If Luke Combs on Friday night was his idea of the My Kinda Saturday Night Tour, be glad there’s a 24-hour breather in between before he does it all again.
For an artist about to make Green Bay history as the first act to ever play back-to-back shows at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, not a lot has changed from the young guy who had stacks of pizzas delivered to the Resch Center staff to celebrate the quick sellout of his first arena tour in the city in 2018.
Eight years later, he’s still the everyman. Still humble. Still wearing the black Columbia PFG fishing shirts. Still only as flashy as the red Solo cup in his hand. Still with the same nimble band behind him. Still in awe of where he finds himself in the echelons of country music, which these days is at the top of the heap.
“How about this, man, Lambeau Field! Look at us!” he said with a grin, as he looked out at a sight not seen at the Green Bay Packers stadium since Paul McCartney played there in 2019.
“Me and these guys onstage, I don’t think any one of us ever would’ve imagined that we would end up here. I think I certainly thought that I would be able to play shows every night for the rest of my life, I just figured it would not be at Lambeau Field.”
For all about Combs that has remain unchanged, watching him rip through a two-hour performance May 15 at Lambeau, it’s hard to remember there was once a time when he could be contained to buildings with a roof. The man is built for stadiums. He’s a force, and so are his fans.
His powerhouse baritone is as big as the bowl, and with Combs, there’s rarely a song where the emotion isn’t bursting at the seams, whether he’s singing about the heartbreak of drinking himself into the “Alcohol of Fame” or a sentimental ode to an aging father in “Remember Him That Way.” It’s a combination that can do incredible things, like make fans sitting way back and up high on the opposite end of the field feel somehow as if they were as close as the pit.
And is there a country music fan base that sings along to every word of every song as loud as the crowd did Friday night? If you thought anthems like “Beer Never Broke My Heart” and “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” were tornadoes when he and his band, The Wild Cards, cut loose on them in an arena, just throw in a jacked-up guest choir of 40,000 or 50,000 in a stadium.
He stuck to the setlist that has been mostly unchanged since the tour started. He managed to pack in all the favorites, a more reflective storytelling stretch mid-set with cuts from the new “The Way I Am” album, including “Be By You” and “ Sleepless in a Hotel Room,” and then the big beer-drenched final stretch.
If there was that goosebump moment that comes built-in when Lambeau Field hosts a concert (and this was only the fifth one), it was “Beautiful Crazy,” a love song Combs wrote for his wife, Nicole. On a made-to-order May weather night with the flags high above Lambeau moving in the breeze, the stadium felt like a collective Friday date night as the crowd crooned along. It was a soft touch during an evening that was cranked to 11.
Packers players, past and present, chugged a beer with Combs
Combs has been bringing out surprise athlete guests in each city on the tour to chug a beer with him during “1, 2 Many.” On Friday night, it was a whole gaggle led by former Packers running back AJ Dillon, now with the Carolina Panthers, and current Packers players Anthony Belton, Sean Rhyan, Aaron Banks and Jordan Morgan.
If there’s one way to make even a giant of a stadium act suddenly look small, just swarm him with NFL offensive linemen. It all went down so fast – the beer and the fun – you secretly hoped for slow-motion instant replay on the Lambeau video boards.
Dierks Bentley was not to be missed
Married duo Thelma & James opened the evening with a quick 15-minute set at 5:20 p.m. Jake Worthington, sporting a Cheesehead and smoking a cigar when he walked out, looked a little like a young Mark Chesnutt and sounded every bit the country traditionalist, complete with a cover of Merle Haggard’s “The Fightin’ Side of Me.” By the time Ty Myers went on and made the young girls scream, the Lambeau bowl was filling in.
The Night 2 crowd will want to be in their seats by 7:30 p.m. for Dierks Bentley, who delivered a most free-wheelin’, fun-lovin’ hour-long set that had him sprinting from one end of the massive stage to the other to play to people up in the stands at the corners. With a stage presence that is the embodiment of “Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go),” every tour should be so lucky to get a dash of Dierks, a formidable headliner himself.
If Combs held anything back for Saturday night, which is a sellout of roughly 55,000, it’s hard to see what it might possibly have been, but then again, don’t underestimate him.
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Luke Combs comes out swinging during first night at Lambeau Field
Reporting by Kendra Meinert, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
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