floor, and line dancers prance in rough synchronicity to the 1990s Brooks and Dunn hit, “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.”
Eighty years ago, little places like this across the South and Midwest gave birth to modern country music, and the ghosts of Merle Haggard, George Jones, Hank Williams Sr. and Lefty Frizzell would feel right at home at Bluebird Crossing. They may even haunt the place.
For anyone who remembers the small-town taverns, Elks Clubs and Legion halls of the 1960s and 1970s, walking into Bluebird Crossing on a Saturday night while Markham Harris does a very creditable imitation of Luther Perkins’ minimalist guitar solo on “Folsom Prison Blues” is like shifting a John Deere time machine into road gear.
The crowd loves it. They cheer and they clap. Grandparents and small children shimmy and shake as Goff rears his head back and motors into “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow,” Alan Jackson’s two-step paean to the hard-knocks life of an aspiring country crooner.
Jackson, perhaps traditional country’s last great practitioner, recorded the song in 1990, and that’s about as contemporary as it gets at Bluebird Crossing.
Sure, some of Broken Spokes’ songs are newer, but they all have that traditional sound, the hidden, spiritual rhythm of music produced by people who have day jobs, families and fields to plow, who put in a lot of hard hours before cutting loose a little on the weekend.
“An atlas and a coffee cup, five pickers in an old Dodge truck
Headin’ down to Houston for a show on Saturday night.
This overhead is killing me, half the time I sing for free. When the crowd’s into it, Lord, It makes this thing I’m doing seem right …
Chasin’ that neon rainbow, livin’ that honkey-tonk dream.”
Of course, times have changed since 1955 — or 1975 for that matter — and Goff doesn’t pick cotton or mine coal. He’s a schoolteacher and an auctioneer. His guitar player is a dentist.
But the feel is there. To paraphrase Waylon Jennings, yes, Hank did it just this way.
“I started when I was real young,” Goff said, “Nine or 10 years old, playing all the ‘oprys’ around here. I just have a love for it, and I hope my children will have a love for it. Country music is about the things that real people go through. … You can believe in it because you live it.”
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Dancers of all ages were on the floor Saturday night at Bluebird Crossing in Quitman. The hall, a former church, is owned by Michael Goff, who usually plays the venue on the second Saturday of each month with his band, Broken Spoke.
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Line dancers step out to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” Saturday night at the Bluebird Crossing events center in Quitman.
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Fourteen-year-old McKenna Liles performs “When Will I Be Loved” on Saturday while sitting in with Michael Goff and Broken Spoke during a country music show at the Bluebird Crossing events center in Quitman. Liles, who also sings Broadway show tunes as a member of the Maryville Young Players, has a heart for country music and lists Dolly Parton and Carrie Underwood as two of her favorite singers.
