Brent Cobb Brings Sold-Out Homecoming Show to Nashville’s Basement East
Brent Cobb sold out Nashville's the Basement East last Thursday (March 28) on the Nashville stop of his Sucker for a Good Time Tour. Taste of Country attended the show and caught up with the Grammy-nominated Americana singer about it in a phone interview on Sunday (March 31) during which he was en route to Georgia, where his son is expected to be born sometime this week.
After regrettably missing the tail end of opener and roots rock artist Adam Hood, we posted up at the far end of the bar behind hundreds who had gathered to hear Cobb’s seamless blend of South Georgia soul and country-rock. He and his three-piece band, made up of Americana Award-nominated drummer Jerry Pentecost, guitarist Mike Harris and bassist Jason Kott, took the stage about ten minutes fashionably late.
They hit the ground running with a high-octane live rendering of “Sucker for a Good Time,” a bluesy track from Cobb’s latest album, Providence Canyon, released in May of 2018. Afterward, Cobb admitted he had a bad case of nerves that night.
“I think it’s that that many people are showing up for me,” Cobb tells Taste Of Country. “I wanna live up to any expectation anybody has of me, of course. And when you play in Nashville, the room is full of super-talented people — everybody’s judging everybody.”
Next, the quartet banged out Cobb’s rollicking portend of hangovers and morning-after regrets, “Morning’s Gonna’ Come,” then “Afternoon in June” and “Diggin’ Holes,” two tunes from his 2016 LP Shine On Rainy Day. Then came “Down Home,” the singer’s cut on his cousin and Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb’s 2016 compilation album, which included songs performed by Chris Stapleton, Zac Brown and Jason Isbell, followed by “Solving Problems,” the opening track of Rainy Day.
The funky tribute to Cobb’s sojourning friend, “Kind of Alabama,” came just before the band’s fiery version of Lynyrd Skynyd’s “Swamp Music” — one of only two covers in their set — and then a long-winded, grungier reworking of “Black Crow,” a tune from Rainy Day. “Let the Rain Come Down” came next, followed by “Traveling Poor Boy” — both upbeat cuts from Rainy Day. The crowd was singing along to a good portion of all of Cobb’s original material.
“This is the first time we’re experiencing crowds of this size,” Cobb says. “So far, we’ve been able to connect with them the same way we always have. I haven’t really changed anything onstage, from songwriter rounds to bars to this. I just tell stories and try not to take it so seriously.”
Next up, he played “Country Bound,” an ode to the South that his father wrote in 1992, followed by “.30-06”, “Shine On, Rainy Day,” and, finally, “Ain’t a Road Too Long.” All in all, it was a full-circle show for the artist, who spent many years plugging away in Nashville obscurity before being able to perform his songs in front of a crowd this size.
“My first gig I ever played in Nashville was at the original Basement,” Cobb recounts. “And to go all the way from the OG Basement to selling out the Beast is just awesome.”
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