Friday To-Do: 'A Ride with Bob'
‘A RIDE WITH BOB’
7:30 p.m., Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, Conway. $30-$35.
Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel have made a career out of carrying the torch for the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys (and won nine Grammys along the way). In “A Ride with Bob,” they take their reverence for Wills and the Western Swing music he popularized to a logical culmination: They perform as Wills and the Texas Playboys. "Part memory play, part loving homage, part country concert," the show features 30 actors, dancers and musicians in a musical journey that follows Wills from his early genre-mixing days, making dance music out of pop, jazz and country-string music, to his years of waning popularity, to the reemergence that followed Merle Haggard’s 1970 album tribute, “The Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World.” Anne Rapp, who wrote the screenplays for “Cookie’s Fortune” and “Dr. T. and the Women,” penned the musical, which runs through Sunday.
