The neon signs projected above the stage read "Honky Tonk," "Open," "Beer," "Whiskey" as Blake Shelton began singing “Come Back a Country Boy” at Pinnace Bank Arena on Thursday to kick off his “Back to the Honky Tonk Tour.”
After “Guy With The Girl,” Shelton greeted the crowd of about 10,000 that filled the arena.
“Welcome to the biggest honky tonk in Lincoln, Nebraska,” he said. “I’ve been coming to y’all’s bars for 20 years now, I thought I’d bring my own.
“I know what the weather is out there. You came through ice and snow to be here tonight. I don’t know what’s wrong with you people. Let’s play some country music.”
That’s exactly what Shelton and his six-person band did for 1 hour, 45 minutes running through 23 smartly sequenced songs that hit most of his hits and took him back to the beginning of his career.
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That runs back to “Ol' Red.” His first hit, “Austin,” was accompanied by hilarious Journal Star news items and pictures of Shelton, Gwen Stefani and openers Carly Pearce and, kind of, Jackson Dean from each of the song’s years.
That reworking of the old “show the town you’re in” trope is the best evidence of Shelton’s fresh approach to his show — with a stage designed to create a bunch of front-row bar seats, humor and easy-going connection with the audience.
The moment of the show happened when Pearce appeared on stage and engaged — there’s no other word for it — Shelton in a blow-the-roof-off vocal showdown on “Lonely Tonight.”
Shelton’s reaction — “Holy s***. That’s pretty damned cool. You’re welcome, Lincoln.”
Other high points included his “duet” with a projected Stefani on “Nobody but You,” his latest hit “No Body” and the revved up duo of “Hillbilly Bone” and “Boys ‘Round Here” that launched the entertaining show that had been rehearsed in the arena to its end.
Pearce doesn’t usually introduce “Never Wanted To Be That Girl.” But she had to Thursday, her first big show after a big event.
“I wanted to write a real country song with my friend Ashley McBryde,” she said. “A couple weeks ago, the craziest thing happened, it won a Grammy. Thank you for loving country music, thank you for loving this song. Now I’m going to be Ashley for a minute.”
So began the song that took the best country/duo group Grammy — one of the highlights of the 45-minute set that showed how far Pearce has come from The Single Barrel and why, four years later, she’s poised to be a country superstar.
Establishing her traditional country bona fines with “Dear Miss Loretta,” her tribute to Loretta Lynn, Pearce bounced from hit to hit — contrasting the defiant breakup ballad “Should’ve Known Better” with the countryish love song “Closer To You” from the ’90s, reaching back to her breakthrough “Every Little Thing” and plugging her new songs.
And she did so with confidence, an engaging down-to-earth personality and perfect country-pop style. She’s going to be headlining arenas sooner rather than later.