Country trio shows fans a great kind of love

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/03/2012 (4963 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lady Antebellum owned the night in Winnipeg Tuesday.

The Nashville country trio made its third stop in the city since 2009, but this time they have graduated to arena headliner status on the strength of three multi-platinum albums that have earned them seven Grammy Awards.

“We love coming back. Last time we were here, was it with Keith Urban? And here we are headlining the damn place,” vocalist Charles Kelley said triumphantly while raising his fist in the air.

The last time the group was here was actually in 2010 with Tim McGraw (Urban was in 2009) but this time the 10,500 excited fans in the MTS Centre were there for them, and after the past few years Lady A has had, you can’t blame Kelley for his minor slip.

Moving up to headliner status means a bigger production, which in this case was a two-tiered stage with a phallic-looking extension and an inner circle area that held about 100 fans. The trio’s five-piece backing band was lined up in front of three video screens.

The group — vocalists Kelley and Hillary Scott and guitarist-pianist-vocalist Dave Haywood — wasted no time in getting the crowd into it by having them handle some backing vocals on opening number, We Own the Night.

Lady A is known for an overabundance of slick sentimental ballads, so they were careful to mix in all of their upbeat pop numbers to ensure the show didn’t become dragged down in predictable soft-rock mush.

Whether they were showcasing their rock side on Stars Tonight, getting into a mid-tempo groove on Our Kind of Love or slowing things down for Dancin’ Away With My Heart, the group’s harmonies were always on full display with Kelley and Scott in perfect synch. They are both married to other people but play the roles of wanna be/should have been/once were lovers in their music and on stage, especially when they stared into each other’s eyes, like on the ballad Wanted You More, which found them alone on the stage extension.

Later, they were joined there by their entire band for the single American Honey and opening acts Thompson Square and Darius Rucker for a laid-back version of the Doobie Brothers Black Water before the trio was left alone to belt out their first-ever No. 1 single, I Run to You.

They also made sure to acknowledge their fans for helping them get to the top of the commercial country music heap.

“We just want to say thank you to each and every one of you for spending your hard-earned money on coming to see us tonight,” Scott said graciously.

Handling opening duties was Rucker, who has successfully completed the move from frontman of pop band Hootie & the Blowfish to country singer-songwriter with several No. 1 hits on American country music radio.

Hootie’s music was innocuous and mostly acoustic-based, so its rootsy makeover doesn’t take much more than the addition of a fiddle and some pedal steel guitar.

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca