Back to the regular blog post for this week!
This week I’ll be focusing on the New Zealand country star Keith Urban. Now you might be asking “A country artist from New Zealand?” and I would respond with “I know right?” Urban is quite a rare bird in the fact that his origins as a country singer do not begin in Texas, Georgia, or even the United States for that matter, but rather Australia.
As a birthday gift I was able to see Keith Urban perform in Dallas, Texas on August 17 at the Genexa Energy Pavilion. I had never seen Urban perform before, but I had listened to much of his music over the previous year.
The venue had a mixture of pros and cons, I will try to just focus on one of each. The “pro” of the Genexa Pavilion was that is was a very large venue and could seat up to 20,000 people, so lots of people could enjoy the show. The con about the Genexa Pavilion was that it was a very large venue and could seat up to 20,000 people … For my taste the pavilion might have been a little bit too large. I prefer a location that is closed in by walls and can give an audience a more intimate feeling. However, Keith Urban has a huge fan base, so I understand the necessity for a large venue. More importantly, the band had three large concert jumbotrons that played live video of the performance on the screen, so that way even people on the lawn could see the performance. The band sounded great inside the pavilion; the band came with a huge set of equipment to project their sound to the entire audience.
Absolutely fantastic set list! Keith pulled mainly from his older music at the beginning of the show, and then his more popular and new songs towards the end of the set. My favorite songs from the set were “Somebody Like You” and “Little Bit Of Everything”. “Somebody Like You” is one of my favorite songs written by Keith Urban, because of the awesome banjo intro and outro that this song has. During the live performance Keith and the band took a solid four or five minute solo in the middle of the song where they just jammed out and had a good time as a band. My other favorite song was “Little Bit Of Everything” which is currently Urban’s top song on Spotify. Both songs have a great toe-tapping/foot-stomping on the audience and can get an audience dancing (which both did that night).
Massive audience, but you could feel the electricity and excitement in the air. The audience had a great time; clapping during all of the songs, dancing, singing along to all of the music. After a few songs Keith even invited up a few people to the stage to take photos with him. He also had a couple come up for a proposal! Specifically from the concert I remember one woman who stood a few rows in front of us who was having “too good of a time”. She would get up dance on her chair, dance in the isle, and dance with different people (including my friends). While she might have been embarrassing her husband, my friends and I had a great time observing her.
If you haven’t already been to a country concert I highly recommend you go. The music might not be your thing, but watching the people applaud and sing along with the musician is an experience that you will find in few other genres. The highlights of the night were when Keith asked everyone to take out their smartphones an turn on the lights for one of his songs. Not only did I get a sweet photo from it but I grew closer with the audience as we shared in the experience together.
The other memorable moment was being ten feet away from Keith Urban! Urban and a few members of the band walked down the isle to a secondary stage where he performed five or six songs from his set. It was something that I had never seen an artist do before.
All in all, I had a great night taking my friends with me to see on of my all time favorite country artists.
ArtistExposure 