Mountain Stage is the Whitman Sampler of live performance radio. There's always something you like and usually a lot of things you didn't even know you enjoyed. Such was the case with FestivALL's closing 2008 salvo in what can only be described as a very successful season.

Sunday evening's Mountain Stage presented musical roots that grew from a variety of soils, mixing talented newcomers with proven performers, five acts with distinct aural flavoring.

The show was very understated but totally awesome, which made the Clay Center the perfect setting to showcase the musical nuance that each artist brought to the stage.

It all started with Krista Detor, whose songs centered on overwhelming spirit and underlying despair. With the help of two bandmates, her music's strength was inspiration and interpretation, not precision or proficiency. All of her arrangements were aces high and extremely worthy.

She was much better at singing about angst and anxiety than she was during her one venture into fun and strum, the ditty "Steal Me A Car."

Her set was hauntingly hypnotic.

After a song by Julie Adams and the Mountain Stage band, Andy Davis bounded to the stage and made it his personal property for the next 20 minutes.

His set was filled with stomp and thump and verbal irony, playing tunes that were able to capture the large audience's undivided attention without ever demanding it. One song even featured a percussion section provided by a pre-programmed iPhone.

His were songs with a little bit of a ragged edge and a slight hint of a twisted mentality.

Next to commandeer the spotlight, Priscilla Ahn was the surprise of the evening. Hers was music that had been to the edge and had come back wide-eyed and wise.

Mountain Stage is the Whitman Sampler of live performance radio. There's always something you like and usually a lot of things you didn't even know you enjoyed. Such was the case with FestivALL's closing 2008 salvo in what can only be described as a very successful season.

Sunday evening's Mountain Stage presented musical roots that grew from a variety of soils, mixing talented newcomers with proven performers, five acts with distinct aural flavoring.

The show was very understated but totally awesome, which made the Clay Center the perfect setting to showcase the musical nuance that each artist brought to the stage.

It all started with Krista Detor, whose songs centered on overwhelming spirit and underlying despair. With the help of two bandmates, her music's strength was inspiration and interpretation, not precision or proficiency. All of her arrangements were aces high and extremely worthy.

She was much better at singing about angst and anxiety than she was during her one venture into fun and strum, the ditty "Steal Me A Car."

Her set was hauntingly hypnotic.

After a song by Julie Adams and the Mountain Stage band, Andy Davis bounded to the stage and made it his personal property for the next 20 minutes.

His set was filled with stomp and thump and verbal irony, playing tunes that were able to capture the large audience's undivided attention without ever demanding it. One song even featured a percussion section provided by a pre-programmed iPhone.

His were songs with a little bit of a ragged edge and a slight hint of a twisted mentality.

Next to commandeer the spotlight, Priscilla Ahn was the surprise of the evening. Hers was music that had been to the edge and had come back wide-eyed and wise.

Ahn's departures from the musical norm were subtle but frequent and featured a voice that was velvet, confident, enthusiastic and quite capable of captivating a crowd.

Few in attendance will soon forget Ahn's "Boob Song" and the story that introduced it.

Hayes Carll was the only act of the night that appeared on Mountain Stage before and his songs centered around a moral compass that didn't quite point true north. A southwestern songwriter and Texas troubadour, Carll held the crowd's attention with songs like "Drunken Poets Dream," delving into the lives of no-good, low-down drunks and the women who love them, and the highly memorable "She Left Me For Jesus."

But as good as all the openers were, the evening belonged to Bob's boy, Jakob Dylan and the Gold Mountain Rebels. Focusing on life after the Wallflowers, Dylan has become a premier songwriter.

Dylan is a word weaver, stitching together syllables into sentences into a flowing, unbroken musical line of deep thought. And his voice is way smoother and much more expressive than his daddy.

His three-piece band's playing was both exciting and relaxing, rapid-eye music.

Dylan's six-song set proved to be the ace act of the evening and the tune "Something Good This Way Comes" deserves special mention.

Mountain Stage was certainly the cherry and whipped cream atop my Sunday.

Reach Roger Lilly at criticalm...@yahoo.com