First up was Gary Allan, who I'm not really a fan of but I thought put on a good show. I only recognized a couple of the tunes he played, but I was in the minority as it seemed everybody knew hit after hit. He played Nothing On But The Radio, Life Ain't Always Beautiful, Best I Ever Had, Learning How To Bend and his current hit Watching Airplanes just to name a few (since I don't know the names of others). He probably did a 45 minute set that was energetic at times and slowed down to an acoustic, heartfelt crawl at times. It is worth noting that he plays a song by one of my favorite artists, Todd Snider, called Alright Guy, which is pretty much Todd's signature tune. I didn't realize that Gary played this but at least I did know all the words to 1 song.
Next up, after a DJ spun a cool mix of music from Michael Jackson to Lynyrd Skynrd to keep the crowd pumped, was the Aussie Keith Urban. Behind the stage is a probably a 30 foot by 60 foot video screen, easily the biggest I've ever seen at a concert. It was also in high-def and looked really, really sharp. All during the show it was either showing multiple-camera angles of what was happening live or videos and snapshots. Very cool. His stage itself extending out a long narrow walkway/catwalk to about 3/4 of the way to the back of the arena with a larger circular stage area at the end where the whole band could fit. Hovering over this catwalk was a camera that moved in about any way that was needed to give some very unique views of the show, especially when he came out onto the walkway.
So anyway, he comes out to thousands of screams in unison (I didn't scream of course, but I did give it either a hoot or a holler, I'm not sure which) to Once In A Lifetime as the place exploded. He continued to keep everyone happy with a sing-a-long version of Where The Blacktop Ends, Faster Car (complete with a motion sickness inducing racing video on the screen) and major crowd favorite (and also one of mine) Raining On Sunday. The video screen showed a lot of people singing along and couples in embraces and he perfectly sang it along with everyone.He kept things pretty mixed between rockers and ballads and the band actually did a 3-song sit down on the stage at the end of the catwalk to give all the fans on that end of the arena, us included, a really close-up version of the show. He blasted through songs like Days Go By, You're My Better Half, Making Memories of Us, You'll Think of Me and a version of Stupid Boy that clocked in around 9 minutes in which he just tore it up on the guitar. That's one of the things I really like about this guy. He's not standing there holding the guitar for a prop or occasionally playing some chords as rhythm guitarist, he's THE lead guitar player and can really rip, and does often. You can tell he loves it and really plays with emotion. He doesn't get too sloppy and is really technical, evoking something between Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits I thought. I'm not shy at all about saying the guy is a virtuoso guitarist.
Another really cool moment was when he brought the University of Central Arkansas drum line out towards the end of I Told You So and they rocked for about 2 minutes with a really cool percussion finish that had everybody in the place on their feet. You couldn't help but get into the tribal funk.
He played a guitar solo, but instead of just melting the frets he was really just teasing some famous riffs and getting the crowd going. He teased AC/DC's Back In Black, Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama, Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water, Aerosmith's Walk This Way and Joe Walsh's Life Been Good if memory serves me correctly, plus a few others.
He also took a little walk out into the crowd during You Look Good In My Shirt with guitar in hand, while the women screamed and tried to get their hands on him. He stopped by a microphone which his security force had set-up, they were surrounding him the whole time, and you could see women on the big screen lean over and touch him, then stand their with wide-eyes and goofy smiles.
He returned to the stage, again surrounded by security and they seemed to man-handle one guy who got a bit too excited, and sat at the piano and played Got It Right This Time, which he dedicated to his wife, Nicole Kidman.
He left stage for a few minutes as the house lights went down, but returned pretty quickly and played Better Life (I think? Maybe Got It Right This Time was part of the encore... can't remember) and ended up the night with Everybody, before the band took their bow and most left the stage, except for Keith who walked around shaking hands, thanking people and slapping fives with everyone all around the stage who stayed around to touch him.
Somewhere during the set I think I remember hearing Who Wouldn't Want To Be Me and Somebody Like You, but I can't remember all the songs really. I may have missed a few or missed some of the order. But surely you get the picture. He played for just over 2 hours and has so many hits and songs it's tough to keep up.
Great show, great performer, great guitarist... I'd go see him again in a second. Keith Urban is a sensational entertainer... part country artist, part rock star, part pop star. His songs are upbeat and fun and it shows in his live performance. He can sit at the piano and move everyone in the building, or he can tear into a guitar solo and get everyone in the room moving.
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