The crowd got its first hint of Lisa Lynn’s strength as a singer just a few songs into the set, when the pair sang “Jackson” - a song popularized in duet form by Johnny and June Carter Cash. That story was Flora’s intro to Lisa Lynn’s rendition of “We Belong Together.”
Those included an occasion when Connie Valens asked if she could join them on stage to sing one of her big brother Ritchie’s songs. That was the lead-in to Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” With its opening line - “I hear the train a comin’ rollin’ ’round the bend” - the tune could have served as a kind of theme song for historic Prairie Village, which was celebrating Railroad Days over the weekend.įlora sprinkled in vignettes from the early days of rock-n-roll in his between-song banter, including the group’s own brushes with history. Flora described his father-in-law as an “opinionated man” who believed there were only two kinds of music: “Johnny” and “Cash.” 72), about 40 miles northwest of Watertown, where her parents still run a cow-calf operation and grow corn, beans and wheat. The South Dakota connection to the Minneapolis-based band is actually deeper than that first prison venue. As he told the Lawrence Welk Opera House crowd, the South Dakota State Penitentiary was the first venue the group ever played. The encore number written by Williams was a natural tie to the prison ministry work that Flora does.
Mark Flora (vocals, guitar), his wife Lisa Lynn (vocals, bass) and Matt Alexander (drums) obliged with two more songs from 1950s artists: “I Saw the Light” written by Hank Williams and “Rave On!” made popular by Buddy Holly. Their standing ovation demanded an encore from the trio. ‘There are two kinds of music, ‘Johnny’ and ‘Cash’’Ī near capacity crowd in the 280-seat Lawrence Welk Opera House at Prairie Village rose to its feet at the end of a more than 30-song set by the The Holy Rocka Rollaz Saturday night.