Luke Combs lights up nearly 53,000 fans at massive Ford Field show

Luke Combs kicked off the busiest concert year in Ford Field's two-decade history on Saturday with his sold-out, packed-to-the-rafters concert, which squeezed a reported 52,783 fans into the football stadium.

Garth Brooks played to a bigger audience in Feb. 2020, when he brought 70,000-plus fans into the Detroit Lions' home. But that concert was in-the-round, with the stage in the center of the stadium. Among concerts with end-stage configurations, only Kid Rock's 40th birthday bash reportedly had more fans, with an announced crowd of nearly 60,000 revelers crashing that 2011 party.

Whether Rock or Combs had more fans through the doors is immaterial; a Ford Field rep on Sunday said Combs had the edge, according to venue files. Either way, there were a heck of a lot of people in the stadium Saturday and there wasn't room for many more, and the 33-year-old Combs announced his venue attendance record on-stage — sans asterisks — and toasted the accomplishment two-thirds of the way through the evening.

The moment and the evening as a whole served to further solidify Combs' bond with his fans. Over the course of 110 hits-packed minutes, the North Carolina native lit up the football stadium with love songs, beer drinking songs and songs to soundtrack a Saturday night in downtown Detroit. The crowd roared back, making Combs' biggest Motor City headlining engagement to date a solid success all around.

As big time stadium productions go, it was a rather straightforward affair: a huge stage, a catwalk that came out into the crowd, and massive video screens giving everyone in the building an eyeball on the action. But there was no pyro, no B-stage at the back of the stadium, nothing to lift Combs and fly him through the air above fans' heads. It was just songs, delivered powerfully, with Combs occasionally telling the stories of their genesis, all of which fed back into Combs' grounded, everyman persona and narrative. The only production gag was when he shotgunned a Miller Lite, much to the thrill of fans.

Rock star attitude? Nah. Combs sang several songs with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his red Solo Cup, and he wore jeans, a short sleeve button-up shirt and a mesh ball cap. The only hint of flash was the gold watch on his wrist.

A video segment featuring members of Combs' family opened the show, and they talked about how humble he is, and the significant odds he had to overcome to make it in Nashville (he doesn't look like a traditional star, etc.). But Combs has been winning over fans en masse since his debut album was released in 2017, and by 2021 he nabbed Entertainer of the Year from the CMA Awards, a title which he repeated the following year.

It all happened fast, and there was a pandemic thrown in there too, which made his rise seem even faster. (Combs also headlined one of the nights at Faster Horses in 2021.) But he had fans firmly on his side all night long throughout the 26-song show on Saturday, from his opener "Lovin' On You" to covers of songs by Tracy Chapman ("Fast Car") and Ed Sheeran ("Dive") to his signature songs "Beautiful Crazy" and "When It Rains it Pours."

Combs, whose tour schedule is amazingly almost exclusively Saturdays, played with a six-piece band who joined him out on the stage's catwalk for an acoustic run-through of "Better Together." Openers Riley Green and Lainey Wilson accompanied him during "Does to Me" and "Outrunnin' Your Memory," respectively, and they were both back for a show-closing cover of Brooks & Dunn's "Brand New Man."

Combs is touring behind his companion albums "Growing Up" (released in June) and last month's "Gettin' Old" — he skipped the bridge track, the my-bones-are-getting-creaky-but-I-can-still-party anthem "Growin' Up and Gettin' Old" — and he performed a handful of songs from each. But it was the older material that was closest to him, and he told the stories behind "Houston, We Got a Problem" and "She Got the Best of Me" like he was still the struggling artist who wrote them on a wing and a prayer.

He's no longer that person, as he's now headlining stadiums across the country. But key to Combs is his connection with his fans, with himself and with the guy who's still grinding it out and trying to make it, and as long as he can keep those connections in tact, he's going to be just fine.

Saturday's concert was the first on the crowded 2023 docket for Ford Field, which will also host Taylor Swift (June 9 and 10), Morgan Wallen (June 29 and 30), Ed Sheeran (July 15), Beyoncé (July 26) and Metallica (Nov. 10 and 12). It's the most concert activity the stadium has seen in a single calendar year since it opened in 2002.

agraham@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @grahamorama