Raleigh
Gretchen Wilson
Alltel Pavilion–If rock critics were a representative sample of the American population, the people’s standard deviation would be choked on irony and the need to tell the common man why he needs higher art. Rockcrit interest in Gretchen Wilson over the past two years is based more on the latter component than the former, hip rag staffers lauding Wilson’s advocacy of “The New Redneck,” a concept so silly and self-interested it can only stem from a writer’s need to proselytize the worth of his own cultural pedestal. Truth is, Wilson represents an age-old strain of country music that’s concerned with older issues and drinking them all away. She does it well, too. That’s not an exclusive concept, nor did “The Old Rednecks”–to which opener Trace Adkins belongs, according to the same critics–ever desert it. The $23.50-42.50 show starts at 7:30 p.m. –Grayson Currin
