Country-music superstar Tim McGraw was a man of his word Saturday night. And by that, I mean a man of few words.
“Y’all know if you’ve been to my shows before I don’t talk a lot,” he said to the audience after singing the first four songs of his set without interruption. “We just like to play music.”
Without a lot of chitchat, McGraw was able to fit 20 hits into his 95-minute show at Orlando’s Kia Center, just the third stop on his brand-new “Standing Room Only” tour. That tour title is not bragging from the singer who delivered a poignant “Humble & Kind” as one of his encores. The title comes from his latest studio album, McGraw’s 16th, released last summer.
McGraw has been making music consistently since the 1990s, which means that even with 20 songs on the setlist multiple favorites didn’t make the cut. They were mostly from McGraw’s sentimental side — early ballads such as “Please Remember Me,” Can’t Be Really Gone,” “Not a Moment Too Soon,” and “Don’t Take the Girl,” which admittedly would have been out of place in the rockin’ party atmosphere McGraw created.
He emerged through a cloud of smoke to launch into a bass-heavy “Truck Yeah,” the rocker looking for those who’ve “gotta little redneck in their blood.” That likely applied to many in the sea of cowboy hats as they drank cocktails out of mason jars.
Like his music, McGraw straddled the line between country and rock: Big belt buckle, big hat, tight jeans and tighter black T-shirt (Bro has been working out).
The singer still hits the high notes in his cover of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” though the sound mix was increasingly fuzzy the louder the song got. More successful was a rendition of “Over and Over,” his collaboration with Nelly, which segued seamlessly into a driving (pun intended) “Shotgun Rider.”
Generally, McGraw’s voice rose above the mix better in the gentler songs: a rolling “Watch the Wind Blow By,” a lyrical “Where the Green Grass Grows,” a percolating “Just to See You Smile” with the percussion helping the song lightly chug along.
On the biggest hits, McGraw let the eager audience sing lines from the chorus — though he caught out his friend Khristian Dentley from Take 6, who was in the audience and missed a lyric from the banging honky-tonker “I Like It, I Love It.”
“Man, you’ve got to know this one,” McGraw exclaimed good-naturedly. The rest of the packed Kia Center certainly did.
Opening act Carly Pearce, rhinestone boots glittering in the stage lights, gave a solid set of predominantly radio-friendly midtempo songs.
She sang both her own and Ashley McBryde’s parts in big hit “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” a cheating song that’s this generation’s “Does He Love You?”
Pearce, who called herself “the luckiest girl ever,” still has a glow of excitement over her success, even though she’s been getting airplay since 2017’s “Every Little Thing.”
“I don’t have to clean Air B&B’s anymore,” she enthused with a laugh, referring to the job she held before “Every Little Thing” hit big.
Pictured at his rocking “Standing Room Only” tour stop at Orlando’s Kia Center on March 16, Tim McGraw looks like he’s been hitting the gym. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)Pearce upped the tempo in her set for a rollicking cover of “Let’s Go to Vegas” — originally a hit for McGraw’s wife, Faith Hill — as well as a sassy “Next, Girl” and a blazing “Truck on Fire,” a new song in the classic woman-scorned genre with the memorable raging chorus of “Liar, liar, truck on fire; flames rollin’ off of your Goodyear tires.”
She closed with another ill-treated woman song, the crowd-pleasing “What He Didn’t Do.”
For his part, McGraw also wrapped things up with a crowd pleaser, “Live Like You Were Dying,” before departing as he arrived, through a cloud of smoke, still a man of few words.
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