FLORENCE β Dustin Lynch was like a kid let loose in an arcade with a pocketful of quarters when he hit the Country Thunder stage Sunday night.
He's been here before but this was his first nighttime show at the four-day festival, the moment when you have arrived β one step behind the headliner and two steps ahead of where he was when he played an afternoon show a few years earlier.
Lynch seemed to be having the time of his life, skipping the length of the catwalk with this genuine "I can't believe I'm here!" gait to his step. He danced, he signed autographs along the way from the stage to the end of the catwalk and he smiled this wonderful boy-next-door smile that just sucked you in and made you feel like you had known him forever.
His show was a mix of covers including Garth Brooks' "Rodeo" and Joe Diffie's "John Deere Green" And he played his growing catalogue of mostly rocking country songs including "She Cranks My Tractor," "Cowboys and Angels" (which he dedicated to his grandparents, who celebrated an anniversary Sunday), "Where It's At" and "Dancing in the Headlights."
When it was over, Lynch looked out in the audience of 27,500 β an official sell-out β with his hands raised in the air and drank in the feeling of arriving.Β
