Sound Woes Keep Wynette From Breaking Through

Except for the high-profile Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, country music’s older legends don’t play Southern California too often, and when they do it’s usually a country stronghold like the Crazy Horse in Santa Ana.

So Tammy Wynette’s appearance at the House of Blues on Monday was an occasion, and it was something a little different for the First Lady of Country Music and her audience. The show was arranged not through standard country circuit channels, but by John Roeker, business partner of the First Lady of L.A. Punk Rock, Exene Cervenkova, who joined the San Francisco female punk band Stone Fox in an acoustic opening set.

This cross-pollination put Wynette in front of an atypically young, hip audience--and to their credit they stood by their woman through a somewhat rough set.

Wynette, 55, has been through enough marriages and illnesses (as recently as three years ago she was on life support for five days with a stomach ailment) to fuel a lifetime of bittersweet country music, and in the ‘60s and ‘70s she ranked with Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn as Nashville’s definitive female voice.

On her own and in duets with then-husband George Jones, Wynette set up camp at the top of the charts as she expressed the pain of collapsing relationships in such hits as “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” If she could play a classic country victim, there was also a vein of proto-feminist independence in her persona--despite the flak she took for “Stand by Your Man,” whose origin she recalled at the House of Blues: “We spent 20 minutes writing it and 28 years defending it.”

But too little of the Wynette essence came through during Monday’s hour-plus show, which was done in by a microphone that left her inaudible for much of the evening. Her all-out wail was clear enough to raise chills periodically, but there were no dynamics: When she stepped back into a lighter, intimate register, her voice was lost. The sound problems not only sabotaged Wynette’s vocals but also undermined the effortlessness of the classic sound that carries them into honky-tonk heaven.

Rather than pause and repair things, or make the best of it, the star pressed on but was visibly distracted by the glitches, sounding stiff and nervous in her between-song comments. When she returned to the stage after a four-song spotlight on her band members, she was excessively apologetic for the group’s high volume.

The audience tried to cheer her through the obstacles, and ultimately the synergy of Wynette’s stature and the fans’ support transcended mundane technical difficulties. Let’s hope they can get her back for a makeup date that will show the crowd what they missed.