Steve Earle and the Dukes, Graham Brazier at the Regent

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

You'd love to be able to say to all those South Island ticket holders left out in the cold on Steve Earle's oversubscribed Christchurch opening night of his New Zealand tour, that hey, it's okay - he wasn't that great.

But if any unlucky mainland fans are reading, stop now. The next few hundred words could turn you from understandably angry to irrationally homicidal.

And the maverick leftist country-rocker sends his regrets.

"Did everybody get in?" he quipped to his Auckland audience early on, wondering aloud on his bad luck and how his first South Island gig - coming after a 13-year gap between New Zealand visits - got him headlines for being too popular.

On this last night of his New Zealand tour, Earle and his powerful band seemed to pull out the stops.

That said, there were spots early where they plodded along like a perfectly good bar band from Tumbleweed County, USA.

Fortunately though, it fired into something compelling soon enough with the gravel-voiced Earle and co pacing the set between power-twang rockers and country pickers.

Add the emotional punch of his sweet if heart-bruised ballads and the resonance of his political lyrics, many from his 2002 album Jerusalem, and it became something very powerful indeed. Especially on the death-row ode Billy Austin, then John Walker's Blues (about "American Taleban" John Walker Lindh) grouped with that album's title track towards the end.

By then, the rock numbers had become mighty muscular things, whether it was the slab-like chords behind Taneytown, or the folk-rock dam-burst of Copperhead Road.

The encores came with Earle howling over a ragged glory cover of Nirvana's Breed and a stomping country-metal take on The Unrepentant.

A night of thrillin' twangin' American music carrying a true rebel yell. Invigorating.

In support, a solo and acoustic Graham Brazier seemed a mite nervous in front of a bigger crowd than he's been used to lately.

But armed with fresh material from his new solo album, his robust voice won through.