38 Special is one of my favorite bands. That’s not a comment many rock fans can or will make.
You see, 38 Special is a band of many contradictions. It has a Van Zant, but not the Van Zant. It is one of the best Southern rock bands, but not the best Southern rock band. It had many chart-topping hits during the heyday, but Southern rock bands don’t have chart-topping hits. 10-minute guitar workouts don’t make the pop charts, just the rock radio charts. Thus, 38 Special probably feels more at home being lumped in with Journey or Foreigner than with the Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd, even though those are the two forebears of the Southern rock movement. These days, the boys make a living playing the state fair and classic rock festival circuit, with the occasional off-gig in some out-of-the-way town like Modesto, where the band played Wednesday night (June 26).

Modesto is not the rock and roll capital of the world. It’s not even the rock and roll capital of the San Joaquin Valley, an area that includes Stockton, Fresno and Lodi, and you know what John Fogerty said about Lodi. It didn’t seem to matter to the band (who once played a gig at an Air Force base 20 miles south of here, in Turlock, of all places) or the crowd that this was a jazz-style dance club (and a nice one), or that it was Wednesday night. Like every other time I’ve ever seen 38 Special, the band played a scorcher.
It was the kind of gig that took a few songs for both the musicians and the fans to figure out what was going on. The band looked genuinely surprised at the reaction of the sold-out (and very drunk) crowd, who packed the strangely effective venue in front of the stage and in the extended balcony that rimmed all four sides of the building. The crowd was shocked to see how good these guys still look and how wonderful the band sounds live, and by the time the fourth song, the classic “Wild Eyed Southern Boys,” had dusted the place up, everyone was on the same page.

The group is still one of the tightest and well-rehearsed acts on the road. Letter perfect renditions of the band’s greatest hits (and a few suprises) were played out over 90 minutes. I’m not always for letter perfect live renditions of the hits, but some bands do it so well, and with 38 Special, it’s all about the music. Even when the group was selling out arenas, the show was a musical tour-de-force and not a Kiss-like theatrical romp. Thus, the boys don’t look like idiots now in a jazz club on a Wednesday night. The six-piece unit, still featuring lead vocalist Donnie Van Zant, vocalist/guitarist Don Barnes and bassist Larry Junstrom, is now augmented on the road by guitarist Danny Chauncey, keyboardist Bobby Capps and drummer Gary Moffatt. Californian Chauncey’s been around since 1988’s Rock and Roll Strategy, while Capps and Moffatt are seasoned touring pros who have beefed up the group’s sound in the past five years. Every time I’ve seen these guys over the years I’ve been amazed at how tight they were, and this night was no exception.

The band is a much better proposition with Barnes fronting, however, no matter how good the Max Carl material was during Barnes’ leave of absence from 1988-94. Barnes writes all the hit songs, and sings them with a sweet voice that very few musicians from the South have ever had. Van Zant has his moments, but Barnes is easily the star of this band, both vocally and on guitar.
Aside from Barnes and the expert musicianship, the setlist was the real highlight on this night. Opening with the same four songs the band has used for the past three tours, “Rockin’ Into the Night” is an effective starter, while “Back Where You Belong,” tends to get the young things going crazy. Other highlights were “The Squeeze,” a rare b-side that was released as a cassette single back in 1995, “If It Will,” a Hank Williams Jr. song destined for a tribute album, the always popular “Fantasy Girl” and the closing medley that shut the set down proper with an epic “Caught Up in You.” The encore was a stormer, with “Chain Lightning” and “Hold on Loosely” leading into “Living in the USA” and a final romp through CCR’s “Traveling Band.”

38 Special won’t win over many more fans these days. It’s the tried and true, stone cold believers who have been with the band since the 80’s (1977 for me) who make up the audience, and every couple of years it’s nice to revisit with these wild eyed southern boys. Regardless of which Van Zant brother is in the band or where the group stands in the echelon of southern rock legends, 38 Special will always be a very special band to me. And that’s the only thing that really matters. –by Dan Wall