Laid-back Chesney doesn't disappoint
DARIEN — Pretty much every major concert these days comes with a corporate sponsor, whose logo and product offering take up as much real estate as possible in the venue.
This is usually something best ignored, but at Kenny Chesney’s Corona-sponsored Sun City Carnival Tour on Thursday night at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, fans were treated to a perfect marriage of art and marketing.
As his career has developed over the last 16 years, Chesney has gone from the heir apparent to Garth Brooks to a grinning, Southern-fried Jimmy Buffett. Sure, he’s still a contemporary country hitmaker, but in the 2000s he’s also become the genre’s poet laureate of lazy summer days. If you could pull back on one of those iconic Corona billboard images, a shot of Chesney relaxing on a beach chair would fit right in.
As the opening video sequence of his set unfolded, marked by the promise, “When the sun goes down, we’ll be groovin’,” the atmosphere in the venue was of the best kind of party — loose, anticipatory and completely free of pretension. And when the superstar took the stage, it was clear that “a good time had by all” was his only priority. He kicked everything off with “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” which might not be the most poignant song in the world. But Chesney’s positive energy and the crowd’s elation made everything OK — not to mention the sheer horsepower that the 12-piece band injected into the tune’s simple blues vamp.
The show then moved on to less gimmicky songs that belied the two biggest influences of Chesney’s more recent material — Buffett and Willie Nelson. “Out Last Night,” a new tune featured on his recently released “Greatest Hits, Vol. 2” compilation, is a “boy was I drunk” sing-along firmly in the tradition of the Redheaded Stranger classics “Bubbles In My Beer” and “Bloody Mary Morning”. And “Beer in Mexico” is Chesney’s ode to “Margaritaville,” so much so that the melody in the chorus is pretty much a direct lift from the Buffett song. The wonderfully unnecessary four-guitar attack employed on this performance exemplified the Chesney approach — a quartet of ax slingers might not be a logical artistic move, but man did it look like fun.
While there were a few too many ballads – this is a guy that did a song called “You Had Me From Hello,” after all — they didn’t throw much of a wrench into the family cookout mood. This guy’s material was written, arranged and performed to get thousands of people out of their seats when it’s nice outside. To country fans, Kenny Chesney simply is summertime (even when it’s a rather chilly June evening).
If anybody thinks that reality TV can’t produce anybody with talent, then they’ve never seen Miranda Lambert. The former “Nashville Star” contestant gave Chesney a run for his money in her opening set. Lambert’s voice has the kind of reedy, friendly twang that welcomes comparisons to Dolly Parton. Granted, she still has a ways to go before reaching that level of openhearted brilliance, but she’s on the right track. On top of her boisterous originals that blur the line between country and Southern rock, Lambert and her fabulous band tossed in an inspired cover of Wilson Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour” — a high point of the night, to be sure.
REVIEW
WHO: Kenny Chesney with Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum
WHEN: Thursday night
WHERE: Darien Lake Performing Arts Center
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