Music triggers memory. So, the long gone Philly venue that inevitably came to my mind during Kacey Musgraves’ “Middle of Nowhere” tour stop at Xfinity Mobile Arena in South Philly on Friday was the Valley Forge Music Fair.
My head is spinning just thinking about it.
Why? Because just as was the case at the Devon venue where I saw legends like George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Ray Charles, Musgraves staged her show in support of a superb new return-to-country album giving her tour its name in the round.
And not only in the round, but also — just as at the Music Fair, which closed in 1996 and was located on a site where home improvement retailer Floor & Decor now stands — with a spinning stage.
Listening to Musgraves’ music can be mildly trippy . Going back to “Follow Your Arrow,” from her 2013 debut Same Trailer, Different Park, the East Texas native who uses @SpaceyKacey as a social media handle has espoused a you-do-you philosophy.
That song is the foundation of Musgraves’ arena-sized following, and her significant role in making country cool for younger audiences who might be turned off by too much twang or homilies about small towns, pickup trucks, and beer.
Instead, Musgraves opened the door wide to the LGBTQ community on “Follow Your Arrow,” which was the penultimate song in a sparkling, consistently pleasing set. The song suggests fans “kiss lots of boys, or kiss lots of girls, if that’s something you’re into” and advises taking a toke or two “when the straight and narrow gets a little too straight.”
No weed smoke was sniffable from where I sat. But the sense of strange things happening was nonetheless in the air; with the stage and video screen above encircling it moving clockwise, then abruptly moving in the opposite direction.
Also notably odd was the faux roadhouse building constructed behind the stage from which Musgraves made her initial entrance, walking through the crowd over a floor strewn with hay. It remained otherwise unused.
More memorable was how Musgraves chose to present “Rhinestoned,” a terrific tune about stepping out behind the roadhouse for a smoke in hopes of taking the sting out of a breakup.
“Is every one having a good time?” she asked, adding coyly: “Would you go so far to say you are having a ball?” With that, a double disco ball appeared over in the anatomically correct shape of a pair of testicles.
Conveniently, the mirrored object was built with space for Musgraves to take a seat within it as she was lifted above the stage. “The is my grandma’s favorite part of the show,” she quipped, then rather remarkably managed to maintain the emotional thrust of the song, singing “Ooh, let’s put a little sparkle on / Ooh, until the heartache and sadness is gone.”
The moving stage and aerial scrotum made for clever — dare I say ballsy? — strategy by an artist who is more mellowed out than dynamic in performance.
“Thunderstruck” by AC/DC — the Australian hard rock vets who will be across the street at the Linc on Sept. 29 — played during the entrance countdown.
Nothing nearly so raucous followed in the 22-song set to come, as Musgraves was backed by a subtle and understated band that included steel guitar and accordion, spicing up a Tex-Mex vibe in songs like “Uncertain, Texas” and the Texas Tornados cover “(Hey Baby) ¿Que Pasó?”
But if Musgraves is somewhat of a static performer — she moved with such deliberation that her hair never seemed to move beneath her black cowboy hat — that’s OK, because her fans aren’t coming to see the sort of aerobic display expected at most outsized pop concerts.
Instead — and refreshingly — it’s all about the songs. Musgraves’ strength is in her writing, which is sharply focused in Middle of Nowhere tunes like “Horses and Divorces” and “Loneliest Girl” that settle contentedly into mid-30s singledom and convey the satisfaction of making peace with oneself as middle age approaches.
Musgraves’ crossover from country to pop was highly successful — 2018’s Golden Hour was named Grammy album of the year. But Middle of Nowhere is as satisfying as it is in part because after wandering away from the music she grew up on, it feels like a homecoming.
“The bones of country music are really in my heart,” she said, while thanking her fans for a decade plus of loyalty. “Whenever you strip it down to its beautiful basic form, it’s a genre that is built on stories about real people, and just real hearts, real life stuff. And that’s what inspires me the most.”
Two unexpected things happened — or didn’t — over the course of the evening.
First, after singing a spooky “I Believe In Ghosts” — about cowardly guys and Irish goodbyes — Musgraves broke out in a snippet of “Here Comes the Sixers,” the snappy theme song of the team for whom LeBron James will soon be dribbling on the very spot she was standing.
“I don’t know why I know this song,” she said, before leading the crowd in a “10, 9, 8 … 76ers,” singalong, confessing that “I don’t know [much] about sports.” (Turns out, she has a history with the song — though why is a mystery — as my colleague Emily Bloch explained in 2024.)
Second, the show included no tribute to Dolly Parton, or even mention of the beloved country great who died last month. In her first two shows after Parton’s death, in Boston and in New York, Musgraves sang her own “Rainbow” plus a Parton cover — “Here You Come Again” one night, “9 to 5” the other.
“It’s already hard to navigate these times right now and when we lose a matriarch like that,” Musgraves said of Parton during the first of her two shows at Madison Square Garden. “It’s the closest thing we’ve ever had to royalty … I definitely would not be able to stand up here and do what I do if it hadn’t been for Dolly Parton.”
During her second show in New York last week, however, Musgraves cut the Parton tribute, as she did again in Philly on Friday night.
It was a disappointing missed opportunity for a collective expression of grief, but perhaps Musgraves feels the pain too keenly to revisit it night after night. Instead, she stuck to the set list closing the show with a lively cover of George Strait’s “All My Ex’s Live In Texas,” complete with a Lone Star State flag hung from the rafters.
Flatland Cavalry, the Lubbock, Texas, country sextet, opened the show with an agreeable mix of fiddle and steel guitar tunes punched up with a rock and roll backbeat. Singing songs from its new album Work of Heart, the band displayed the influence of fellow Texans Strait and Robert Earl Keen.
Leader Cleto Cordero got the crowd’s attention by claiming he’s always been an Eagles fan despite growing up in Cowboys country, and the band delivered a tasteful cover of Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light.”
But as well as they went over, there was one clear reminder that the band were second fiddle on the bill: The stage didn’t spin for them.
