Chesney and McGraw: A Country Night in New York

August 12, 2012, 12:01 pm

By JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR.

More than 56,000 people packed into MetLife Stadium on Saturday to hear Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw perform back-to-back concerts, one of the largest country music events ever in the New York City metropolitan area.

The simple pleasures of summer romances and drinking on the beach, the remorse of lovelorn cowboys, and nostalgia for youth were on the program, as Mr. Chesney and Mr. McGraw, two of the genre's biggest stars over the last decade, served up their stomping country-rock party songs and I-could-have-been-a-better-man ballads.

The concert, part of the “Brothers of the Sun Tour,” was a marathon, a sort of mini-festival. Four bands played over six hours. The two opening acts were Jake Owen, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Then Mr. McGraw, bronzed tan and dressed all in white with a black hat, took the stage for a an hour-and-a-half set of his songs, leaving the crowd charged up for Mr. Chesney, who played for another two hours.

The crowd was full of people with New Jersey and New York accents wearing inexpensive cowboy hats â€" the sort made of paper or straw you buy at a street fair in Manhattan. The men favored tank tops, flip flops and baseball caps, while cut-off short-shorts and cowboy boots were the fashion among women. If there were very few genuine Stetsons in the audience, Mr. Chesney did not seem to mind. Between songs, he talked about how the faces of the people in the audience reminded him of his hometown in Tennessee.

“There is a lot of commonality, I believe, with the way I grew up,” he said. “I see a lot of passionate people. About life, about music, about sports, about everythi ng. That's why I love to play here.”

Then he segued into “I Go Back,” a nostalgic song about how a tune can stir the memory of a high school romance: “I go back to the feel of a 50-yard line / A blanket, a girl, some raspberry wine.”

Mr. Chesney, 44, gave an athletic performance, leaping about the cross-shaped stage that extended into the sea of fans, tugging on his faded white cowboy hat, mugging for the cameras and blowing kisses to the crowd. His black tank top with a skull and crossbones was drenched in sweat within a few songs. He sang more than 20 songs from across his 16-year recording career. But he did only a couple of tunes from his most recent album, “Welcome to the Fishbowl,” including the hit single “Come Over,” a romantic ballad about longing for an ex-lover.

One highlight came when Mr. Chesney was joined by Ms. Potter to sing “You and Tequila,” a song he first recorded on his 2010 album, “Hemingway's Whiskey.” (A liv e version of the song is on his more recent CD.)

The full band retired from the stage, and the audience could hear the two voices and two acoustic guitars. Mr. Chesney slipped right into one of his favorite personas: the hard-drinking man meditating on a disastrous love. “You and tequila make me crazy / Run like poison in my blood / One more night could kill me baby. / One is one too many / one more is never enough,” he sang as Ms. Potter did the high harmonies in her clear soprano. It was basic country, stripped of the pop and rock strains that run through Mr. Chesney's more up-tempo songs. The entire stadium sang the chorus, mostly in tune. “Ain't it great to be alive tonight?” Mr. Chesney shouted when it was done.

Earlier, Mr. McGraw, 45, did a muscular set of songs that drew as much from Southern rock licks and pop harmonies as it did from country and bluegrass rhythms. The rocked-up sound was pushed along by a big back-up band: four electric guitars, a steel guitar, fiddle, piano, drums and bass. Mr. McGraw appeared muscular himself, tan and fit in his pocket T-shirt, with a few tattoos on his arms, just enough to make him look the part of a working-class cow punch.

His voice was exultant on his hit “Felt Good on My Lips,” from his latest album “Emotional Traffic,” released in January. He also drew a large applause for the redemption song “Better Than I Used to Be,” from the same album, and he brought the crowd to a fever pitch late in a the set with his recent single “Truck Yeah,” a talking-blues-style song spoken over a gnarly rock guitar lick. (He and his phalanx of guitarists started off the song kneeling in a wedge shape on the jutting stage.)

During the rest of his set, Mr. McGraw dug deeper, performing older hits like 1999's “Something Like That,” 2001's “The Cowboy In Me” and 2004's “Live Like Your Dying.”

Mr. McGraw joined Mr. Chesney for a few encores at the end of the concert, among them their recently recorded duet “Feel Like A Rock Star.” The finale was a rousing rendition of Jackson Brown's “Running on Empty,” and after it was done, Mr. McGraw and Mr. Chesney signed autographs for people in the front rows before waving goodbye and disappearing.

The ticket sales for Saturday's event were slightly better than Mr. Chesney's appearance at the stadium last year, when about 55,000 came out. The attendance also easily topped the attendance for the 1983 festival with Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Linda Ronstadt, which for years held the distinction of being the largest country concert in the New York City region.