Kansas City Concert Review

Several times during her 90-minute set at a sold-out Knuckleheads on Friday night, Terri Clark paused to explain her presence in a downtown honky-tonk that holds about 125 people. Clark is a highly decorated country-music veteran who played the big-label game in the 1990s but never quite reached the heights of peers who, artistically, were her equals.

These days, she is independent: running her own label and in charge of her own career, beholden to no one, except, maybe, to Gibson guitars, whose logo is emblazoned on her tour bus. For Friday’s show, she brought a half-dozen or so acoustic guitars and a chair, a sound guy and her own photographer and gave the full house a solo-acoustic show that brimmed with grass-roots warmth and charm.

Her set list showcased tracks off her latest album, “The Long Way Home,” like “If You Want Fire,” “A Million Ways to Run,” “Gypsy Boots” and “Merry Go Round.” Before that one, she used a merry-go-round as a metaphor for her big-label career — the monotonous ride she wanted off of in favor of a path of her own. That career was good to her, thanks to all its Top 40 modern-country hits, and she played several of those: “Better Things to Do,” “I Just Wanna Be Mad,” “No Fear,” “Now That I Found You” and her raucous cover of Warren Zevon’s “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me.”

Clark writes or co-writes most of her material, some of which evokes the writing style of Mary Chapin Carpenter. Most of it translates nicely to the solo-acoustic arrangement. The room was packed with devotees who listened harder to the old stuff than to the new and who sang-along a lot, both when prompted by Clark and on their own.

She peppered the show with stories, jokes and asides, a couple of which were salty. Before “If You Want Fire,” she talked about burning new-love — the kind where you’re doing one of two things: “Both begin with ‘f’ and one of them is ‘fight.’” After a train rumbled by, she did a few impromptu bars of “Folsom Prison” (but didn’t acknowledge it was Johnny Cash’s birthday). And she delivered some advice she’d gotten from her idol, Reba McIntire, about Clark’s need for a better wardrobe and costumes, and then plunked a big black cowboy hat atop her head.

Clark expressed gratitude several times to those who filled the room — for their emotional support and long-time loyalty as much as for their money. (Her after-show Twitter update: “Thanks to everyone in KC- it was just the best- had a blast. Couldn’t get one more body in the place- whoo hoooooo …”)

And though the title of her last big hit was “Girls Lie, Too,” when she said she’s happier with herself and her career then she has been in a long time, it felt like she was telling the truth.

Setlist: This Ole Heart; I Just Wanna Be Mad; If You Want Fire; Empty; That’s How I Feel; Every Time I Cry; No Fear; Poor, Poor Pitiful Me; A Million Ways to Run; What Happens in Vegas (Follows You Home); Merry Go Round; Now That I Found You; Better Things to Do; Sometimes Goodbye. Encore: Take My Time; Gypsy Boots

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Timothy Finn, The Star