The southern rock band Black Stone Cherry from Kentucky is about to release a brand new record in April called 'Kentucky'. They probably thought that the best marketing for a new record is, is to give a preview of it on a big tour. They could be right about this and a lot of people came to the venue today to see, not only the headliner of the evening, but also Toseland.

While Toseland came on stage, the venue wasn't that filled up yet, but really the band didn't seem to care about that. They gave it all they had and tried to fire up the crowd, like a good support-act does. It is quite strange to see James Toseland sing in this band if you're into motorsport. He competed in the MotoGP and Superbike and did that pretty well also. Nevertheless as a vocalist the crowd didn't get much to complain either. The song 'Renegade' will be stuck in quite some heads in the next couple of days. A decent warm-up for the headliner of the evening, but nothing extraordinary.

Beginning with a huge part of the song 'Pony' by Ginuwine isn't really the thing you should expect on such a rock evening. Nevertheless that is what Black Stone Cherry did. When they shut down this lapdance song, the band immediatley0 started with 'Me And Mary Jane'. This would be only one of the few newer songs since the band would mostly play songs from the first three records, which in my opinion are the best also. The sound wasn't perfectly mixed since the bass was too loud and you could bareley hear both guitars the first few songs. This was fixed quite fast on the other hand and the energy from the stage was amazing. It isn't very weird that the band knows how to play together since this line-up is still the same as when they formed in 2001. After the strong first song the set continued in the same style with 'Rain Wizard', 'Blind Man' and 'In My Blood'. Not only older songs were played on this nice evening, also two songs from the upcoming album were. 'In Our Dreams' was performed before the drum solo, where the drummer injured himself, and 'The Rambler' was played after. It was a great preview on the soon to-be-released record.

Furthermore songs as 'Soul Creek', Things My Father Said', 'Maybe Someday', 'White Thrash Millionaire' and 'Blame It On The Boom Boom' weren't skipped in the setlist either this time. The setlist came to an end way quicker than everybody expected and the band left the stage. But of course they came back to the stage for an encore. They started with 'Lonely Train' and that was followed up by the last song of the evening, a tribute to Lemmy with 'Ace Of Spades'. Although the evening came to an end quite early, the crowd didn't seem to be bored at any time during this set. The band gave it all and although lead vocalist Chris didn't reach all of his notes, it was still an almost flawless performance with lots of energy.

Two bands so quite a short evening, but I think this was enough for the crowd either. Good to see that Black Stone Cherry is back and give away a show this well! I can't wait to see them on a festival again.