Toby Keith brought his Big Dog Daddy tour to South Florida Saturday night and rocked the house with his unique blend of country.
Janis Fontaine offered this review in the
Palm Beach Post today:
WEST PALM BEACH — Even in the heat, I love freedom of the outdoor space at Sound Advice. If you've never seen a concert there, I recommend the venue. And if you can see a superstar like Toby Keith, so much the better.
Keith took the stage shortly after 9 p.m. Saturday following opening acts Flynnville Train and Miranda Lambert. Train delivered a solid set, showing that these guys are obviously great musicians. But their look is more sloppy than sexy - they all have longer hair than I do - and probably won't appeal to the fans who buy the CDs - women, who on top of talent want someone nice to look at.
Miranda Lambert, on the other hand, is very nice to look at. But she started her set with one of the worse faux pas in the music business - she said hello to the wrong city. That's like calling your date by the wrong name. How invested can you be if you can't get the name right?
Lambert tried to make up for it but giving a rocking performance. I was impressed with her stamina. Playing the stage at SAA in August is a bit like trial by fire, and the Kerosene girl didn't falter there. She took the stage to strains of American Woman in a teal tank and jeans, and played her signature pink guitar, then went right into Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the title cut from her second CD. She almost seemed to kick up a little breeze with her attitude.
The native Texan gracefully swept the sweat from her brow and delivered What About Georgia and Me and Charlie Talking, then followed the lighthearted Dry Town with the dark Gunpowder and Lead. They bathed her in red for the dark ballad about killing an abusive boyfriend: "His fist is big but my gun's bigger..."
Lambert kept up the pace for the rest of her set, flinging her long blond hair about and running across the stage even at the end of her set. Aside from the tiny but important mistake, she delivered a great show. But she knew that we were there for the Big Dog.
As usual, Toby opened with a video featuring a Ford truck (his sponsor) and Larry the Cable Guy: The Adventures of Big Dog Daddy and Possum Boy. Hilarious.
Then the curtain opened to reveal Keith's new set. (Unlike Tim and Faith he revamped just about everything this year and spared no expense.) No Ford truck center stage this year, but the whole set was based upon its grill. Sort of subliminal advertising.
And Keith did not forget where he was. As a date, he was fully engaged. Lots of eye contact - I don't know how you make a crowd of thousands feel like they're making an individual connection, but he did.
He looked great in a black T-shirt and jeans, very fit and strong. The set showcased his 10-piece band, with dozens of lights and a huge video screen behind the band that looked like a big trampoline.
Keith opened with Big Dog Daddy, the title cut from his new CD, and followed with Honkytonk U. He showed pictures of his grandma and himself as boy, great for the "Aaww" factor. The show, which on many levels seemed spontaneous, was a well-orchestrated game plan careully designed to give the fans an emotional experience. And it worked.
Keith played drinking songs: Get Drunk and Be Somebody, Whiskey Girl; love songs: He Ain't Worth Missing, You Should't Kiss Me Like That; and redneck songs: As Good As I Once Was, Who's Your Daddy. But when he sang his first No. 1 single, I Shoulda Been a Cowboy, the crowd shouted loud enough to drown him out.
After a whirlwind of hit songs, Keith and his band played a Ted Nugent song, and he scoffed, "I can rock but they can't sing country!"
When the show "ended" the crowd knew it wasn't over. We hadn't heard the patriotic songs, songs at the core of who Keith is. To chants of Toby and USA, he returned for the encore. He played American Soldier and Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue amid fireworks and flames.
It was the perfect good-night kiss.
More MirandaLast week, Miranda gave this interview to Janis Fontaine at the Post:
"I'm partial to people with cocky attitudes," Miranda Lambert says with a laugh. "If you like it, great, if you don't, go somewhere else. I guess it gets translated into my music."
Lambert is not only talking about Toby Keith, whose Big Dog Daddy Tour she opens for on Saturday at Sound Advice Amphitheatre, but her second attitude-laden album, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which was released to rave reviews in May.
"This album has some extreme songs, but it's more just about being strong," she said by phone from St. Louis. "That's more the message that I'm trying to send: Be strong in whatever you're doing. Be a strong woman and stand up for yourself."
Lambert, the Nashville Star reality show finalist who set the country music scene on fire with her first platinum-selling disc Kerosene, has been standing tough for a long time. She learned to do for herself in tiny Lindale, Texas, about 40 miles east of Dallas, population 2,500.
Her parents were private investigators. "My parents didn't shelter me much. I grew up in a really great home and in church, but my parents had parties on the porch with Dad and everybody playing music and drinking beer, and I was just exposed to that lifestyle. They never tried to shelter me from that so I saw a lot early in my life."
On Kerosene, released when she was just 22, Lambert showed a maturity most artists work years for.
"People used to call me an old soul, and I think I was, and now I'm kind of catching up with it. When I started writing Kerosene I was 17 years old and I didn't really have a lot of life to write about. But being on the road for three years has taught me a lot. I think on this album I really wrote more from my point of view, rather than taking other people's perspective."
Lambert, like her lyrics, is thoughtful and complex: "Sweet like a kiss, sharp like a razor blade," as one line goes. She's a contradiction: A girly-girl who killed a deer with a bow last November; a sophisticated songwriter and accomplished guitarist who'll be only 24 on her next birthday.
In 2003, Lambert got national exposure when she came in third on the first season of Nashville Star, a country version of American Idol. She says losing that contest was a blessing.
"I was 19 years old and I wasn't ready to make a record in a month. For me, I got all the exposure of the winner that season because I was on all nine episodes, but I didn't have to have that big yellow sticker - Nashville Star Winner - on every album from here on out, and I also had plenty of time. I waited two years to put an album out and he (winner Buddy Jewell) had to put one out in a month. So I think it was a blessing I had time to build it.
"I think you can't really put your heart and soul into something you're rushed to do, especially in the creative sense. To me music is something that's very personal and that you really need to take time (with) and if you win, you don't have that time. When you're in such a rush, you maybe settle for a couple of songs you don't believe in."
Initially the picturesque blonde worried that her record label might want her to do just that: Sing songs she didn't like or believe in.
"I was ready with my whole spiel. Luckily, I had a great label. I signed with Sony and they just said, 'We signed you to be a writer, we signed you for who you are, now go and make your album.'
"It gave me a lot of confidence, but it was also a lot of pressure to do it right. I got to do this my way, but what if it's not successful? About a month before the album came out, I remember just being scared to death. Luckily, it worked."
Worked is an understatement. Kerosene debuted at No. 1 on the country charts, sold more than a million copies, earned her a Grammy nod, and was named one of the best albums of the year by The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Blender magazine.
And Kerosene's clever lyrics and catchy melodies helped Lambert distinguish herself in a country music landscape that seems to be littered with pretty blondes lately. She set herself apart from Carrie Underwood, Kellie Pickler and Taylor Swift, she said, by carving herself out a niche as the country-rocker girl.
"Every one of us has a different style," Lambert said. "I think I do something a lot different in my music and on stage. I sing about things other girls don't tend to sing about; drinking and cheating and real life situations and I think that sets me apart. And I have a tattoo," she laughs.
"It's a tough road, though. Everybody's looking at you and waiting to see who's going to have the next hit. I think I have more of an edge than the other girls, but thank God there's room for all of us."
