If Red Dirt country is your thing — or you’ve never heard the term and want to find out why it has such a following — Jason Boland & The Stragglers play The Blue Note in Columbia on Thursday, July 23. Doors at 7, show at 8, all ages, with Autumn Ragland opening.
The band has been at this a long time, and the reviews follow them around for a reason. The venue’s own write-up leans on outside critics to make the case, and it’s a fair one: the New York Times has called Boland “one of the country scene’s most multidimensional songwriters,” per The Blue Note’s event page. Their sound blends country with rock, punk, bluegrass, and folk — the band’s own description of the Red Dirt scene they come out of — and the venue describes their most recent album as raw, exhilarating, bold and muscular. That’s a lot of adjectives for one band, which is usually a good sign live.
Good to know before you go: The Blue Note is a cashless venue, and there’s a Rock Box upgrade if you want better seats and amenities — both per the venue’s own event listing. Tickets run through Ticketmaster.
Getting there
The venue’s page doesn’t publish parking guidance, so we won’t invent any — it’s a downtown Columbia show (17 N. 9th Street), so expect the usual mix of street parking and nearby garages, and get there early on a weeknight if you want to walk in without circling the block. If you’re driving in from Rocheport or Boonville, you’re on I-70 through the ongoing Boonville-to-Rocheport reconstruction, which has intermittent lane closures most weeks right now — nothing that should change your plans for a Thursday night, just worth padding your drive time.
This is a preview — the show hasn’t happened yet.