Friday night in Jersey, Urban-style

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.)

What a night 😅😍🎶 @KeithUrban @bretteldredge pic.twitter.com/31XtMVg44e

— caybay (@caseybaylis) August 27, 2016

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.