A Wednesday night in Music City USA, is different from other cities in the US. Where in most cities a Wednesday night tends to be a quiet affair, in Nashville on Wednesday, July 12 it was a loud a raucous night with LA based rockers LA Guns taking over the famed BEast for the night with a packed house in attendance.
The night opened with Nashville based rock band Tuk Smith and the Restless Hearts taking the stage. Having opened for bands such as Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe, this band’s style was a perfect fit for this evening. With their unique blend of an old school rock and roll sound, this band sounded like they would fit on the radio not only in today’s rock scene, but would be perfectly at home during the hey day of when LA Guns was taking over the airwaves in the late 80s and early 90s with the trademark “dirty” sound you expect from the guitars. They played through a set of high energy rock and roll while the crowd rocked along. There were quite a few in attendance who were familiar with the band, and you could catch them singing along to the songs as the evening progressed. They played about a 50 minute set including Girls on the East Side of Town and the title track from their 2022 release Ballad Of A Misspent Youth.
With the crowd primed and ready to go, it was time to welcome the headliners of the evening to the stage. It was already a warm night in the venue, but I knew that it was about to heat up even more, and I wasn’t just thinking about the actual air temperature. The room was packed from front to back, and everyone was eagerly awaiting the band to take the stage. With Ozzy Osbourne’s Diary of a Madman playing over the house sound system, you hear an echoing electric guitar coming from off stage playing along to the guitar riffs. The music is coming from none other than Tracii Guns playing along himself to begin the night. When that song wraps, the rest of the band bursts onto the stage opening with their song Cannonball. It is not hard to see why these guys have remained popular with their fans all these years as they come out and serve a rocking sound that would rival many of the young guys out there today. I have seen LA Guns once before, and they did not disappoint then just as they did not this night. They never slowed down through the entire night, even though as I mentioned earlier, it was VERY warm in the venue. They played through many of the fan favorites as we carried through the night including songs such as Gypsy, Speed, I Wanna Be Your Man and Kiss My Love Goodbye. They also played Diamonds off of their newest release titled Black Diamonds, which was release earlier this year. Serving blistering guitar licks through the night, guitarists Tracii Guns and Ace Von Johnson kept the rock coming through the night. To be perfectly honest, these two musicians have been two of my favorite guitarists to watch live in quite some time. They serve a textbook lesson in how to rock n roll on a nightly basis. Adding in the bass stylings of Johnny Martin, the backbeat on the drums from Shawn Duncan and the vocal performance from Phil Lewis, you have a heavyweight rock mix. After Kiss My Love Goodbye, Tracii leads into the opening guitar riff from AC/DC’s Hells Bells (you know the one) to lead into their song Never Enough. They then Segway into the beginnings of Crystal Eyes before transitioning into probably their most well know song, The Ballad of Jayne. I, along with the entirety of the crowd, sang along with lead singer Phil Lewis as he belts out the ballad and allows the audience to take over for the chorus each time. From time to time you would hear various fans chanting from the crowd for songs that they hadn’t heard yet. They ended the night with a blistering rendition of one of those, the fan favorite Rip and Tear. Saying goodbye to the crowd, the members of the band high-five, wave and dance around the stage as So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music is played over the house sound system and the crowd dances and waves back to them. If you love the hard rock sound from the late 80s and early 90s, do not miss these guys if they are near you. They are out this summer on the Black Diamonds tour making stood all through the US, before wrapping up on August 31 in Pryor, Oklahoma.
