In what might be considered a country music version of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, singers Joe Diffie, Sammy Kershaw, and Aaron Tippin are currently on what they’re calling the Roots and Boots tour…and they’re bringing it to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation this Sunday…playing in the Prairie Wind Casino at 7:00.
Diffie…whose dozen #1 hits include If the Devil Danced in Empty Pockets, Pickup Man, and Third Rock From the Sun…they’ve been having a lot of fun, but admits the idea of the three of them coming together wasn’t theirs.
He says they all have the same booking agency and while each of them was looking for something different to do, someone at the agency suggested touring and singing together.
In addition to having three headliners working together, the Roots and Boots tour features Diffie, Kershaw, and Tippin working acoustically. He says both aspects…being part of a team instead of a lone wolf and using the softer acoustic sound…have been a lot of fun.
Diffie recently re-recorded 20 of his biggest hits into a CD titled The Ultimate Collection. He says there were a couple of reasons he decided to redo them instead of just re-releasing the original versions.
One dealt strictly with a business reason: he would own the new recordings and have more control over their use.
Another was to eliminate a few aspects of the originals he thinks are dated, such as a heavy use of reverberation on his songs from the early part of the 90s.
Diffie says he didn’t know if he could catch “the magic” that made the songs hits originally, but thinks the result was a good updating that’s a good representation of his hits.
As for what fans can expect Sunday night at the Roots and Boots concert at the Prairie Wind Casino, Diffie says good music and good fun with he, Tippin, and Kershaw on stage together with a lot of comradery.
Ticket prices for Sunday’s concert are $20, $30, and $40.
We talk to Joe Diffie:
