As hard as she rocks, and as much of a rebel as she looks, Morgan Wade is pretty much like you and me. In her recent appearance at the 9:30 Club, she shared that she had eaten of the venue’s delicious chocolate cupcakes and taken a nap that afternoon.
Country-pop gets a lot of criticism from people who favor rougher, rawer forms of the music. And the truth is, a lot of it, especially the bro-country stuff, isn’t very good. But it’s not bad because it’s pop; it’s bad because the writing is terrible, filled with cliches. It’s Mellencamp for meatheads. It’s not that I don’t like pop; I don’t like dumb.
Morgan Wade is absolutely a country-pop singer, and she’s great because she writes excellent songs. She doesn’t traffic in the staid tropes and cliches that dominate what comes out of Nashville, like beer, trucks, and horses. At 9:30 Club on Jan. 29, her songs were more insightful, and they took on deeper, more meaningful subjects. But make no mistake: This is post-Garth country, big and loud with arena rock flourishes and lots of sheen.
Touring behind the recently released Obsessed — her third record since her debut in 2021 — the Floyd, Virginia native and her band rocked the house on this Wednesday night. They opened with “Total Control,” the album’s kick-off track, and they played several more cuts: “Time to Love, Time to Kill,” “Reality,” “Juliet,” and “2AM in London.”
Watch Morgan Wade perform “Time to Live, Time to Kill” live for CMT Studio Sessions on YouTube:
The majority of Morgan’s set, however, was older songs: “Last Cigarette,” “Reckless,” “Losers Look Like Me,” “Matches & Metaphors,” “When the Dirt All Settles,” “Don’t Cry,” “Carry Me Home,” “Mend,” “Take Me Away,” “Run,” “Met You,” and “The Night.” Ever prolific, she tried out a new song, “Roses.” The set also included a medley of Outfield’s “Your Love” and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie Girl.” She finished up with an audience favorite, “Wilder Days.”
There wasn’t a lot of stage banter, but Morgan did exchange dad jokes with one of her bandmates. The bandmate told a joke about peeing in the deep end of the pool, the punchline being that he was standing outside the pool. Not to be outdone, Morgan returned with a joke about sucking mothballs with the punchline, “How’d you get their legs open?” That’s probably not one I can repeat at the office. If you’re reading this, Morgan, here’s a dad joke for you: What happened to the farmer who was attacked by a root vegetable? He got beet.
Before Morgan and her band took the stage, brother duo the Crowe Boys, out of New Orleans, got things going with an opening set. As they shared, they’ve been playing music for a long time, starting out in their family band as kids. After kicking off their set with “Leather Wallet,” they talked about how they lost their mother to cancer at a young age. They followed that with a mashup of their own “Here We Again” and Willie Nelson’s “On The Road Again.” “Simply Complicated,” they explained, was written “kind of as a joke,” but it “ended up being really relatable.” “Bootstraps” was written about “people turning their backs on us.” They also also played “Let Me Alone,” “Good Old Days,” and “Where Did I Go Wrong.”
Playing acoustic, the Crowe Boys were a contrast to the high-energy, pounding delivery of Wade and her band. As much as any country act I’ve seen, Morgan rocks out hard — you could really feel the pulse of the music. And it wasn’t just loud; there was plenty of steak here to go with the sizzle.
Here are some photos of Morgan Wade performing at 9:30 Club on Jan. 29, 2025. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Kyle Gustafson.
Here are some photos of Crowe Boys performing at 9:30 Club on Jan. 29, 2025. Photos copyright and courtesy of Kyle Gustafson.
