Country classic

There were 12,000 country-crazy fans at Canada Life Centre Thursday night, but it was plain as day who was the smartest person in the room.

It was Luke Bryan, the fun-loving, plaid-wearing, American Idol-judging entertainer. The tall Georgian has figured out country is an attitude that anyone can have, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve roped calves, hauled hay bales or driven a combine.

In Bryan’s world, country is a vibe — soaking in the sun during the day and getting wild in the moonlight and all the ups and downs along the way — that’s worth being proud of.

It’s a credo in almost all of Bryan’s songs, including Thursday’s rousing openers Kick the Dust Up and Knockin’ Boots, which he belted out while prowling a stage that jutted into a large pit of his staunchest country crazies. Behind him, a video screen with an elaborate light showed a motorboat zooming across a lake.

When he sang What Makes You Country, he didn’t judge where folks get their country ‘tude from.

While it’s his country music that’s made him a star with 30 No. 1 songs and counting, it’s his inclusive embrace of the country life in all of us that’s made him a crossover superstar who has fans joining him on nearly every word of every song he sang Thursday night.

And being country means not taking yourself too seriously.

Bryan became the butt of jokes from his fellow Idol judges earlier this week after an incident at a show last Saturday in Vancouver. He slipped on a fan’s cellphone that was placed on the stage and went for a header that became a YouTube sensation.

But Bryan didn’t become a perennial entertainer of the year from country music organizations by moping. Instead. he hardly missed a beat in concert and while getting ribbed on national TV by Katy Perry.

That hard-to-define quality is why Bryan has two feet firmly planted on or close to the top of the country music mountain and isn’t about to descend any time soon.

Winnipeg is a country town and Manitoba is a country province, if past sold-out shows at Canada Life Centre and his appearances at Dauphin’s Countryfest are any indication.

When Bryan brought his band out front for an acoustic set, the crowd treated Crash a Party, Drink a Beer, or three Bryan Adams covers like they were the national anthem at a Jets game — loud and proud.

Aerosmith isn’t country by a country mile either, but that didn’t stop Bryan from making Sweet Emotion part of his world.

The stage’s light system dazzled all evening but was at its flashy best for I Don’t Want This Night To End, which had Bryan bopping on the stage.

Even country legends such as Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard are part of new country in 2024. Bryan and Chayce Beckham, who preceded the country superstar on the stage Thursday, are quick to reference the genre’s trailblazers in their songs, even if their own numbers resemble pop and hard rock more than the honky-tonk of yesteryear.

That includes Beckham’s song Waylon in ‘75, which treats Jennings as a metaphor for a frustrated state of mind — enhanced with power chords.

It’s hard to tell if Beckham is a carouser, but the 2021 American Idol winner sure loves to sing about the wild life.

He sang and strummed tracks such as Drink You Off My Mind, Whiskey Country, Smokin’ Weed and Drinkin’ Whiskey and his fine cover of the Tyler Childers’ classic Whitehouse Road (“Make me higher than the grocery bill”) must have sold a few drinks at the arena before Bryan hit the stage,

Whether the smoothie-singing 27-year-old Californian can find long-term success on the Nashville assembly line that launched Bryan into the living rooms of TV viewers remains to be seen.

The crowd warmed up to Beckham’s closer, the hard-drinkin’ 23, but weren’t exactly partying hearty during the rest of his hour-long set.

Tenille Arts, a four-time Canadian Country Music Award winner, opened the show for the evening’s early birds.

The Weyburn, Sask., singer, decked out in black, has her own reality TV story — she was a performer on The Bachelor in 2020, not a contestant — but it’s her breakup tunes such as I Hate This and Something Like That, both of which were part of the dating series that given her roses on both sides of the border.

She played both on Thursday night too, with the bouncy Something Like That, winding up her 30-minute set to a round of applause.

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall