Not Your Mama’s Country

There are coun­try shows that cater to rock­ers and rock shows that spin a lit­tle bit of coun­try, but Fri­day night’s Lynyrd Skynyrd show with open­ing act, Dierks Bent­ley, at the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming’s Arena Audi­to­rium, brought some­thing for every­one in the crowd of approx­i­mately six thou­sand.  The con­cert marks not only the start of the school year and foot­ball sea­son in Laramie, but the University’s first foray back into brin­ing head­lin­ing artists to south-east Wyoming’s largest arena, since Elton John head­lined a ben­e­fit con­cert for the Mathew Shep­ard Foun­da­tion in 2009, rais­ing $550,000 at the event.

Many in the state may remem­ber the days when Garth Brooks, Chris LeDoux, and other major tour­ing acts played the Arena Audi­to­rium (“Dou­ble A” as it’s called by fans), as a reg­u­lar event in Laramie – and Friday’s show did not dis­ap­point, deliv­er­ing a lit­tle bit of coun­try and a whole lotta’ rock-n-roll to the crowd that included stu­dents, the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming Board of Trustees and fans from as far away as South Dakota, Nebraska and Utah.

Open­ing the show was country’s hottest ris­ing star, Dierks Bent­ley.  Nom­i­nated for three CMA (Coun­try Music Asso­ci­a­tion) awards, includ­ing Male Vocal­ist of the Year, Album of the Year for his sum­mer release, UP ON THE RIDGE, and Musi­cal Event of the Year for his video “Bad Angel” fea­tur­ing Miranda Lam­bert and Jamey John­son, and also hon­ored Sep­tem­ber 14^th as ASCAP’s (Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Com­posers, Authors & Pub­lish­ers) “Songwriter/Artist of the Year”, Dierks Bent­ley con­tin­ues to take the world of coun­try music by storm. Friday’s per­for­mance did not dis­ap­point for the rowdy Laramie crowd, with Bent­ley play­ing favorites like the upbeat hit “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do,” the care­free, ram­bling “Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go),” and mov­ing num­ber one bal­lads “Set­tle for a Slow­down” and “Come a Lit­tle Closer.”  The crowd was cer­tainly not devoid of female fans sport­ing Bentley’s sig­na­ture “white tank tops” made famous by his 2003 hit “What Was I Thinkin’,” which brought a hand­ful of female admir­ers stage-side for a hand­shake and twirl from the crooner.  Not to be out­done, the men in the house cheered and sang along to a rous­ing ren­di­tion of Bentley’s feel-good drink­ing song “Side­ways.” From the open­ing notes of the title track to his lat­est crit­i­cally acclaimed release, UP ON THE RIDGE, which brought fans to their feet with the blue­grassy  foot-stompin’ tune, through­out the hour-long set, Bent­ley wowed the crowd with a spat­ter­ing of mate­r­ial from each of his five albums.

Bentley’s band includes some of Nashville’s best pick­ers, strum­mers and fid­dlers includ­ing Brian Layson (gui­tar), Steve Mis­amore (drums), Tim Ser­gent (steel gui­tar, banjo), Cas­sady Feasby (Bass), and newest mem­ber Dan Hochhal­ter (fid­dle, man­dolin, gui­tar, banjo) whose musi­cian­ship was appar­ent through­out the evening.
Before hand­ing over the stage to southern-rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bent­ley gave one last shout-out to the Laramie crowd, ask­ing the rev­el­ers to save a stool for him later that evening at the Cow­boy Bar, which he said was the first place he’d ever played in Laramie, years ear­lier. If he did make it down­town, you can be sure there was some­thing “Domes­tic, Light and Cold” wait­ing for him!

Dierks Bent­ley is cur­rently on the road sup­port­ing his lat­est album Up On The Ridge, with head­lin­ing dates cur­rently listed through the end of 2010. http://www.dierks.com