At Last: Keith Urban Starts a New Tour in Cincinnati!

FINALLY!! The Light the Fuse Tour begins!  Not quite a “regular” tour since it starts with a long list of summer festivals that aren’t quite as friendly to avid fans and don’t offer such things as catwalks, but still a tour after a long Keith dry spell.

Since I wanted to be at the opening show, my cheapest flight option was to go to Louisville and drive Up to Cincinnati. I squeezed in a bit of the Louisville “Urban Bourbon Trail” and a visit to Lilly’s, a nice bistro, on Wednesday night. Thursday morning I headed to Cincinnati and used Roadfood.com to pick out a local diner offering the Cincy specialty goetta (tasty) but even better was the advise I got on the backroads route to Riverbend, avoiding all the interstate construction mess.

Gosh it was damn hot in Cincy!! 99 when I headed to the show, with a heat index way up in the 100’s. (Keith makes it hot enough without the weather packing such a wallop!). Even though I got a decent parking spot in one of the Riverbend lot, what seemed like a mile-long walk to the Music Center was torture in the sweltering weather. Everyone was just dripping with sweat. I could hardly pay attention to Dustin Lynch’s energetic performance because sweat was dripping into my eyes, rolling down my back and chest! Some desperate fans who had brought signs to hold up, gave up and tore them into fourths to use as fans, and those who had fans flapped them most of the evening. (This does not bode well for the upcoming concerts which are even further south!)

Luckily I got a little more comfortable after sitting still for a bit, so I thoroughly enjoyed Little Big Town’s set. Here is a sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAZCi2MIftc

There was a very short break between Dustin and LBT since not much had to be altered in the stage set up. There was a much longer break before Keith came on since LBT had a fair amount of staging that had to be removed. This break may shorten as the roadcrew gets uses to the breakdown and set up.

The Light the Fuse Tour features a triangular bank of lights above the stage and, initially, a silvery curtain at the back of the stage. As the roadcrew finally finished their preparations, the interim music volume cranked up. I told myself to pay attention to what song signaled the show was actually going to begin, but then didn’t quite follow through. It may have been the song “Pressure”. In any case, without any other fanfare, Keith took the audience by surprise by suddenly walked out on stage by himself!! With his banjo!! And starts plucking out a beautiful melody which quickly turned into quite a banjo rocker. It was such a surprise that I only caught a bit of it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtUHpl7Z9Wc 

 In about 30 seconds the other guys joined him in rocking the house mightily, with their instrumental lasting almost 2 minutes. Then, with little or no pause they moved into Long Hot Summer (and certainly the Hot was appropriate to the occasion!).

Keith was wearing a dark short sleeved button up shirt which appeared to be of a stretchy teeshirt like material – wonder if that will be the garb du tour? I don’t know if this will be specific to this venueor not , but  there was no center stage microphone! Keith spent most of the night at a microphone in front of the right side (his left) of the audience, with just 2 or 3 trips to the corresponding microphone in front of the left audience. (Unfortunately I was on the left so did not always have a good view around the tall heads in front of me). I did not really get a chance to locate the cameramen for the evening – maybe they had to be to the right for some reason and so he sang there to allow filming. There was no overhead camera team like the last tour – that may be impossible in these summer venues – so there is definitely less “camera coverage” of the performance at this time. 

About 30 seconds into Long Hot Summer the silvery curtains dropped to reveal the big video screen, with 5 tall panels each showing Keith playing  : ). The display changed thoughout the show – sometimes  there was a full screen view rather than panels, sometimes multiple rectangles each showing one of the guys. I probably missed much of what went on on the screen when instead I was watching Keith himself.  In the last chorus of LHS Keith had the audience the “uh-uh-ah, uh-uh-ah-ah-ah-ah” part, which we did to his enjoyment.  Next up was Sweet Thing with Keith shouting out a big “My-oh-my mama!” for emphasis. Then, a surprise in terms of song order, I Told You So, with a return of Keith’s “Space, space, space, space..” echo after the first line which made him giggle at himself. He through in several “You know it Ohio!” and “You want to sing it Cincinnati?”’s to please the crowd, and finished with “I won’t say it baby……. I can’t say it baby………. But I told you so!!” before the big ending.  Here is some of it (sorry about the heads): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiBc5mDouyY   Notice Keith has a bit of a moustache!

There are new intros, outros or transitions to the old songs so sometimes we didn’t know what was coming next – in this case Stupid Boy was next – great as always. But I was a bit surprised that the Stupid Boy guitar solo was really about the only extended guitar solo of the night. There were a few other shorter playful guitar segments, but no other shredding of his guitar. BTW there appear to be several new guitars in use – an interestingly shaped snazzy white guitar caught my attention.

It was only after these first 4 songs that Keith stopped to greet the audience, joking “It’s a little bit chilly tonight!” After calling attention to the fact that they chose Cincinnati for the opening night of the Light the Fuse Tour, he confessed “I’m a little bit nervous, but when we came out and started playing you guys made us feel right at home, so now I’m alright.”  He asked for a round of applause for Dustin and then for Little Big Town  and made a joke about their new song “Sharpnado” (rather than Tornado), saying he heard he’d get 50 buck for including a Samsung Sapphire reference (at the time I had no idea what he was talking about, but looked it up).  He joked that everyone in the crowd had their (singing) “Red Solo Cups” and went on to greet each area of the audience.  While he was talking he leaned over to turn on a stage edge fan to blow on him, then said (as his hair was blowing in its breeze) “I feel like Shakira”  : )  but then caught himself, “Well, I don’t ‘feel’ like Shakira…”   He explained that they were planning to mix it up a little – old songs and a few new songs from the new album coming out Sept 10. (I’m sure he said Sept 10, although I had heard Sept 12 earlier.)

