Turnpike Troubadours and Jason Isbell play first of 2 rare concerts in OKC: 6 highlights

During a break between songs more than halfway through the Turnpike Troubadours’ first night of their two-night home-state arena showcase, Evan Felker shot the fervent fans that filled Paycom Center a grin as wide as the Illinois River.

“We’re the same old band,” the Okemah native assured the ardent Oklahoma City audience.

Although the singer-songwriter’s assurance was technically correct — the beloved Oklahoma Red Dirt outfit was fully assembled, with its talented six-man lineup clearly locked in and eager to play for the Sooner State crowd — the Turnpike Troubadours were arguably better than ever in concert Jan. 19 at Paycom Center.

Any lingering doubts as to the success of the band’s triumphant comeback that started nearly two years ago in their native state were quickly erased as the Troubadours handily transformed the OKC arena into a supersized honky tonk with a 23-song set list packed with familiar favorites and new songs from their excellent 2023 album “A Cat in the Rain.”

Even better — and rare for a show outside a festival lineup — Turnpike brought along Americana star Jason Isbell and his stellar band the 400 Unit to warm up the crowd that braved the chilly arctic cold snap to fill the Paycom Center.

“This is a bunch of people doing real music. I like this. I know that’s what y’all like out here in Oklahoma,” Isbell said during his set.

The four-time Grammy winner wasn’t wrong: Other than some fancy lights and plumes of stage fog, the Friday night show wasn’t much of a visual spectacle. Instead, the spotlight stayed firmly on finely crafted songs, expertly sung and played by passionate performers and the fans who love them.

And American roots music fans have another chance to catch the superlative pairing of the Turnpike Troubadours and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, plus opener Charles Wesley Godwin, in OKC. Tickets are still available for the Saturday, Jan. 20 concert at Paycom Center, where they’ll play Night 2 of the two-night stand.

Here are six highlights of Night 1 of the hotly anticipated concert pairing, followed by their Jan. 19 OKC set lists:

Turnpike Troubadours share fan-favorite tales of Lorrie in OKC concert

Formed in Tahlequah in 2005, the Turnpike Troubadours opened the first of their back-to-back OKC concerts with their heartwarming yarn “The Housefire,” part of the band’s ongoing story-song series featuring fan-favorite character Lorrie and the first-person character Felker often embodies.

The home-state crowd ecstatically revisited the saga of the straught-shooting country girl and her beau Felker has jokingly called “the man with no name” through “Good Lord Lorrie” and “The Mercury.”

“That song’s about a very controversial bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I’ll be doing a residency,” Felker said of the latter, referring to his upcoming Thursday night concert series at the Mercury Lounge.

Arguably one of the Lorrie songs, the finely honed tale “The Bird Hunters” hit the mark as always.

Turnpike Troubadours heat up OKC arena with scorching musicianship

Despite the sub-freezing temperatures outside, the Turnpike Troubadours — Felker on lead vocals, harmonica and guitar, Ryan Engleman on lead guitar, RC Edwards on bass, Kyle Nix on fiddle, Gabe Pearson on drums and Hank Early on steel guitar, banjo, accordion and dobro — heated up the Paycom Center with a scorching display of musicianship.

The Red Dirt rockers played their first home-state headlining arena show at the OKC arena back in autumn 2022, and they seemed perfectly at home as they launched their two-night stand on that familiar terrain.

Watching Engleman prop his foot on strategically positioned traveling case to blaze through solos on “A Tornado Warning” and “Whole Damn Town,” seeing Nix practically set his fiddles aflame on “Shreveport” and “Gin, Smoke, Lies” and witnessing Early continually switch instruments and prove his prowess at every single one never got old.

The sizzling combo of Felker’s harmonica and Nix’s fiddle sparked the crowd to immediately start stomping and clapping along on their fan-favored cover of John Hartford’s “Long Hot Summer Day.”

The energy they generated still smoldered when the Troubadours shifted into a two-song acoustic showcase, with Felker tenderly crooning “Diamonds & Gasoline” accompanied only by Early on dobro and Edwards taking the lead on the pretty ballad “For the Sake (When It Comes to Loving You),” joined by Nix and eventually Engleman, too.

“This is one I wrote for my wife,” Edwards said. “It’s good to be home.”

‘King of Oklahoma’ shares songs written during ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

Like Turnpike, Isbell and his bandmates nimbly veered between old crowd-pleasers and fresh tracks from their acclaimed new albums.

