I can probably count on one hand the number of concerts I've gone to in which I didn't know a fairly sizable chunk of the artist's catalog. But gonna need one of those digits for Keith Urban. I find him very personable as a human being and talented as a guitarist and vocalist, but I only know one of his albums, and none of the songs in the setlist were from that one. Mark wasn't familiar with the material either. That didn't stop us from fully enjoying the show.
But we were covered as everyone else in the audience seemed to know every single word. Up on the lawn behind us, six girls were dancing with each other and singing every word about as loud as they could. We were just enjoying the groove. And the dazzling array of guitars that Keith would bring out almost every song. We cringed as one of them was shot-put in the air in what we hope was the general vicinity of a guitar tech. Another one was signed and handed to a kid in the crowd.
This man's stage presence certainly is engaging. He acknowledges all the signs he can see. He brought a girl from New York at her first Keith concert up to the stage (and later her dad too), asked her what her favorite song was and sang some of it -- "Break on Me" -- to and with her, even though he'd already played it. Which reminds me, he also pointed out some unique personailty quirks of New Jersey residents, and as Mark put it, every other song seemed to have a lyric aptly proclaiming it to be Friday night.
His crew set up a "B" stage at the back left end of the covered seats so he could play to those of us sitting on the grass for a spell. "Who's got the best seats now?" he inquired. Well, it could still have been those in the paid seats, for he has a fine behind. (I feel confident saying that's just a Paige aside, and not Mark's feelings as well.)
During "Somebody Like You," performed with second opening act Brett Eldredge, both gentlemen played up to the camera as though they were singing right to one person. Which it did kind of seem like they were doing. On the main stage, he brought the first opening act -- Maren Morris -- to perform "We Were Us" with him. And he utilized modern technology to sing "The Fighter" with Carrie Underwood on the videoboard.
He covered Muse's "Unintended," and later did a huge chunk of John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" in reggae-esque fashion and little snippets of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" and The Police's "So Lonely." Recognized those, but as I said, it didn't take away from anything to not know his catalog as well as the other thousands.
The encore songs featured Keith performing "Stupid Boy" alone on the acoustic guitar and the crowd-pleasing "Raise 'Em Up." Had I had any of my strawberry lemonade vodka left, I surely would have raised it up for that. Then he thanked each and every one of us for choosing his show and "jumping through hoops" to get there.
It was a whirlwind trip to Boston. After an 11-hour work shift threatened by a few computer system halts, I boarded the express to South Station. This was definitely an express trip, I was due back on board 24 hours after I arrived.
Got a little nap in at Chez Fitz -- of course, I was hanging with my Pearl Jam bud, Liam -- and then headed over to the hallowed ground of Fenway Park. Felt completely exhausted ... but if the delectable Sharon Gabet (best known as Raven Whitney on Edge of Night) tells you you're looking good, you go with it!
Loved our fan club seats, two sections over from Pesky Pole. We looked directly onto the stage in center field, more than I can say for the floor seats that seemed to be facing the right-field wall.
Main set: Release, Long Road, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, Low Light, All Those Yesterdays, Given To Fly, Mind Your Manners, Why Go, Daughter/WMA,/Another Brick in the
Wall, Even Flow, Faithfull, Grievance, I Am Mine, Down, Black, Do The Evolution, Masters of War, I Am a Patriot, Porch.
Encore 1: Strangest Tribe, Society, Just Breathe, Sleeping by Myself, Wasted Reprise/Life Wasted, State of Love and Trust, Comfortably Numb, Corduroy.
Encore 2: Draw the Line, Alive, I’ve Got a Feeling, Baba O’Riley.
We got two openers for the price of one -- "Release" and "Long Road." I immediately realized that this is a band tailor-made for sending their words and music into the open air ... and that it had been about 13 years since my last outdoor Pearl Jam show. (It wasn't until I made a chart for this blog that I realized I had never before gotten "Release" on one of my setlists.)
"Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" made an early entry into the set. With a woman whose back was tattooed with more lyrics to the song than its elongated title in front of us, our section was emotionally engaged in the show pretty quickly. And "Low Light," "All Those Yesterdays" and "Faithfull" drove me completely mad -- they're tracks from my favorite Pearl Jam album, Yield, that I had never seen live before.
They scorched through the first set with the likes of "Given to Fly" and "Mind Your Manners" and "Even Flow" and "Porch." At one point, Stone and Matt cracked me up by starting "Grievance." But then they stopped to do "Faithfull," and went back to "pledge their grievance to the flag" after that -- apparently they jumped a song in the setlist.
Of course, we were awash in Boston references and baseball references and Boston baseball references. It's not like I didn't expect that, but it still brought me out of my reverie to some degree. Former Red Sox hurler and fashion plate Bronson Arroyo joined in for "Black," even singing the background do-do-do-do-do-do-dos from the old days.
Eddie elicited some boos from the crowd when he mentioned loving the Cubs, and he chastised the crowd for not remembering what it's like to not bring home a championship for a very long, long time. But he added that his favorite American League team was the Red Sox, and all was right in the land once again.
It was horribly cute when "Youk" -- Kevin Youkilis -- brought out Eddie's ukelele, it was what one might call a natural. Later, sports personality, and I use that term loosely, Peter Gammons took the stage ... and then left it. I guess he just wanted to say "hi" to Ed.
One of the show's highlights was a cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War." I've heard/seen Eddie perform this with Mike at "Bobfest" a number of years back, but the full band sound was truly something to behold. I got chills. Until I looked to the side and saw the number of people streaming for the exits, then I got annoyed.
They took it down a notch in level, albeit not, in quality to start the second set. "Strangest Tribe" is a soulful song that I hadn't previously experienced in concert, and the show marked only the second time Eddie's "Society" from Into the Wild was performed by the band. "Just Breathe" and "Sleeping by Myself" kept us pretty chilled out until they rocketed into "Life Wasted," complete with reprise, and "State of Love and Trust."
In compiling my setlist chart, I saw that ELEVEN of the songs they hadn't performed before "for me." Granted, a couple were covers -- like Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and Aerosmith's "Draw the Line" -- and I'm saving the best for last, but that seemed like an awfully high number. To share my bounty with the rest of you, they were in order of appearance ... "Release," "Low Light," "All Those Yesterdays," "Faithfull," "Masters of War," "Strangest Tribe," "Society," "Sleeping by Myself," "Comfortably Numb," "Draw the Line" and the holy grail, something they haven't performed (except for one other time in Boston) since their earliest incarnations, "I've Got a Feeling."
Their Beatles song ("All Those Yesterdays") AND a Beatles cover? Let's just say my socks -- no, they weren't red -- were knocked off.
