Ashton Shepherd at Country In the Woods

Ashton Shepherd is trying her darndest to bring drinkin' and cheatin' songs back to country music's mainstream.

The placid audience at the free Country In the Woods festival in the Kansas City area was having none of it. Great songs like "Takin' Off This Pain" were greeted with stony silence. She only connected with a cover of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Fishin' In the Dark."

















Lonestar was the headliner, and I suspect that many people were just waiting to sing along with "Amazed". Yet I adored Shepherd. She splits the difference between the feel of the early commercial work by fellow Alabama natives Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer.

















I was largely indifferent to opening act Adam Gregory. He seemed stuck to a rigid formula created in a Nashville boardroom. ("Let's find a good-looking guy who's part Jack Ingram and part Keith Urban.")

I had to laugh when he tripped up on the name of a local country radio station. He had thanked their competitor in his introduction to the previous song. Gregory then anxiously and apologetically blurted "I'd like to thank K104." The Q104 staff surely didn't take offense, but it's a drag to see an artist running scared.