Fans drink up charismatic Shelton
Blake Shelton With: McKenzie Porter Where: Rexall Place Sold out When: Wednesday night
The bet was made about 10 hours before Blake Shelton hit the Rexall Place stage last night.
“Hello Edmonton!!! $100 says I WILL be drunk by the end of tonight’s show Aaannd possibly before tonight’s show,” he tweeted, perhaps popping a cold one as he wrote it.
No big surprise from a man who prides himself on walking it as he talks it, and Shelton has always been quick to remind people that he’s a hellraising good oil’ boy who can’t be quieted. At least in song, like in the opening number All About Tonight, where he sings about doing his best to “dance with every girl in this bar/ Before they shut it down/ Then I’ll pay my tab/ Climb in a cab/ Headin’ to a spot downtown.”
If he didn’t finish on the boast then Shelton at least did his very best Wednesday night for the many willing supplicants on the floor beneath him. Shelton has a good woman waiting at home for him (actually, strike that, she’s doing a parallel tour) in Miranda Lambert, so likely he just settled up the tab and headed out with the boys for a few pops. The ever-present cup in hand (because he was feeling a little “nervous”) indicated that Shelton was certainly well on his way.
He went straight to the point with The More I Drink, which should serve more as a warning than anything else, showed his tender side with She Wouldn’t Be Gone and his hillbilly cred with a cover of George Jones’s Ol’ Red. After that was a run of hits accumulated over 15 years or so, a musical map highlighting Shelton’s roots as a disciple of ’80s New Traditionalists and propensity for country mugging.
The mugging was definitely as much a part of the show as the down-home strains, with lots of protestations about being unprofessional and unscripted, just reg’lar folks talk. There was a whiff of Jimmy Buffett to the proceedings as well at times, brought even more into focus for Some Beach, where he also put on a cowboy hat with fake mullet wig. These are tour gags, done from venue to venue with much the same patter, but the undeniably charismatic Shelton pulls it off.
He’s also good at selling the more traditional songs, especially weepers like Who Are You When I’m Not Looking or the warm and fuzzy Doin’ What She Likes. The more rocking side, well-represented by tracks like Hillbilly Bone, are probably more popular, but they’re also hammy and dumb. They’re ably sold by Shelton because he’s got a slick Nashville band adept at catching all sides of the singer, including ex Voice contestant Gwen Sebastian, acting as backup singer and Shelton’s duet partner on the hit My Eyes.
Back to the declaration that he would either be drunk before or after the set: it’s tough to tell whether Shelton had stayed true to his word from his Twitter boast. If he was wasted he was doing a fine job of hiding it, but then maybe that’s something that a good oil’ boy like him would be good at.
Opener Mackenzie Porter made use of her limited time onstage to play a few original numbers and a satisfactory version of Alanis Morissette’s Hand in My Pocket. Nothing particularly special to it, but give her some time.