The Wild Feathers Raise the Ceiling at Sold-Out Ryman Debut

Playing the Ryman for the first time is no doubt a significant moment for any band of a Southern tide, but headlining and selling it out to boot is downright career-defining for a Nashville group. So it was for The Wild Feathers on Saturday night, when their homecoming show distilled six years of hard touring into a single set of polished sing-, dance- and stomp-alongs. It was a heartwarming experience seeing these home-flown heroes rock out songs from both 2013’s The Wild Feathers and this year's Lonely Is a Lifetime to such an engaged and heavy-heeled crowd — the Spin even pumped a few fists here and there ourselves.

At around 9:30 p.m., Feathers frontmen Ricky Young, Joel King and Taylor Burns strode onstage with drummer Ben Dumas and auxiliary keyboardist/guitarist/former Apache Relayman Brett Moore. With abortively repressed grins, Young, King and Burns approached their mics and started belting the a cappella intro to Lifetime down-tempo stomper “Help Me Out” to enthused cheers. 

We couldn’t blame the boys for their obvious initial giddiness and occasional rubbernecking at the wonder of standing in the Mother Church's spotlight. After you've spent years grinding it out at The 5 Spot and clubs like it across the country, it’s got to be pretty damn sweet to see a capacity Ryman light up at the start of your latest album’s single, which is what happened next when the Feathers kicked off the Americana pop banger “Overnight.” Next came the appropriately named “Backwoods Company,” a tune made up of fast-paced bluesy guitar riffs riding on Dumas’ heavy shaker-based beat. The soft love-beseeching “If You Don’t Love Me” followed, then Young proudly addressed the crowd as the band played the watery intro to “Don’t Ask Me To Change”: 

“Pretty cool to say that we’re The Wild Feathers from Nashville, Tennessee," Young bantered. "So many dreams have been made here tonight, so thank you for joining us.”

“Don’t Ask Me” is an operatic self defense anthem that, besides showing off Burns’ killer guitar chops, gave us a taste of his and Young’s magic mix of vocal timbres — hell, Burns sure can bellow on pitch! Boy, Young sure can sang! Together their voices create something uniquely organic in today’s ever-calculated pop-rock praxis.

Happy love ballad “Got It Wrong” was the first big sing-along, prompting high-fives and bro-hugs from some college guys in the front row. At song's end, garbed in blue jeans and a white sports coat, recent touring guitarist Daniel Donato joined the band and added his chops to the mix. At 21 years old, Donato handled himself and his light blue Telecaster with spry aplomb as the band rocketed into “Hard Times,” a soulful-yet-hopeful tune about lacking fun and funds, shredding a dexterous chicken-pickin’ solo that made a Lower Broad honky-tonk of the Ryman. 

Where most of Burns’ guitar fills and solos were carbon-copied from their studio versions, Donato’s were a bit more freewheeling, if not entirely improvised, flowing out of him like a Bellagio fountain of blues licks. From the following slow, shoegaze-y “Sleepers,” to the folky Gram Parsons-indebted “Goodbye Song,” to the poppy, grunge-nodding “Into the Sun,” Donato kept the energy high with choppy guitar fills and high-powered rhythm parts, making his exit just before the band burst into "Happy Again," their joyful ode to longing for good times. At the end of the song Young flung his mic stand to the floor while King got down on his knees to dramatically slap out the song’s fast-paced bassline.

Afterward, Young invited the band’s “brother Feather” and former guitarist Preston Wimberly to help hash out the rest of the set. The next song was fan favorite "Left My Woman" (and fun fact: the first song the Feathers ever wrote together!) — it prompted such a resounding sing-along that the band stopped playing for the first half of the last chorus to let the crowd take over.  

At one point Young said 99 percent of the album “was written on the road when we were trying to figure out how to get back to our wives and girlfriends. So it’s super fitting we get to play this here with you guys.”

With that, the band slid into an emotive rendition of the album’s quiet, slightly eerie and self-reflecting title track. Those front-row college bros hugged each other again. 

“We gotta’ thank Lightning 100 for everything," Young said before "The Ceiling," perhaps the band's best-known song, thanks to some heavy rotation on the local Triple A. "It’s one of the best radio stations in the world.”

Dumas started the song off with some four-on-the-floor kick-drum, and as soon as Wimberly smashed into the opening guitar lick, the crowd lost its collective shit. By the end, everyone was standing, stomping, and clapping. Before the closing number of a two-song encore, Young invited Donato and openers Jamestown Revival (the Austin, Texas Americana rockers’ 10-song set saw a standing ovation; catch them at Exit/In in October) back to the stage for a balls out, 13-man arms-around-your-buddies rendition of The Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends."