Stagecoach: Asleep at the Wheel a welcome (and tight) time machine

Immediately and vividly I was taken back to that specific time. I felt like I was in the back of the van halfway to grandma’s house, probably having just poked or needled my little brother in some way that made us have to be separated.

While the nostalgia was washing over me, I almost forgot about my videographer duties, but I was able to capture most of the song on my phone. It was a good thing I did, too, because it was one of only two songs they played during their nine-song set that was on that fateful tape, the other being a cover of “Route 66.”

They left a couple of our family favs on the cutting-room floor like “Choo-choo Ch’Boogie” or the one I liked the best because it was a funny song and even as an 8-year-old I got the joke. It’s a song called “Last Meal” in which a prisoner is on death row and the warden tells him he has one last meal before they put him out of his misery. The prisoner then sneakily proceeds to order several impossible-to-make items: “Two dinosaur eggs over easy, fried in butter, not too greasy. I’ll have mosquito knees with black-eyed peas …” Anyway, you get the idea. The song crescendos before ending with a dessert, “A barbecued brick of chocolate ice cream.”

So I didn’t get to belt that one out, but I was impressed. They sounded sharp, very crisp, tight, not showing their age at all. They played a cover of “All My Exes Live in Texas” which got the now-growing crowd to sing along and put a smile on Benson’s face.