Young At Heart

Dolly Parton keeps it Pure & Simple with new album and first concert tour in 25 years

Dolly Parton's first tour in 25 years includes several Texas cities.

Dolly Parton/Facebook

Watch out Santa, another consummate giver and joyful spirit is coming to town this December, and she’s bringing lots of musical goodies for young and old Houstonians alike. For the first time in 25 years, Dolly Parton has embarked on a major 60-city tour and she has several Lone Star stops along the way, including her Houston NRG Arena show on December 5. I caught up with the music, television, film, and even Broadway, superstar at a recent tele-press conference for her new Pure & Simple Tour and found out what keeps this 70-year-old music legend young at heart and still dreaming.

The Pure & Simple album and subsequent tour all began purely and simply enough with two pared-down charity concerts in Nashville. She said those intimate shows got such a wonderful response from the audience and such good reviews, they gave her the idea of going back to basics for both a new album and a new tour.

“I always felt my personality was pure and simple, and people seem to relate to my stories and to me and my rags to riches, Cinderella story,” she said. With only a few band members joining her on stage, Dolly will play multiple instruments and the format allows her to make deeper connections with the audience.

A Dolly Connection

With so many cities and so many different sized venues, I had to ask her how she keeps that intimacy in some of the bigger arena stages. Dolly revealed that it all goes back to family and that down home attitude she maintains in her life.

“I always just think of it as I’m having people in my house and the bigger the house the better for the people. I look at it as it doesn’t matter because my show is the same and it seems to work in the bigger arenas as well as the intimate ones,” she explained.

For Dolly, performing is like many other aspects in her life, forming connections.

“I really feel like I connect with the people, and they’re there for me, and I’m there for them. Everyone seems to feel like we’re all in it together, and it doesn’t seem scattered or too big. I’m from a big family and I guess I think of everything as a big family reunion. Sometimes we’re in a smaller area sometimes we’re in a bigger house,” she said.

While Dolly loves hitting the road and performing, she said one of the hardest parts of the process comes before the tour begins, when she’s deciding what songs to sing. “There’s a handful that you really have to do,” she said, listing “9 to 5,” “Islands in the Stream” and “Jolene” as songs that she knew had to go on the set list.

“Then you try to figure out what’s going to be most entertaining. What they call dynamics in a show, the ups and downs and the moods that you set,” she described and then went on to explain that for this tour she also chose some of her favorite songs that would allow her to not just sing but to play. For example, she made sure “Apple Jack” was on the set list so she could play the banjo.

Home for Christmas

While her tour is foremost in her mind, Dolly did reveal her holiday plans for when she takes a break. Of course, she’ll go home to get together with family.

“I think most families have a basic thing that they do, and in our family we get together and sing talk and cook and eat and talk about everybody when they leave the room,” she said laughing, but she also loves to play Santa for her own young nieces and nephews in true Dolly Parton style. She has an elevator in her house they decorate to look like a chimney and she dresses as Santa and delivers presents coming down that chimney elevator.

“I’m a kid myself at Christmas,” she confessed.

A Lifetime of Achievements

In November, Dolly received the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award at the CMA Awards, and she explained this award seemed particularly special to her because it’s named in honor of her good friend, and one of Texas’ favorite sons.

“I love Willie as much as I love anybody outside my own family, and he feels like family to me,” she said adding that she’s especially looking forward to getting to Texas just because that’s where Willie is from. She also has fond memories of Texas visits in the past and even filmed a television movie Wild Texas Wind, which she co-wrote the screenplay for, at the Broken Spoke in Austin.

During her decades in the spotlight, Dolly has received career-spanning awards honoring her many achievements and she’s “proud” of every one of them.

“It just makes you feel like you might have done something right,” she said but then confessed, “Sometimes it does makes you feel like people think you’re old, but I feel like I’m just now getting started. I feel like I know enough now to do really good work. Everyday I have new dreams.”

Dolly Parton's Pure & Simple Tour lands at NRG Arena on December 5. For tickets or more information about her tour, which includes five Texas cities, visit her website.

music concerts

Movie Review

28 Years Later revives zombie franchise for new generation

Photo by Miya Mizuno

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams in 28 Years Later.

The 2000s brought two of the best zombie movies ever made in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. Both films, despite being made by different filmmakers, featured intense action with fast-moving zombies, harrowing sequences, and real emotional connections with their main characters. Now the original director and writer — Danny Boyle and Alex Garland — have returned with the first of a possible three sequels, 28 Years Later.

The rage virus from the first two films that turns humans into insatiable monsters has successfully been contained to the United Kingdom, and one group of survivors has managed to band together on a small island off the coast of England. We’re introduced to the group through Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his wife, Isla (Jodie Comer), and his son, Spike (Alfie Williams).

Isla is sick with an unknown illness, while Jamie is set to take the 12-year-old Spike on his first trip to the mainland to hunt zombies. That trip not only gives Spike an education as to the different types of feral zombies that now populate England, but also a clue that other people have survived there. When he discovers that one of them may be a doctor, he makes plans to take his mother there in hopes of finding a cure for whatever ails her.

While the first two films were notable for their brisk pace that kept the potency of the stories high, Boyle and Garland almost go in the opposite direction for much of this film. The first 90 minutes are relatively slow, with only a couple of sequences that raise the blood pressure. The final half hour or so go a long way toward filling that void, so it’s clear that the filmmakers were biding their time for the story to come in the sequel. A bit more balance in this film would have served them well, though.

What they do show involves some weird, wild stuff that is objectively upsetting, even for fans of the genre. The zombies have evolved in strange ways, giving them a variety of body shapes and abilities to suit the environment in which they live. These storytelling choices may thrill some and have others scratching their heads. Another human character living on his own (played by Ralph Fiennes), appears to have gone the way of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, with a revelation that is bone-chilling.

Boyle, who’s directed everything from Trainspotting to Slumdog Millionaire, doesn’t have a signature style, and he makes some choices in this film that test your patience. He occasionally employs an odd technique in which the film stutters, for a lack of better term. It’s a bit jarring, especially since it doesn’t seem to improve the storytelling. He also inserts scenes from older films involving medieval warfare that emulate the bow-and-arrow weaponry used by characters in this film, but the exact connection he’s trying to make is unclear.

The young Williams has a lot put on his shoulders in the film, and he proves to be up to the task of carrying the story. He isn’t precocious or annoying, instead reacting almost exactly like you’d expect a boy of his age to do when faced with extreme situations. Taylor-Johnson and Comer are good complements for him, drawing him out with their polar opposite characters. Fiennes makes a huge impression in the final act of the film, while Jack O’Connell makes a very brief appearance, teasing a bigger role to come.

It’s difficult to fully judge 28 Years Later because it’s designed to only give you part of the story; part 2, The Bone Temple, is due in 2026, while a third film will follow if the first two do well. This film has its moments and winds up on the positive side of the ledger, but it’s also a frustrating experience that could have used a more stand-alone story.

---

28 Years Later is now playing in theaters.

movies film