At 8:30, Ram Jam’s “Black Betty’ crunched in through the main speakers, then trailed off as a loop of Mike D’s drum part from the Beasties’ “Sabotage” ensued and a female voice said, “Let’s keep that cracker up here.” Atkins emerged from the blue steam and took the mic for “Take the Back Roads,” perhaps the most fitting song for a concert in south Arkansas in his extensive catalogue. It’s a heavy-sounding song, too, celebrating the appeal of the rural life as refuge from the head-achy city as so many Atkins songs do and indeed as so many pastoral poems have done. It’s a theme whose month is always May and Atkins lyrics evoke vivid images. 

Before the next tune, Atkins told the crowd in Legion Field that he was glad to be in Hope because it had “the best hospitality in the world,” a comment that was to the credit of the many Hope-Hempstead Chamber of Commerce staffers and volunteers who helped see to that hospitality. 

The arcing mountains of sound from the guitarists would surge up from the landscape throughout the evening and at times even take over the show, as when Cameron Pillow and Philip Shouse engaged in a soloing duel that threatened to dislodge the few cirrus clouds from the half-moon Hope sky. 

But Atkins also led the band in a pretty rendition of “Figure Out You,” a ballad calling for delicacy. So the night was not all shimmering rock peaks. It included a gently acoustic “Watching You,” too. 

Although we weren’t treated to a guest turn by Atkins’ brilliant-singing wife Rose Falcon, their four-year-old son Ryder did come out for a chorus of “Watching You,” delivered with disarming confidence and enunciated impeccably.  We were still clapping as he scuttled backstage again. 

Atkins played until after ten. Despite my having put in a day covering as many of the Watermelon Festival’s Saturday events as possible since the 9:30 a.m. Money in the Haystack, I was up for more. As I slowly walked off the field with my hydraulic chair, Atkins was still on-stage autographing shirts, tickets and, as I saw, one lady’s shoe. 

The opening act, Southwest Arkansas’ own Lil Skinny, took the stage at 7:00, just after a spirited introduction by the night’s master of ceremonies Hope Public Schools Superintendent Jonathan Crossley. He provided an hour’s sampler from his rhapsodic folky bluesy songbook with a few covers thrown in.  He and fiddler Ryan Fowler, a highly busy and surrealistic soloist throughout kept a hypnotic hold on the crowd and on me. 

In another demonstration of the prodigious talent Arkansas produces, young singer-guitarist Austin Russell, the day's Watermelon Idol winner from Sardis, played note-perfect renditions of songs by Hank Williams Jr., David Allen Coe and Jamey Johnson to his jan. He accompanied his own jangly, sure-handed playing in a voice certainly influenced by those artists but also possessed of a looming hauntedness which bodes well for his own future as a outlaw artist. 

Again, a show to remember has ended another Watermelon Festival. May there be more such every year. 

Photo Credit: Ethan Houk