FLORENCE — Four-year-old Christian Thomas draped his arm around Donnie the bloodhound as Officer Jason Johnson loosely held the dog’s leash.
Donnie seemed pretty used to the attention and didn’t seem to mind when Christian squeezed a little harder Thursday afternoon.
“He loves dogs,” his aunt, Monique Chavez, said as the boy flipped his sunglasses down and gave Johnson’s Department of Corrections canine partner one last hug.
Just around the corner in the food court area, Tom Montoya and his crew were minding the open flames of their grill loaded down with corn on the cob and giant turkey legs roasting and spitting as they turned crispy brown.
In the backdrop, you could hear San Tan Valley resident Shyla Cluff trying to lure customers to her hot dog stand: “Hot dogs! Jumbo corndogs! Fresh squeezed lemonade!” she shouted as co-worker Jaslynn Savage looked out at the fairly empty food court.
Montoya was not worried; just give it time, he said. Over the weekend, the veteran vendor — this is the Casa Grande resident’s eighth Country Thunder festival — expects to sell 400 to 500 turkey legs and serve some 10,000 to 12,000 country music fans.
“I like the atmosphere,” he said. “I’m making money and watching the crazy show.”
Only some of that show will be on stage; much of it will pass right in front of Montoya in the food court and vendors area tucked in a corner of the sprawling grounds.
The vendors selling festival T-shirts or promoting all sorts of causes from the Arizona Club that supports law enforcement — the reason Donnie and Johnson were there Thursday — to the legal-eagle site Myazlawyers.com that offered free root beer if you liked them on Facebook were momentary distractions.
The real action was on the enormous Country Thunder stage, which will see some of country’s biggest stars over the weekend, including Sunday night headliner Chris Stapleton.
On opening night Thursday, an estimated 30,000 people packed in to see veteran country singer Trace Adkins and rising star Brett Eldredge kick things off.
From the crowd’s piercing screams, the pair was a fine choice to shatter the notion that opening day should be the calm before the country storm.
Adkins, at 6-foot 6 the tallest person who will grace the Country Thunder stage this year, might not have the hit-power of his earlier days, but he proved he can still get the crowd going.
Along the catwalk, dozens of fans held out cowboy hats and ball caps with Sharpies at the ready in hopes of getting his attention. They failed; Adkins was not there to sign autographs. He was there to show us that his deeply nuanced, slightly twangy baritone is no worse for the wear of years of singing songs that can still wring a tear out of lamenting that “You’re Gonna Miss This” or make you holler when he commends a woman’s “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.”
Adkins covered a lot of ground in 90 minutes, from his early single “Songs About Me” to one of his latest, “Still A Soldier.” He shimmied and shook his way through the grinding “Hot Mama” and “I Left Something Turned On At Home” and got downright snarky on his “A**hole Song,” which took unapologetic broad swipes at his buddy Blake Shelton, before closing with a cover of Gregg Allman’s “I’m No Angel.”
Eldredge, making his third Country Thunder appearance in his nearly 10-year career, bounded on stage with a drink in hand. Anyone wondering what kind of show he was putting on got the message: Welcome to the party.
As the evening chilled, Eldredge strutted along the catwalk or skipped from one side of the stage to the other extolling the value of being “Drunk on Your Love.”
He tugged at our hearts with “Raymond,” an homage to his grandmother in her waning days, and showed us how he’d finally found something he’s good at.
He told the crowd he wasn’t one to ask people to turn on their phone flashlights, but he figured under the blanket of a near starless night in Florence with 30,000 people and their phones, it would add a nice effect to his ballad “Mean to Me” and the words “if I could be the fire in your firefly.”
He was right. The blanket of twinkling lights looked like a sky full of fireflies.
Country Thunder continues Saturday with headliner Dierks Bentley and Brothers Osborne.
