Georgia’s premier Country music talent promoter and booking agency, Georgia-Country, has added a new venue for its country music artists. The Grand Opening at Craze Tavern (formerly Bogies) last Friday featured one of their many crowd pleasin’ Country artists, The Joe Olds Band.

This was a perfect match for the newly remodeled Sports Bar/Music Hall, which sounded great and had plenty of dance floor for the boot scootin’ line dancers to boogie through the night.  Joe’s stage presence and the band’s energy got the dancing started right off as they kicked out songs by artists like George Strait, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, Alan Jackson and Steve Earl  (just to name a few).  Their authentic Nashville country sound includes lots of guitar –  with two acoustic, a Telecaster lead and especially the pedal steel.  The play between Ivan Duke ‘s lead guitar and Steve Allison’s steel gave each cover the real country feel. Joe gave each band member an opportunity to show off their individual talent with Sonny Fleming on drums and sharing vocals with Eli Odum (bass), Jeff Marcus (acoustic), and Ivan Duke (lead guitar) .  One of my favorite parts of the night was how Joe and Jeff blended verses in their unique medley of Swinging and Livin’ on Tulsa Time.  Other highlights of the night were Ivan’s version of Luke Bryon’s Shake it for Me and Eli singing Bill Withers Ain’t No Sunshine.

You couldn’t help but have a good time and enjoy watching these guys – I had heard they connect with their audience and it was true. Take This Job and Shove It got a whole group of hardworking women up on the dance floor to help them forget about their day at the office.  Along with doing a great job with the cover tunes, Joe played an amazing original called I Wanna Ride that will be out soon on their upcoming CD.

The Joe Olds Band and Georgia-Country let Atlanta fans know they don’t have to go to Nashville for live country music.  For more information on both check out www.joeolds.com and www.georgia-country.com.