Underwood brings big stage, big show to Tucson Arena!!!
Carrie Underwood’s Nashville colleagues likely envy her stage setup:
• The back-end platforms that glided from the center of the stage to the sides;
• A six-layer lift that looked like a glittering wedding cake when it was fully extended;
• A wooden swing hanging from the stage rafters on woven rope and cable;
• A quartet of jumbo video screens;
• And a vintage pickup truck that could have been a 1950s Ford or Chevy suspended above the audience as it made its way in a 180-degree half-circle from the stage to the center of the soldout Tucson Arena on Saturday.
It would be easy to say that all those bells and whistles are what earned the “American Idol” the Academy of Country Music’s Entertainer of the Year honors two years running.
But that was just eye candy. What really mattered to the audience of 8,000 — many of them young girls flickering their cell phone cameras throughout the evening and young twentysomething women with their blond hair dressed up like Underwood — was the catalog of female-empowered, break-up, make-up and find-yourself songs that she has woven into the country music fabric in five short years.
Her 2009 critically acclaimed album “Play On” — which is also the namesake of this tour — got the most attention Saturday night. Among the highlights was the poppy “This Time,” which she sang while standing in the back of the pickup perched above the audience; an emotionally charged performance of her self-penned inspirational ode “Temporary Home”; and the rocking “Cowboy Cassanova,” which she sang during her dramatic below-stage entrance dressed in a waist-coat tuxedo and impossibly high spiked heels.
She also mined the hits from her first two albums — the inspired never-give-up ode “Wasted”; an emotionally breathtaking turn on the breakup song “I Know You Won’t”; and a pair of gospel-inspired tunes including “Jesus Take the Wheel,” arranged with the hymnal “How Great Thou Art” at the end.
“I built my whole career on this one song,” she told the audience.
Underwood’s show Saturday was the long-awaited encore to the 27-year-old Oklahoma native’s 2008 soldout Tucson Arena show. Newcomers Sons of Sylvia and Tucson fave Craig Morgan opened the evening.
Underwood brought Sons of Sylvia back on during her show to perform “What Can I Say,” a song they recorded together on Underwood’s “Play On” album.
Check out the Caliente Tuned In blog later today for a review of Sons of Sylvia and Craig Morgan's opening sets.
