Keith Urban @ EntertainmentCentre, Adelaide (08/04/11)

Tue 12th Apr, 2011 in Gig Reviews

I’m generally not a great fan of country music but somewhere along the way, the music of Keith Urban found its way onto my iPod and has somehow managed to keep on the playlist while other acts have dropped off to make room on my hard drive. Since I have now accepted the fact that I actually like the country rock sound produced by Keith Urban quite a bit, I had to catch the man performing live. As a huge fan of predominantly hard rock music, I, like many other rock music fans, tend to make the ultimate judgement of an artist’s worth after seeing them live – if a good rock recording artist can’t impress in front of an audience, they instantly lose a lot of appeal with me.

Opening the show for Mr. Urban, was Nashville’s Lady Antebellum. Their set was a nice warm up for the headliner as they went down really well with the large crowd already inside the Entertainment Centre. They had most of the room moving in their seats as their music was a similar style of toe- tapping country rock to Keith Urban and a lot of the audience seemed to be familiar with their songs as a lot of the country music fans in attendance were singing along for a lot of their set.

By the time Keith hit the stage, the crowd were warmed up and ready to go.
Right from the start of the set, I could tell that Keith Urban was going to impress. The band sounded great, they all seemed to have a lot of chemistry together and Keith, as well as the band in general, had a lot of charisma which filled the large Entertainment Centre stage quite nicely. As a rock fan, this show had a lot of appeal, even for rock fans who are anti-country music. There are no cheesy country clichés where Keith Urban is concerned. There were no cowboy hats to be seen and no twangy yodel-style country vocals here at all. In fact, I would say that if you missed Bon Jovi when they were in Australia recently (missing Adelaide), this show would have been a nice substitute. That was the kind of vibe in the room tonight. In fact, Bon Jovi are more country than Keith Urban nowadays anyway.

One of the highlights from the set for me was when Keith disappeared from the main stage and reappeared on a small stage right in the middle of the arena to do a few songs in front of the crowd who were closer to the back of the room. In particular, Keith’s big hit Once in a Lifetime sounded great as a big sing-along number from the middle of the room, although the country fans don’t seem to sing as loud as the rock ones. During all of the crowd participation moments, there was a noticeable lack of volume from the crowd which made singing along a little embarrassing since you could be heard all too easily by everyone around you if you sang too loud. Yes, this was a problem for me!

With Keith’s return to the main stage, the band’s energy kicked in again as the crowd’s focus returned to the front of the room once again. Another highlight of the night for me came when Keith introduced the band. In turn, as they were introduced, Keith’s two guitarists and his bassist stepped up to the mic, one after the other and showed that they also had the vocal skills to front the band if they wanted. After a few more up-tempo country rock tunes and a nice acoustic version of Cold Chisel’s Flame Trees as an encore, the high energy set ended with an explosion of confetti, leaving the packed Entertainment Centre buzzing as the lights came on and everybody filed out of the arena. A year or two ago I would have grimaced at the thought of being at a gig even remotely connected to country music but this show was about as close as it gets to a good old fashioned, fun, rock arena show as you can get in this day and age. While you still couldn’t call me a country music fan, I now am definitely a Keith Urban fan.