CHARLOTTE, N.C. - s4story -- When Charlotte first met Drivin N Cryin in 1989, opening for REM at a sold-out Charlotte Coliseum, few if any of the 23,000 in attendance would have thought they'd be playing at The Visulite 37 years later. Yet, when the band blistered the small concert hall Thursday night, screaming "Looks like we're back again, just when you need a friend," from its new album Crushing Flowers, perhaps only a handful of those who had seen the band along their trail of seasons knew with a smirk or a smile that the band never left, with no fancy polish yet an enduring shine.

With appearances for decades at places like The Pterodactyl Club, the 13 13 Club, and Tremont, all places DNC has outlasted (and add the Coliseum and REM to that outlasted list), and annual though interchangeable dates at The Neighborhood Theater and Visulite, the Atlanta-based band has never forgotten about Charlotte. Last night, on an extended 40th-anniversary tour, DNC's Visulite show was more about perseverance than survival, more of a family picnic than a reunion. There was laughter, there were tears, plenty of sing-alongs, dance-alongs, calm reflection and plenty of food for thought. Oh, and some very, very loud music, only surprising to friends that their fans brought along. Fans already knew.

Lead everything, Kevn Kinney, dressed from head to toe in off-brand black, his style says, "If you want to make a difference, you gotta be different, that's the deal." Over the decades in and out of southern towns and beyond, they've seen the music industry change while they refused to be consumed or discarded. DNC keeps delivering and being asked back because they always clock in for a hard night's work, while others shift from what's popular now to survive another night. And they don't ask for bonuses or overtime pay for the extended set. He introduced Why Don't You Go Around as an ode to Atlanta and Charlotte traffic, though it might have been instructions to all the bands that passed them and faded away before they burned out.

The song says a lot about DNC. They have their own lane, their own speed, and tailgaters can go around.

The same staples like Honeysuckle Blue and Straight to Hell that won over the '89 REM crowd were on full display, though, like always, never the same. The guitar solo in Fly Me Courageous, their troops-embraced commercial hit ("supporting troops is not a political statement. It's a working-class statement"), becomes whatever Kinney feels at that very moment, in real time.

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Kevn is the leader he sang about in With the People near the end. He starts the march on every song, then falls in line to walk with the people, bandmates and fans. Leadership, in his hands, looks less like standing in front and more like pulling everyone forward together. That there is no "I" in team, and that the "I" is suddenly missing in Kevn, doesn't seem like a coincidence.

Also missing were pyrotechnics, backing tracks and a set list taped to the stage floor. They produce one-time, tonight-only sessions without pre-planned production. And, for the same reason you won't stick around to find a roadie with a banged-up order of songs on typing paper, you won't find one in this review. It would tell you what they played, but it wouldn't tell you what happened.

While unpredictable all night, there were familiar faces.

Their original and only-ever bassist, Tim Neilsen, who seems to be aging in reverse, took nonverbal cues from Kevn and never missed a sign all night, from the pace of the song to the room temperature. Although he never knows what's coming night after night, Nielsen has spent his career mastering the art of following the turn before everyone else sees it coming.

Though neither the Kevn guy nor the Tim guide, drummer Dave V. Johnson keeps both marching on. With a drum kit you might find beside a Christmas tree, Johnson, who, depending on the volume necessary for the song, will occasionally invert his drumsticks. He never makes eye contact with the audience and looks at Kevn like a student awaiting the next dose of guidance. He's a calmly intense fighter pilot whose trajectory could change at any second, yet the mission doesn't; and if you really needed a friend, he'd be your best bet.

A defining moment of his role in the band's objective happened at the Neighborhood Theatre almost a year ago. Johnson doesn't do cringeworthy, beer stand break drum solos; his influence flies under the radar. That night, he noticed a crack in a cymbal on his right, affecting his normally flawless sound. Rather than pull a drummer meltdown, he casually turned the cymbal 90 degrees. Same thing every night with the backward drumsticks.

Through the decades, they have toyed with lead guitarists, from Buren Fowler, who passed in 2014, to Sadler Vaden, who went on to Jason Isbell fame and serves as a producer on Crushing Flowers. Last night, it was Aaron Lee Tasjan, a former member and now a solo artist, who looked legitimately thrilled to be back, even for the Visulite night. Yet, he would quietly tell you a secret: Kevn has always been the best guitarist in the band.

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Kevn is also a maestro without a wand. He keeps his eyes closed for a lot of the show. It's not a condition; it's his way of getting the best out of himself by sticking to songs and not putting on a hoodwink show. He keeps things alive with grit and creativity. In an era where artists routinely drop songs as surprises, DNC treats their songs as conversations with fans, even themselves. Their songs survive because they evolve.

One of the newer songs, "Mirror, Mirror," addresses Kevn's relationship with his mother, who is living with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. At its emotional center is a recurring acknowledgment, almost an acceptance of an unspoken apology: "I know you're in there somewhere, sanity and grace." Kinney has always been capable of writing something vulnerable enough to silence a concert hall. More than longevity, relevance and nostalgia, his ability to connect again and again, differently, more meaningfully may be his most remarkable achievement of all. With his unique, inimitable voice, Kevn makes single words like "home" and "song" sound therapeutic.

Peter Buck, the bassist for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band REM, was instrumental in getting them on the Green Tour that introduced Charlotte to the band. He said during his speech inducting Drivin N Cryin into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame that DNC "were his favorite band, every night."

They've never flown on private jets like REM. A tour bus parked outside the Pterodactyl in 1991 was probably the closest to that. Yet, as they lament in an oldie-but-goldie, you can check our tears at the door. In the band's 2014 documentary Scarred but Smarter, Kevn stated, "Drivin N Cryin got exactly what they had coming; fame and not fame, fortune and not fortune."

What they inarguably have are fan loyalty and artist respect. Anna Kinney, Kevn's wife, put together perhaps the ultimate rock and roll love letter, a 100-song interpretation by others of the band's songs and Kevn's songwriting, each with their own original art from Ms. Kinney. It was a surprise 60^th birthday present that featured Darius Rucker, Counting Crows and others. The four-vinyl project Let's Go Dancing is done, while the band is not.

Drivin N Cryin continues to move forward with the same stubborn commitment that built its audience in the first place. Not because the road has been smooth or that the industry rewarded its decisions. Because they keep playing, writing, showing up and stepping up, they take the stage to John Lennon's Working Class Hero, reminding all, including themselves, that "a working-class hero is something to be," then spend the next two hours proving it unmistakably.

It was ravenously refreshing to see a band that never stopped being exactly what it was meant to be. They haven't reached Cher and cockroach levels yet, but they keep reinventing survival, and they will be back again, just when you need a friend, one you can count on, one that will never leave you. And whether it's dancing or crushing flowers, you'll keep coming back for more. Finally, the encore? Like the set list, you can forget it. Their final song, no matter what it is, is the working-class hero's mic drop. The 120 minutes, and not one second wasted, erase the need for one more song.