FLORENCE — Blake Shelton looked out in utter disbelief at the audience at Country Thunder Saturday night.
“Damn that’s a crapload of people,” he said, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare of the stage lights. “ I stepped out here a while ago and I have never seen this many people at a concert. And it made me a little bit nervous,” he said in a rare moment of humble confession. “It’s a big deal.”
After years as an opening act, warming the stage for the big event, he found himself in the enviable position of being the big event. And frankly he was not prepared for the size of the crowd that greeted him.
For longtime fans that saw him play his 45 minutes in past years before slinking off with the sun still shining bright, seeing him in the glory of a chilly, dark night was redemption. Shelton, whose currency has risen since he became a celebrity judge on the popular talent show “The Voice,” is arguably the biggest male name in country music today.
He’s also flying high off his recent Academy of Country Music win for Best Male Vocalist, but that award came months after he was booked to lead the Saturday night lineup that included ACM Duo of the Year Thompson Square and neo-traditional singer Joe Nichols.
“I’m a little nervous,” Shelton added of seeing 21,000 people packed into the Canyon Moon Ranch festival grounds here. “ When I get nervous I tend to drink a little bit. And I’ve been drinking a little bit already, I’ll be honest.”
With that he raised his plastic cup and toasted the audience then launched into the music that brought him to the dance: the sobering ballad “Home,” party songs like “Some Beach” and “Kiss My Country Ass,” and his old stuff including “Austin” and “Ol’ Red.”
Shelton has matured over the years to become a polished entertainer. His shows are as much about his wit as his singing. He peppers his show with deliciously funny anecdotes that reveal as much about the man as the song those anecdotes segue.
As a singer, Shelton can be a paradox. He’s neo-traditional in many ways, with a band that includes a fiddle, steel peddle guitar, occasional mandolin and a soaring comfortably worn vocal twang.
A favorite topic is songs about drinking, including his new single “Drink On It” and his quintessential ode “The More I Drink.” But he’s equally comfortable singing pop-tinged ballads like “Honey Bee,” “Who Are You When I’m Not Looking” and “God Gave Me You,” strategically timed between party songs like “All About Tonight” and “Hillbilly Bone.”
“I always wanted to sing a bone song in country music,” he joked.
Saturday’s concert was the biggest show of the weekend so far. Fans filled the lawn from the stage to the merch tables at the back end of the alfalfa field festival grounds. Fans in the packed reserved seating area spent Shelton’s 90-minute show on their feet. A half dozen Pinal County Sheriff’s deputies working off-duty security for the festival tried in vain to get the fans to take their seats. None did and the officers after several frustrated tries gave up.
Shelton commented several times on the crowd size, asking at one time for a show of hands of those who came to Country Thunder Saturday night to hear country music and those who came to :”hook up.”
“I have played Country Thunder many times before and I do not remember this many people before,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “This just blows my mind.”
Country Thunder concludes its 2012 run — the festival’s 19th — today with headliner Alan Jackson.
