Friday night brought Alan Jackson’s 25th Anniversary “Keepin’ it Country” tour into Springfield, with Brandy Clark and Jon Pardi along for the ride. Alan Jackson is a country megastar with 16 studio albums to date, along with 34 number one hits, 50 songs that cracked the Billboard Top 30, and countless awards to go along with them. His supporting acts joining him are no slouches themselves, Jon Pardi going gold with over 500,000 sales of his 2013 single ‘Up All Night,’ and Brandy Clark being a wildly successful song writer for artists including Little Big Town, Miranda Lambert, and the 2014 CMA Award for Song of the Year winner recorded by Kacey Musgraves, ‘Follow Your Arrow,’ as well as coming off of touring with Eric Church.
Opening the show for the packed Mass-Mutal center was Brandy Clark, with songs off of her 2013 album ‘12 Stories.’ Clark began with her first realesed single, ‘Stripes,’ followed by ‘Small Town,’ and ‘Broke.’ Her band left the stage as she began solo acoustic performances of two mega-hits that she had written, ‘Better Dig Two’ recorded by Little Big Town, and ‘Mama’s Broken Heart,’ which was recorded by Miranda Lambert before her band came back onstage and Clark closed out her show with more songs off of the ’12 Stories’ album, ‘Get High,’ ‘Crazy Women,’ ‘Take a Little Pill,’ and ‘Hungover.’
Just around 8PM brought the high energized Jon Pardi to the stage, opening his show with ‘Living Life ‘Til The Day I Die,’ and ‘Empty Beer Cans,’ before beginning crowd favorite, ‘Missin’ You Crazy.’ Pardi then began rattling off hit after hit from his 2014 album, ‘Write You a Song,‘ and the set was winding to a close, Pardi finished strong with title track ‘Write You a Song,’ and his most successful hit, ‘Up All Night,’ the song that really was a gamechanger for him, cracking the Top 10 on US Country charts, and being certified Gold.
The capacity crowd was bubbling with excitement at 9 o’clock when superstar Alan Jackson finally took the stage. The atmosphere certainly lived up to a Friday night performance, having the arena singing, dancing, and even standing on other’s shoulders for a few in the front! With so many hits and number ones, Jackson started red hot with songs ‘Gone Country,’ and ‘I Don’t Even Know Your Name.’ Alan slowed it down with the next choice of song, ‘Livin on Love,’ a hit off of his 1994 album, ‘Who Am I.’ The slowed tempo didn’t last long, as Jackson went back into fast paced honky-tonk anthems he is known all too well for, leading to the middle of his set, he started into gut wrenching songs off of his 2002 album ‘Drive,’ A song for his late father, ‘Drive (For Daddy Gene),’ and ‘Where Were You,’ leading into a roaring “U-S-A” chant by the crowd.
Once again picking the momentum up, Jackson performed ‘Don’t Rock The Jukebox’ and other classic hits, before bringing it down to perform a song that he is in the process of writing and recording, ‘Angels and Alcohol.’ This song sounded as much his own as any other written, and told the crowd that he hopes to have the album released sometime in the next few months. As the show was drawing near, Jackson closed with all of the crowd favorites, ‘As Shes Walking Away,’ his 2010 duet recorded with the Zac Brown Band, ‘Remember When,’ ‘Good Time,’ ‘It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,’ ‘Chattahoochie,’ and closing his show with ‘Where I Come From,’ as videos and photos of Springfield and its surrounding attractions scrolled across the video screens. Nobody headed for the aisle and the entire arena demanded more, so Jackson came back out to perform his 1993 hit ‘Mercury Blues.’ The entire crowd was on their feet applauding and cheering, and you could tell both Jackson and the city of Springfield hopes he’s around for another 25 years.