An Alabama native based in Nashville, Isbell shared with the OKC audience that he wrote most of his celebrated 2023 collection "Weathervanes" in 2021 while working in Oklahoma on Martin Scorsese's cinematic epic "Killers of the Flower Moon," in which the singer-songwriter makes his impressive acting debut.

His 75-minute set showcased several songs from the Grammy-nominated album, including the striking addiction ode “King of Oklahoma,” the vivid story-songs ““White Beretta,” “Strawberry Woman” and “Cast Iron Skillet” and the barn-burning Heartland rocker “This Ain’t It.”

The latter featured a thrilling extended guitar duel between Isbell and Audley Freed, who is filling in while 400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden is on paternity leave.

Turnpike Troubadours spotlight songs from new album

Likewise, the Turnpike Troubadours made space in their home-state set for several songs from their comeback album “A Cat in the Rain,” the 10-song studio collection they released in August.

For many fans, it was the first chance they’d had to hear live selections from the long-awaited follow-up to the group's 2017 album "A Long Way from Your Heart.” “A Cat in the Rain” supplied thirsty fans with the first new music the band had released after coming back from its widely publicized “indefinite hiatus” that lasted nearly three years.

Along with the toe-tapping title track, Turnpike featured the soulful ballad “Chipping Mill,” co-written by Edwards and rising Oklahoma singer-songwriter Lance Roark; the heartfelt “Mean Old Sun,” which the Troubadours recently performed on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in their national TV debut; and “Brought Me,” an unabashed country love song that got fans happily crooning along.

Jason Isbell marks 10th anniversary of his ‘Southeastern’ breakthrough

In addition to spotlighting new songs, Isbell honored the 10th anniversary of his 2013 breakthrough album “Southeastern” during the OKC show.

The fans were eager to get in on the celebration, cheerfully wailing along on the bluesy ballad “Stockholm,” the rollicking boot-stomper “Super 8” and his impassioned closer “Cover Me Up.”

Jason Isbell and Turnpike Troubadours pay homage to Oklahoma musicians and fans

In many ways, Friday night’s show was a celebration of Oklahoma music, with Isbell praising Sooner State singer-songwriters John Moreland, John Fullbright and Zach Bryan.

“They’re good people,” Isbell said. “I got a bunch of buddies out here.”

Before launching into the rollicking Oklahoma tale “The Winding Stair Mountain Blues,” Felker paid tribute to a beloved Payne County band.

“It’s a true honor to be up here, ladies and gentlemen. We owe a lot to a lot of the great bands that let us play with ‘em over the years, the Red Dirt Rangers being one of them,” Felker said, noting he spotted the Ranger singer/mandolin player John Cooper in the audience.

“We’ve been at this for a little while now. For those of you who do not know us, we’re the Turnpike Troubadours. But I bet a bunch of people do know us, and I bet a bunch of people have seen us play in places a lot smaller than this, even here in Oklahoma City.”

When the Troubadours closed their set after an hour and 45 minutes with the tuneful ode “Pay No Rent,” it felt like an earnest homage to the home-state fans who have followed them from barrooms all the way to arenas. No encore was needed after that.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit Jan. 19 OKC set list

• “24 Frames”

• “Hope the High Road”

• “Strawberry Woman”

• “Last of My Kind”

• “Super 8”

• “If You Insist”

• “Overseas”

• “Cast Iron Skillet”

• “King of Oklahoma”

• “White Beretta”

• “Stockholm”

• “If We Were Vampires”

• “This Ain’t It”

• “Cover Me Up”

Turnpike Troubadours Jan. 19 OKC set list

• “The Housefire”

• “Every Girl”

• “7 & 7”

• “Before the Devil Knows We’re Dead”

• “1968”

• “Cat in the Rain”

• “Shreveport”

• “Good Lord Lorrie”

• “Gin, Smoke, Lies”

• “The Winding Stair Mountain Blues”

• “Unrung”

• “The Mercury”

• “The Bird Hunters”

• “Brought Me”

• “Mean Old Son”

• “Chipping Mill”

• “A Tornado Warning”

• “Whole Damn Town”

• “Kansas City Southern”

• “Diamonds & Gasoline”

• “For the Sake (When It Comes to Loving You)”

• “Long Hot Summer Days”

• “Pay No Rent”

NIGHT 2: TURNPIKE TROUBADOURS

• With: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.

• Opening act: Charles Wesley Godwin.

• When: 6:30 p.m. Jan. 20. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

• Where: Paycom Center, 100 W Reno.

• Tickets: https://www.paycomcenter.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Turnpike Troubadours and Jason Isbell join forces for first of 2 OKC shows