Turnpike Troubadours rock Ryman Auditorium, evolve into a timelessly great country act

Oklahoma-born sextet Turnpike Troubadours are thriving in their star-to-icon era renaissance because they're peerless rock stars who, when they casually met a metaphorical devil at the crossroads, secretly accepted the expectations of that moniker -- but chose to tell the world that they play "country music" instead.

It's important to mention that via their 1965 hit "My Generation," The Who finally told the story of the offer the devil makes when he approaches young people at the age of 18 at the crossroads of youth and maturity.

"You won't die before you get old."

Throwing logic out of the window, the idea that 39-year-old lead singer Evan Felker and his bandmates have been assured they could be timelessly great and inspire youthful joy is the sole reason why they were able to survive a myriad of youthful indiscretions, take a half-decade away from the stage and have a Friday night Music City crowd of 2,500 strong stomping their feet, throwing Resistol hats in the air and soaking the Ryman Auditorium's pews in alcohol for two hours.

Before Friday evening's concert, attempting to understand the missing piece required for acts like Zach Bryan to achieve their almost inevitable breakout superstardom required a long conversation that conjured Tyler Childers, John Prine, Willie Nelson and Sturgill Simpson.

However, because they were so busy touring venues, raising hell and saving country music from cutting off its nose to beautify its commerce-driven face, we didn't see that the devil -- an angel fallen from the heavens -- was still at work building Turnpike Troubadours into an unstoppable force.

Three seconds into them playing their near-decade-old single "The Mercury," a boot-scooting boogie overtook a crowd now five years wiser and equally mature as the band onstage. The band and its fans then began what can only be called a confidence check to assure themselves that they were somehow still capable of rabble-rousing as they once did to songs like "Before The Devil Knows We're Dead," "Shreveport" and "Long Hot Summer Day."

Turnpike Troubadours' fanbase hasn't died before they've gotten old, either.

Via the band's Aug. 25-released sixth album, "A Cat In The Rain," the act and their fanbase, in perfect synergy, achieving the ability to attain timeless foot-stomping fun that shakes venues like the country music's Mother Church to their foundation is profound.

"Yeah, if you're going to talk about all those acts making their way up right now, you're not wrong. They've all been listening to us for a decade, right?"

Forty-eight hours before their Ryman performance, Evan Felker's in a joking, jovial mood while speaking with The Tennessean and seated with his fellow Turnpike Troubadours bandmates Hank Early, co-founder R.C. Edwards, Ryan Engleman, Kyle Nix and Gabriel Pearson next to a rooftop pool at downtown Nashville's Four Seasons Hotel.

They're seated on artificial grass, making authentic statements that place Friday night's devilry in an ideal context.

After having their latest album compared to sounding like what would happen if Jerry Jeff Walker joined forces with The Band at the big pink rental house that Bob Dylan recorded at in Woodstock, New York, in the late 1960s, a haunting smile slowly emerges from each of the band members' faces.

"That means we finally hit our band's sound on the nose, apparently," says Felker.

They worked with Grammy-winner Shooter Jennings on the album, which, given Jennings' recent acclaim with fellow country rockers Brandi Carlile and Tanya Tucker, also finally puts the sextet in deserved, rarefied air.

Jennings smartly records the act with loud, multi-layered vocals through amplified speakers. The impact is that songs like "A Cat In The Rain" track "Chipping Mill" sound similarly as powerful on record as they do in a live setting. Half the fun of being a fan of Turnpike Troubadours once was amplifying the band's songs to the heavens like a choir. Now, they're singing, six voices unified, to achieve an effect that is as much their signature as emotive songwriting or virtuoso playing.

"We're no longer a band trying to chase after our tails," says Turnpike's fiddle player Kyle Nix.

"We know exactly how we should sound because we finally trust ourselves and truly appreciate our music's best-defining qualities," Felker adds.

The Turnpike Troubadours lead singer's frankness about his pre and post-sobriety selves is noteworthy.

He's remarried and embraced fatherhood in the past two years but can still revisit material written while mixing wine and song, like the title track of the band's new album.

The song is a rare moment where the headspace of its writer as in radically evolved -- via sobriety -- in its development.

"Finishing 'A Cat In The Rain' allowed me to flex the superpower of retaining empathy and thoughtfulness that sobriety feels like it offers you."

"A halo hanging heavy in another evening's curls, mixed up with the morning in your hair" describes "a country girl who came across a cat out in the rain."

The pinnacle of bittersweet salvation is served on a bed of instruments keyed for dusty dancehall nights.

It's the wildness of rock and roll made palatable for a crowd that prefers country music's more leisurely -- yet still often wild -- pace and vibe.

Regarding how relaxed and focused the feel of Turnpike's latest material and the live show feels, guitarist Ryan Engleman notes that five years away from playing and traveling "constantly" allows returning to the studio and stage to feel like more of a "rare blessing" than a burden.

Insofar as where the band heads best from here, a moment emerges at The Ryman as 2017's "Something To Hold On To" expands into an extended bridge.

Felker, Engleman and R.C. Edwards perform in a three-guitar interplay that errs in an homage to countrified rock acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The crowd's liquored-up energy immediately suggests a demand for "Free Bird" as an encore is possible.

The crowd doesn't mention "Free Bird."

Perhaps, Turnpike's success offers a sense that the genre has evolved to include the band's work as starting the approach to Ronnie van Zant and friends' level of generational standard-bearing excellence.

Recalling another moment from The Tennessean's Wednesday conversation with the band puts that live show moment into its best context.

"Being at a place where the music feels less restrictive comes from all of us being ego-free and mature enough to know -- in life and music -- what works and what doesn't to arrive at the kind of music that we like, foremost," says drummer Gabriel Pearson.

Fiddler Nix doubles down with a statement that feels like it's arrived not two decades late but, instead, right on time.

"What we do as a group of guys finally fits."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Turnpike Troubadours rock Ryman Auditorium, evolve into a timelessly great country act