Facebook Twitter

Asleep at the Wheel swings into Norman's Sooner Theater

By Kimberly Burk, The Oklahoman | Published: January 5, 2013 | Modified: January 5, 2013 at 12:14 pm

's warm. He's golden. He vibrates.

If it weren't for those red cowboy boots, you would hardly notice Elizabeth McQueen (guitar and vocals) during the first few numbers, sandwiched between grinning steel guitarist Eddie Rivers and Bob Wills-channeling fiddle player Jason Roberts. But then she got her first solo line, and some people in the audience actually gasped.

Her voice is strong and pitch-perfect and stylized just enough to suit the genre, and one man was so enchanted he made a fool of himself after one of her numbers.

New music is a great thing. We want the songwriters to be able to feed their families. But there's something about a concert that makes you want the familiar. Asleep at the Wheel has been singing "Take me Back to Tulsa" for decades. They can do "Miles and Miles of Texas" and "San Antonio Rose" on autopilot. But they played them for us again on Friday night at Sooner Theatre in Norman, and it's like we had never heard those songs before.

More than 40 years down the road, the band still knows what it was born for. Western Swing lives on.

Page 2 of 2