Review: Ashleigh Flynn & the Riveters Throw Live Music Lovers a Lifeline on 'Live From the Blue Moon'

I consider myself a live album enthusiast. If given the choice, I will almost always buy the live album from a band over the studio album or greatest hits collection. I've walked away from artists I likely would have enjoyed on a studio release based on a subpar live album. With one exception (The Beatles, because they're always the one exception), if you can't translate your songs into a live environment, you aren't for me. But even for artists who thrive on their live shows, their live albums aren't always great. Some pull songs from an entire show, cutting the best rendition of individual songs and stitching them back together like Dr. Frankenstein, with the result often being the same lumbering mess as Doc's monster. The best live albums pull from one or two shows and are willing to just let the show be. They keep the flubs, the audience banter, and the raw energy intact. On their new album Live from the Blue Moon, Ashleigh Flynn & the Riveters do just that, capturing a show from the 2019 Oregon Country Fair that is a good example of their live energy.

I've seen Ashleigh Flynn live, unfortunately only once, and reviewed her studio albums in the past. I don't go back to those studio albums that often because, despite the strong songwriting, instrumentation, and production, none of her studio releases grabbed me the way that live show did. She's an artist who needs to be experienced live, especially with The Riveters in tow.

The album's strongest track is “Big Hat, No Cattle.” It was a song that grabbed me on her self-titled release, primarily because I think it could be the official anthem of Nashville's Lower Broad. If you've ever been there, you've seen the guy in this song. He's the one who wears designer jeans, expensive hats, and unscuffed boots, who talks and acts like a cowboy, despite his entire experience having been riding a Metro bus with particularly bad shocks. On the live album, you can hear, almost feel, the smirk as Flynn sings “I got a gun rack and an American flag on the window of the back of this cab. It's an F-150 with mudflaps and silhouettes of...” On the original release it's “tits and ass.” It's changed on the live version and I can't quite make out the words, but it sounds an awful lot like “of girls with Clap” and if that's not the lyric I'm going to pretend it is because I love it.

Another smoker is the album's opening track “How the West was Won.” Ostensibly a biography of “Calamity Jane” Cannary, the larger than life western icon most recently brought to gloriously profane life by Deadwood's Robin Weigert, it becomes an allegory for a woman making her own way in an environment dominated by men. She “had herself a horse, all she needed was a gun.”

Instrumentally, the entire album was strong, with “The Sound of Bells” being the strongest. Starting with a simple acoustic guitar strum, it then brings in an electric guitar jam that is very Dickey Betts-esque in its tone. I'm a sucker for “Jessica” and pretty much and Betts-era Allman Brothers, so I'm totally there.

Unless you're an artist on the level of John Prine, you're probably going to throw a cover or two into your set. It's a way to draw people in with the familiar so they can experience your new to them materials. On Live from the Blue Moon, the band pulls out two energetic ones. The first is a rollicking version of Buck Owens' classic “Tiger by the Tail.” The second is a set-closing blast through Tom Petty's “American Girl.” The Petty cover, particularly, shows off the instrumental talents of the band, with each member putting her own spin on the already near perfect notes from arguably one of the two best backing bands in rock and roll history, The Heartbreakers.

If, like me (and, on a site called Concert Hopper, all of our staff) you're missing live shows like a junkie, Live from the Blue Moon isn't going to quite give you the fix you need. No live album not named Cheap Trick at Budokan ever will. But the album will provide you with at least some of what you're missing. For that alone, it's worth a buy.