Keith Urban Lights The Fuse, Blows Up Toronto

Last night I started my 2014 live music year at the Air Canada Centre with Trish, in an executive suite thanks to Boots & Bourbon and Diageo.

We won the tickets at Boots & Bourbon on Wednesday night, not a bad way to punctuate a first visit to a new country spot in the city. And a big thank you to Trish who pushed me to go when I was cold and not feeling it so much earlier in the evening. I’ll be back to Boots & Bourbon for the Molson Stock Ale, Fried Chicken, Corn on the Cob, Snow Crab, Desserts… and country music.

I felt spoiled all night. There was food in the suite, we had front row seats in the box, drinks were included, encouraged and poured for us. And, the music was awesome.

Brett Eldredge opened the show. He’s a young country singer from Illinois who is picking up steam in his career, and with good reason. His music was catchy and fun and on stage he did a great job of engaging the crowd that was pouring in steadily.

The sound was also great thanks to the 5 piece band on stage with Brett. His 2 guitars, bass, keys and drums all pulled their weight. I was also drawn in by his cover of Let’s Stay Together. I’m a sucker for covers done country, and this was the first one of the night – and it didn’t suck.

The set closed with the very tall ( 6’5″) Eldredge and his band playing his biggest hit, Don’t Ya. Dude did good. Keep an eye on him in the future.

Next on stage was Little Big Town. Award winning, great sounding, fun energy, very talented, big favorite of mine, Little Big Town.

Side note: Big ups to the stage crew who tore down Eldredge’s set and got things ready for Little Big Town in less than 15 minutes.

As Trish and I watched their set I realized that the only acts I could think of with 2 female and 2 male voices playing a feature role like these 4 do. The only names I could come up with were ABBA and Fleetwood Mac. Clearly they are more Fleetwood Mac than Abba, and I’m totally okay with that.

The set opened with Little White Church, a great option with the clapping and singing and harmonies that make this band who they are.

We also got to hear Bring It On Home (thanks for the feels guys), Tornado, Pontoon, a sweet cover of The Oak Ridge Boys’ Elvira, Your Side of the Bed, Sober, and they ended the set with Boondocks, the song that made me fall in love with the band more than 8 years ago.

I loved every minute of the set and desperately hope that I’ll see Little Big Town on stage again someday… maybe even at Boots & Hearts.

Next, last, biggest, and best was Keith Urban. The reason that we were all packed into the Air Canada Centre. I’ve been at the ACC for hockey, basketball, lacrosse, wrestling and now this concert – and I have never been part of such an enthusiastic, engaged, amazing crowd as I was last night.

Country music fans love Keith Urban. I love Keith Urban. His music has been better than solid since his first album in 2000 – hell, the guy has gone to #1 on the country charts 16 times. I bought his greatest hits album earlier in the week, before we had tickets to this concert – and you need to know that there is going to be another one of those before too long.

And that’s the only problem, with 16 #1 hits, a ton of other fan favourites, and a new album (Fuse) to tour, there was no way that we were going to hear every song that we were hoping for from Keith Urban.

But he tried his best.

The irony was not lost on me when he opened the set with Long Hot Summer… real funny dude. The set list was full of great songs and amazing performances. I don’t know how to tell you what the highlights were. There wasn’t a song that I didn’t like. There wasn’t a miss.

We had highlights like his walking through the floor crowd to get to a small stage during the interlude and then banging out a couple songs for the fans at the back of the arena. Coming out for his encore in a Maple Leafs jersey with Urban, #1 on the back – and the captain’s C on the front. He’s now my favorite Leafs’ captain since Wendel Clark. And I know 1 girl’s highlight of the night was Keith Urban pulling his guitar off his shoulder, signing it with a black sharpie and handing it to her. Yup, that happened. She cried.

I’m currently in love with Keith Urban’s duet with Miranda Lambert on We Were Us – and Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town did not disappoint when she came out to sing the #1 hit 2/3 of the way through the set. Loved it.

It was also cool to see all of Little Big Town come back out to sing on You Gonna Fly and it must have been a rush for Brett Eldredge to come out and sing Kiss A Girl with a guy who has a career that he has got to dream about having some day.

I need to say this too, Keith Urban could play lead guitar in pretty much any band, in any genre. He is amazingly talented and we all got to see it up close when they put a GoPro camera on his guitar and projecting the video onto the big screens.

I sang along so much last night that my voice started to go near that end. It was a concert experience that I couldn’t have hoped to be any better. Heck, it was a concert I didn’t know I was going to until less than 48 hours before Brett Eldredge, Little Big Town and Keith Urban took the stage on Friday night.

If you love country music, go see any of these 3 acts when you get the chance.

You won’t be disappointed.

Trust me.