It's highly unlikely that the Florida Citrus Commission even knows about, let alone condones, the upcoming five-city Citrus Circuit Tour. But it would definitely be in its best interest if it did. The four acts traveling together as the Citrus Circuit Tour are not only good but they're good for what ails you.
Take Truckstop Coffee, a fourpiece out of Lake Worth. The name alone promises another stretch of highway on the horizon, the asphalt that links our towns together. And their sound reflects it — the band surely plays what sounds like the very roots of the American road. And if that doesn't get you out of the house and into a better frame of mind, well, there may be no cure for whatever it is you've come down with.
Then there is Have Gun Will Travel, a Tampa Bay quintet, whose music evokes both the honky-tonks frequented by a gentleman gunfighter and a barroom where Leonard Cohen might catch some of his cool. Traditionally instrumental and devoutly composed, HCWT is as fulfilling as a family photo album of outlaws.
Then there's Daytona troubadour Lauris Vidal, the brainchild behind this Citrus Circuit Tour. His sound is a blues-soaked throwback to a better time. And then there are the Takers, a Gainesville-spawned sextet that would undoubtedly give just as good on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry as in some dusty juke joint in Anytown, U.S.A.
Admittedly, the quartet of acts that compose the Citrus Circuit Tour are more akin to country than they are to any other form of music. But if the sounds made by the very marrow of our nation's being aren't salve enough for the troubled soul, then perhaps nothing is.
