Review: Blake Shelton brings the party to Phoenix

Blake Shelton knows what his audience wants -- a good time where the drinking songs are somehow flowing faster than the drinks themselves. And he was happy to oblige in the course of a two-hour Friday night concert at Ak-Chin Pavilion in Phoenix, setting the tone for the sold-out performance with a boozy celebration of the moment, "All About Tonight."

The first words out of Shelton's mouth were "Don't bother telling me what I got coming in the morning / I already know / I got some feelgood pills and a red Gatorade by my bed / Ready to go."

And he followed that one with "The More I Drink," the greatest drinking song in Shelton's catalog, in which a man explains why he's nursing a Coke instead of drinking with his friends. "The more I drink," he says, "the more I drink."

After changing it up a bit with "She Wouldn't Be Gone," a heartfelt song about losing the girl because he didn't do enough to make her stay, he had the lights brought up, got a look at the crowd and said, "I'm officially nervous now. I'm just gonna be honest with y'all right off the bat. When I get nervous, I tend to drink a little bit.

Then, after singing the romantic "Doin' What She Likes," he said, "I'm starting to relax a little bit now, starting to calm down. And just so you know, when I relax, I like to have a drink."

It was a good bit, followed by an entertaining monologue about a meeting with his label reps in which he was, he says, advised to tone it down -- with the songs about drinking, for instance -- and, if possible, to "stay off Twitter altogether." That led to him using his phone as a prop to "tweet" "If you don't like my tweets, you can kiss my country ass" -- which, of course, led into "Kiss My Country Ass," in which he's got a "truck bed loaded down with beer and a cold one in my lap."

From that point out, the concert was a winning blend of party songs and love songs, from "Mine Would Be You" to the Memphis-soul-gone-country vibe of "Nobody But Me" and the Island-flavored "Some Beach," for which Shelton's donned a cowboy hat with a mullet wig attached to help take listeners back to the "Voice" star's early years.

"Ol' Red," a swampy country-blues that tells the story of a prisoner escaping after hooking the warden's tracking dog up with a steady date just down the road, was followed by more comedy. "I have officially seen it all tonight," Shelton said, explaining that "Ol' Red" was his attempt at outlaw country and as he was trying to sing, he looked down in the front row and saw a man putting some serious moves on his date. This is during a song about a prison dog. "I know what you're trying to set up for later," Shelton told the man, who was shown on the video monitor. "As a matter of fact, we're all pulling for you." Then, he suggested looking at his date while singing the words to the song that followed, "Who Are You When I'm Not Looking."

Things got rowdy with "Hillbilly Bone," a raucous celebration of the country lifestyle, which was followed by "Sure Be Cool If You Did" and Shelton's latest single, "Neon Light," which served as a musical change-up with the banjo taking center-stage and Shelton singing, "There's a neon light at the end of the tunnel / It ain't all that bright, but even though it's subtle / It's got me feeling alright, go on and make it a double / There's a neon light at the end of the tunnel."

The concert mellowed out a bit when Shelton introduced his backup singer, Gwen Sebastian -- part of the Shelton team, he explained, since they met on "The Voice" -- and she and Shelton sang the recent hit, "My Eyes," in which Shelton's eyes "are the only thing I don't want to take off of you."

Then, the singer announced that he wanted to play a few songs alone on acoustic guitar. "I wanna play y'all what I consider to be the two most important songs of my life," he continued. "And ironically, I didn't even record this first one. My wife did. Miranda."

Shelton explained how they'd written "Over You," inspired by his brother's death, together and decided that Lambert should record it because "I actually felt like it would be tough for me to perform this thing night after night."

Of course, the song went on to be a huge hit for Lambert, but hearing Shelton sing it Friday kind of left me wishing he'd recorded it himself. And he followed what was easily the emotional centerpiece of Friday's show with a heartfelt rendition of "Austin," his first single.

Shelton got back to the drinking songs with "Drink on It" and encouraged the fans to wave their cell phones in the air like lighters during "Home," the final ballad of the proper set, before bringing the show to a rousing finale with "Honey Bee" and "Boys 'Round Here."

The singer returned for the encore in a Cardinals jersey with a backwards baseball cap to sing his rowdy take on Kenny Loggins' "Footloose," before ending the night on a tender note with "God Gave Me You."

The concert also featured sets by Neal McCoy, who served as an extremely entertaining MC, Dan + Shay and the ACMs' top vocal group, the Band Perry.

Fronted by Kimberly Perry with her brothers Neil and Reid, the Band Perry came on strong with "Done," an energetic opener that ended with the siblings jumping up and down with their backing musicians. They made their way through such crowd-pleasing hits as "You Lie" and "All Your Life," even rocking a spirited cover of "Fat Bottomed Girls" before touching off an a cappella singalong with the five-times-platinum "If I Die Young" and closing with "Better Dig Two."

Setlist

"All About Tonight"

"The More I Drink"

"She Wouldn't Be Gone"

"Doin' What She Likes"

"Kiss My Country Ass"

"Mine Would Be You"

"Some Beach"

"Ol' Red"

"Who Are You When I'm Not Looking"

"Hillbilly Bone"

"Sure Be Cool If You Did"

"Neon Light"

"My Eyes"

"Over You"

"Austin"

"Drink On It"

"Home"

"Honey Bee"

"Boys 'Round Here"

Encore

"Footloose"

"God Gave Me You"