It’s a rainy Thursday night in Sydney and Liberty Hall feels more like a back porch in the Deep South than a concert venue. Pokey LaFarge—dapper as ever, almost Elvis-like in his sharp suit, red shirt and slicked-back hair—steps out onto the stage like a time traveller with a suitcase full of new tunes and an old soul. Six years on from his last Australian visit, LaFarge’s return is less a revival than a revelation.
This time, he’s riding high on Rhumba Country, his boldest, most eclectic record yet. Born from a post-pandemic reset and a stretch of soul-searching farm work in Maine, the album fuses calypso, Cuban rhythms, gospel, and Western swing.
The crowd’s decked out in fringe tops, cowboy hats, and defiant pairs of sunglasses despite the weather (it’s bucketing down outside.) DJ Boonge is spinning 45s, not Spotify, and when a woman rushes up to say, “I knew it! This is vinyl, not digital,” you realise: tonight’s a full-blown honky-tonk time warp, and Pokey LaFarge hasn’t even taken the stage yet.
Live, Lafarge’s voice is a thing of lived-in wonder: equal parts preacher, crooner, and wanderer. The band is tight, grooving with a light-footed joy that suits the new material. The old Pokey is still there—part vaudeville showman, part dustbowl drifter—but there’s a deeper gravity to him now. When he sings of redemption, change, and joy, it feels earned.
There’s a raucousness to the room that suggests the audience has been waiting for this kind of musical escape: sweaty, sincere, and weirdly spiritual.
LaFarge will appear in QLD, Adelaide, Perth, Wellington and Auckland next, go HERE for tickets.
Images Deb Pelser
