Party jam after party jam
Why would Luke Bryan launch a summer stadium tour in Toronto, you say?
Clearly because he can. The Georgia-born country megastar and newly minted Amer
ican Idol judge didn’t quite sell out the cavernous Rogers Centre on Thursday for the first of the “XL stadium-sized” dates on his What Makes You Coun- try jaunt, but he — with a little assistance from openers Sam Hunt, Jon Pardi and Morgan Wallen — did manage to charm well in excess of 40,000 concertgoers in a market not usually known for its excessive support of country music. Who knew? The promoters and fans, obviously. Me? Not at all. But I kinda get it now. What makes Luke Bryan country? A nasally high baritone, lots of pedal steel, a hint of southern-rock grind in the mix on tunes such as “What Makes You Country” and the Garth Brooks-ish “All My Friends Say,” and lyrics about drinkin’, lovin’, drinkin’, family, drinkin’, jacked-up pickup trucks, drinkin’, old blue jeans and drinkin’, mainly.
Musically speaking, “Light It Up” and “Kick the Dust Up” and his other uptempo goodtime anthems are really not that far removed from the work of fellow crowd-pleasing arena acts like Bryan Adams or Def Leppard.
Jon Bon Jovi comes to mind, too, if only because Bryan exhibits a similar knack for getting shots of his butt wigglin’ or his hips gyrating in tight denim up on the big screens as much as possible, when he’s not winking at the ladies through the camera.
And, judging by the masses of women clad in short shorts, cowboy boots and tassled tops packed into the dome on Thursday, that’s a large part of his appeal.
By the end, some of the female fans had become so overwhelmed by the many slow jams in which Bryan sang about peelin’ off his tight blue jeans and makin’ sweet love to his lady “the way we used to do” — one of them was actually called “Strip It Down” — that they were lobbing their bras at the stage. Bryan knows what he’s doing. A surly old punk rocker like me should have hated every minute of it. But Bryan is a thoroughly likeable and unpretentious presence, quite comfortable doing just what everyone in the room wants to hear from him. There’s an admirable purity to his vision.
It’s dumb as hell, of course.
But one shouldn’t really go looking for depth from an actual former fratboy who played a song called “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day” two songs into his set, and whose most demonically catchy single, “Rain Is a Good Thing,” sports the chorus “Rain makes corn / Corn makes whiskey / Whiskey makes my baby / Feel a little frisky.”
Even his paean to departed family and friends is called “Drink a Beer.”
I took his advice, turned my brain off and tapped my foot along contentedly for 90 minutes. There was no denying that everyone else in the room was having the time of their lives. I’ve been singing “Rain is a Good Thing” to myself ever since. I guess Luke Bryan won. Damn him.