Just five days after I moved from Nashville, Tennessee to Greenville, South Carolina I experienced an all out Southern Rock night at a really cool venue in Greer, South Carolina called the Spinning Jenny. Greer is a small town just outside of Greenville that is a really picturesque town with a really laid-back vibe. The Spinning Jenny is a venue that, from what I understand, began as a roller skating rink many years ago. The floor is all wood just like in a gymnasium and the ceiling has that classic tin “look” and is lit by chandeliers. At one end is a nice sized concert stage and this night Blackfoot owned that stage! It was my first Southern Rock experience living in that part of the South!
Opening the show that evening were to really talented bands. The first band is from Spartanburg, South Carolina called Peacemaker. The second band was led by a Greenville blues guitar shredder Shane Pruitt with The Shane Pruitt Band. Peacemaker was made up of a classic Southern Rock lineup with a singer, drummer, keyboardist, bassist and three guitarists! I’m glad the stage was big enough to handle this seven piece band! Peacemaker really set the scene for the entire evening. The three guitarists in this group are all really talented and all had their moments for some great Southern shredding which I really enjoyed! Check out the video for their song, “Cajun Woman” below for a get a feel for how this show kicked off!
Up next was the Shane Pruitt Band. Shane Pruitt is a Blues/Rock guitarist that plays with pure emotion. The band consists of some very talented musicians with keys, bass, drums and guitar. Straight forward in-your-face killer guitar playing made for some great images. Shane can really jam on some slide guitar playing as well. This band also comes from the Greenville/Spartanburg area and have seemingly been together for a very long time. In a search for material I found a great collection of videos spanning the past 12+ years. To give you a taste for what my images “sound” like check out the video below.
Blackfoot have been a band that has always been there along with bands like Lynryrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet for me. There is a look and sound that simply embodies Southern Rock and Blackfoot are the quintessential Southern Rock band. According to singer, Kenny Lawrence an original founding member, Ricky Medlocke (who is in Lynyrd Skynyrd) assembled this current band line up to carry on the Blackfoot music tradition. Kenny added stories throughout the show that detailed their relationship with Lynyrd Skynyrd and even showed how members of Skynyrd signed the inside of his hat a number of years ago. That relationship between these two bands goes back a long way and I really appreciated his touching tribute to the Skynyrd members who had passed away in a plane crash in 1977.
Kenny Lawrence is a really charismatic frontman. You can just see the passion in his performance and hear it in the power in his voice. Along with Kenny they have Dave Somerville laying down solid beats on the drums, Chief Spires rocking out on the bass, and Stuart Mcconnell and Drew Spencer trading some very serious guitar duties. The set list was a history lesson of the classic band and included some songs that the original lineup had never played live according to Kenny Lawrence. This was a real treat for the die hard fans in the crowd that evening. This venue didn’t make it easy for photography but the band made it easy to get great images. I appreciated their energetic stage performance and their obvious love for what they do. They played great and sounded great. I also really liked when Stuart and Drew came together for a harmony guitar rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. These two guitarists certainly rounded out the evening for killer guitar playing. The final two songs, “Highway Song” and “Train, Train” featured some incendiary guitar playing by both of these axe men. It was at that point that I simply put my camera down and just took in the energy of their playing. I’d like to personally thank Chief and Stuart for giving me the the opportunity to photograph the entire show. No three song limit here which ended up getting me a good variety of images to share with y’all.
Blackfoot Setlist:
1. Gimme Gimme
2. Baby Blue
3. Road Fever
4. In The Night
5. Got a Line
6. Fox Chase
7. Left Turn
8. Pay My Dues
9. On The Hunt
10. Wishing Well
11. Paying For It
12. Queenie
13. Too Hard To Handle
14. National Anthem
15. Highway Song
16. Train, Train
Peacemaker Online:
Shane Pruitt Band Online:
Blackfoot Online:
Scott Diussa is a photographer, guitarist, bassist, videographer and audio engineer based in the Nashville, Tennessee area. Scott has been photographing concerts since 1994 and has a degree in commercial photography. You can follow Scott on Instagram at @sdiussa. www.scottdiussa.com
