MSM 90s: Lightning Crashes, Steve Vickery

8/29/26

By Monica Collier

This year's installment of Muscle Shoals Meets marks the first time I experienced back-to-back surprise moments, friends.

With 1990s music as the MSM theme this go around, it only makes sense that the night was an emotionally-driven nostalgic roller-coaster. The truth is: 90s music was all over the place and had a major identity crisis. It was kind of a messy era in music but in the best way possible. Didn't MSM do a great job of capturing that unique sort of 90s vibe, friends?

Surprise! Steve Vickery performing Live's "Lightning Crashes" followed Cissy Guin killing Melissa Etheridge's "Come to My Window" and it was freaking amazing. Surprise! Just like, "Come to My Window," "Lightning Crashes" is a song I don’t care for at all. Like, at all at all. Surprise! Steve's version, though, was one I was talking about the minute the lights came up. Absolutely phenomenal.

I admit, a few days before we kicked off Muscle Shoals Meets the 90s Mixtape Week, I attended the Fiddleworms and friends main show rehearsal with the Shoals Strings. They only rehearsed the songs with strings but y'all, I knew then this MSM 90s concert was going to be something special. So, no, I didn't see a setlist before the concert but going to that strings rehearsal really whet my appetite for what was to come in the MSM 90s main show.

During rehearsal at the Nutthouse that Sunday, when it came time for Steve to rehearse "Lightning Crashes" with the Shoals Strings, he apologized for being sick. Yeah. He claims he was a little sick but he sounded wonderful to me. I wrote in my notebook, "If this is what he sounds like sick, I can't wait to hear him at 100%."

When I think about Steve's performance of this super dramatic song on that Saturday night at Renaissance Shoals, I get all the goosebumps, friends. How cool is his voice, y'all? I didn't think it was possible but Steve did sound even better that Saturday night than he had in rehearsal a week or so before.

Steve sang "Lightning Crashes" in such a sincere way. He sang it in a way that made me actually feel the lyrics (and message) of the song. I listen to my favorite local radio station, WQLT, a lot during my workday and I usually switch to spinning a record when Live comes on. I have to say, though, the next time I hear "Lightning Crashes," I'll recall Steve's stellar performance and that's a really good thing.

One of the most amazing aspects of Muscle Shoals Meets is the art of the magical artist/song pairings. This fourth performance of the night couldn't have been more perfect. Steve was perfect. The Shoals Strings were perfect. The accompanying visuals were perfect -- thank you, Scott Campbell. The audience was perfect, too. What a great somber but beautifully melodramatic MSM singalong moment.

Perfect.

Stay tuned. More to come.

Dig Worms.

*Photo by Devona Hawkins