Crash My Party: Luke Bryan at Boots & Hearts 2014

For nearly 2 full hours Saturday night Luke Bryan held court in Bowmanville at Boots & Hearts 2014.

And believe me when I tell you this, he owned that crowd and set fire to the night.

With a burst of pyro the set started and Luke Bryan and his band opened with That’s My Kind Of Night. The pop from the audience was amazing. They waited all day for that moment – and after the rain that came down Friday – it was about as perfect as it could get.

The set continued, with 30,000+ voices singing along to every damn word of every song. It was an amazing atmosphere to be in the middle of. Whether it was Rain Is A Good Thing or something slower like Roller Coaster, there was an all-in feeling.

Note: In the 3 years that I’ve been at Boots & Hearts there has NEVER been a crowd as large or excited for an act as this crowd was for Luke Bryan. Blake Shelton has his work cut out for himself on Sunday.

Bryan also showed that he’s charming and endeared himself to all of the locals when he started telling stories about being out fishing for smallmouth bass on Rice Lake. He also made a comment about the deer situation in Ontario – make no doubt about it, Luke Bryan is a hunting, fishing country boy.

After the first half dozen songs or so Lee Brice came onto the stage to sing with the headliner, and together they covered Crazy Girl (which Brice wrote and the Eli Young Band recorded) and the crowd ate it up and gladly sang along as loud as they could when prompted. And before Brice left the stage the 2 treated the Canadian crowd to an abbreviated version of our 2nd national anthem, Bryan Adams’ Summer of 69.

While the piano was still out on the stage Luke sang Shut It Down, covered Alabama’s Mountain Music, and belted out #1 single Do I. I will confess that I love the sound of a piano, and on a song like Do I, it is the perfect way to hear it live. Well done sir.

The next surprise came when Chris Stapleton (hailed all day long by other performers as the best singer in the world) popped out on stage to sing Drink A Beer as a duet. It was an emotional moment, with the crowd singing along to a song that is heartbreaking in the story it tells – and as true to the country genre as anything else you’ll find. Big ups to Chris for writing such a beatiful song.

For the rest of the set it was all Luke, and not a single person (especially the ladies) were upset about that at all. More hits rang out to the crowd including 2 of my favourites, Drunk On You and Play It Again… and then, as it has to, the end came with a long, awesome, fun and rowdy rendition of another HUGE hit Country Girl Shake It For Me.

Saturday morning when we drove into Boots & Hearts I knew that I was a Luke Bryan fan. What I didn’t know is that he could make me a bigger fan. But by putting on the kind of show he did, by charming and joking with the crowd, by letting them sing along and turning 2 hours at the end of a long day into a party – he did just that.

Go find someone else who was at Boots & Hearts 2014 on Saturday night and ask them what they thought. I bet you’ll hear the same thing.

Check out MORE pics of Luke Bryan from Boots & Hearts 2014 on Trish’s blog right HERE!