Kurt Lee Wheeler and the Lathemtown Poets’ Society at Canton Theater March 27, 2022

The South often gets a bad rap, and certainly much of our history and its legacy isn’t pretty. But there is macro-level southern, and then there is micro-level southern, and the micro-level is what Kurt Lee Wheeler’s music is all about.

I had reviewed Kurt’s album and had heard each of the songs many times through my headphones. Music is not meant to be listened to in solitude, however, and so I jumped at the opportunity to hear Kurt with the Lathemtown Poets’ Society at the Canton Theater on Saturday night.

The house was packed with a multigenerational crowd, who were mostly attentive, polite, and enthusiastic. The ones who weren’t got to deal with the lady next to me who went upstairs and firmly reminded them of their manners.

Mitchell Phillips opened the show with his tender melodies and then Kurt played songs from his album - already good listening, but even better with the additions to the band: harmonies from Jennifer Walker Puckett and Raquel Rae, Adam Higgins on keys, Drew Lawson on bass, David Williams on drums, and, notably, Steven Cunningham on lead and steel guitar, as well as mandolin. Like the album, this show was clearly designed, directed, and rehearsed to flow seamlessly and to allow each band member/guest to do what he/she did best. There are subtleties that take a performance from good to excellent, and most of those can be attributed to leadership skills, which Kurt clearly has. 

Kurt is a storyteller, and most importantly, he is sincere. He threaded the songs together with his stories, even tearing up talking about his family’s five-generation legacy that inspired the song Cherokee County. The crowd was on its feet for much of the show, and he had clearly struck some chords, so to speak, in the hearts and minds of the longtime family and friends who were there, while creating a feeling of community for those who were not (yet).  I half-expected to see fried chicken, peach cobbler, and sweet tea offered up at the end to welcome us newbies to the group.

Many of Kurt’s songs deal with faith, in one form or another, and my favorite part of the show were the three gospel song sing-alongs at the end, especially the extended guitar jams that amplified the messages and made them the band’s own. We were all singing along, many with their hands in the air, feeling good and celebrating the simple gifts that create beauty in our lives.  

Kurt Lee Wheeler’s music is a compendium of family roots and faith-based values, his message soaring through the heart like a red-tailed hawk in a blue spring sky. Paradoxically, it is the personal nature of the songs that hits you in the gut with the truths about life that we need to remember and preserve.  

That’s the communal experience I sensed throughout the show and that’s what made it something to remember. What it means to be “southern,” on the micro-level, anyway, is to celebrate faith and family and to keep it going through the next generation. Talented music-storytellers, like Kurt, help us to do that.