So next we were treated to a brand new song “Even the Stars Fall For You”! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co-Bde3XEQw

Next up was You Gonna Fly. Then Keith brought out a stool and sang a touching Without You, preceded by a lovely guitar introduction.

This tour Chris was the first band member to be introduced, with just a very short drum demo. The last of the band introductions (Brian’s) would not occur until the encore!

Then a big guitar intro to Kiss a Girl, a big “Are you with us?” from Keith and out walks Dustin Lynch to sing along on this song (he took the second verse, changing the tune a bit to avoid the high notes, and sang with Keith on the choruses. And a surprise finish to KAG: red and white streamers burst over the audience!!

Perhaps the streamers were meant, in part, as a distraction – because at this point Keith hopped off the stage and headed up the left hand aisle (unfortunately 10 seats away from me), leaving the roofed area of this venue to a stage set up at the beginning of the lawn area. I only had the videocam view but it appeared to be a somewhat bigger platform than he used last tour. Unfortunately there were no cameras following his walk through the audience to or from that platform. To our surprise Keith went into an oldie but goodie song from the Who , Won’t Get Fooled Again, singing:

We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again

I’m always intrigued by his little “extra” song choices!  This excerpt then merged into Days Go By.

I had to catch this satellite stage portion from the black and white videos on the big screen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01f7CvSgi1c

“We’ve only got today”, in turn, turned into Jerry’s introduction. I did not recognize his song excerpt and it had no portion for audience participation like last tour. Maybe it will ring a bell next time.

The second full song performed on the satellite stage was a beautiful, slow, sincere rendition of Making Memories of Us and then the final song out there was Better Life. He then signed and gave away his guitar before making his way back to stage. We couldn’t see him, but he must have kept his microphone because he sang a little ditty of “everybody sing along” and a bunch of “yeah-yeah-yeahs” during his return. Once up on stage he led a “Yeah-yeah-yeah” echo round before completing a bit of a guitar solo and a big finish ending to Better Life.  The lights dimmed during our applause and when they came back on Keith was seated in a chair above Chris and his drums to sing a sometimes melancholy, sometimes angry and powerful You’ll Think of Me, with a plaintive “on with life (but no upraised fist)”. It was a chill giving performance!!

Then the single from the new album, Little Bit of Everything, complete with fun background images, disco ball and a sparkling sun at appropriate points in the song. Perfect concert song!

Who Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me, as usual, spurred great audience participation and included “singing a Little Big Town song to me” this year. It was also the vehicle for introducing Danny Rader, who sang a chorus of this song (instead of American Girl), sounding ever so much like Tom Petty.

Somebody Like You was also a big crowd pleaser. In the middle Keith joked that “It’s cooling down now – the temperature has plummeted down to the nineties!” and led a couple echo rounds – first some “hey hey” – “whoa hos”, then  some complex scat-like do-do-do’s in different patterns, then he began the A-B-C’s but broke up laughing. Somebody Like You also had a big finish – with white confetti strips shooting out over the audience.  Keith and the guys left the stage and the applause, whistles and screams went on and on (longer than usual, probably so the guys could wipe off the sweat for a bit).

When Keith finally returned to stage he was seated behind a piano  (Yay!!) with a tall candelabra type light on it. He thanked us for our applause and said “You guys are still here!!” He sang a slow, beautiful Tonight I Want to Cry with very expressive piano accompaniment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOvoavMfb0M

Then the final band member introduction (during the encore!) – Brian sang the same AC/DC Long Way to the Top segment as last tour. He looks so cute with his very clean cut hair cut – very short with just a bit of a James Dean forehead curl at the front.

Unfortunately Little Big Town did never reappeared to sing with Keith but maybe this will happen in later shows.

Keith said “It may be a Thursday night, but it sure feels like a Friday night to me.” And went into the final song of the night: You Look Good in My Shirt. The guys really screamed “Shirt” tonight, at the appropriate time and then Keith headed off stage once more, jumping down into the left side pit area. With no camera coverage there we could not see what was going on but I wonder if he was more or less held captive there (because he did not move from that spot) and if he lost his mike in the crowd, because we could no longer hear singing from him and Brian seemed to be watching that spot with concern the whole time.  The guys jumped in to sing. When Keith made it back up on stage I thought he appeared slightly flustered, but then led different parts of the audience (lawn, guys only, girls only) in the singing of the chorus and told us he was “just groovin’ cause I don’t want to go home yet.” He spurred the guys to perform with “Fellas –now is the time. If you would like more than just a ride home, now is the time to sing.”

Keith didn’t do his usual end-of-show thank-yous – probably just a first night goof because later, when music was playing he shouted out, kind of like an afterthought, “thank you roadcrew”. He signed a few autographs, slapped some hands, took a photo with a little girl about Sunday’s size,   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD9SkOJKePU and about one hour and forty minutes after he came out, our first show was over. A hot one in more ways than one!!

The next morning when I left my hotel outside of Cincy (I stayed on the Kentucky side of the river), I was surprised to see 3 unlabeled  tour buses in the back of the hotel lot, with a little security tape cordoning them off. I didn’t think they could be Keith’s unless he decided to go low key (unlabeled) this year, but thought they might be LBT’s and Dustin’s. Nine hours (and 2 flights) later I saw two of these same tour buses heading north on a Iowa 4 lane as I drove home from the Cedar Rapids airport. They were towing a motorcycle trailer I had not noticed in the morning. On the way to Monticello no doubt! I should have hitched a ride with them!