Luke Combs packs Detroit’s Ford Field with hits and everyman star power | CPT PPP Coverage
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Luke Combs packs Detroit’s Ford Field with hits and everyman star power appeared on www.freep.com by Brian McCollum.
Armed with an arsenal of evocative, catchy songs and earnest everyman appeal, Luke Combs wowed a sellout crowd at Ford Field Saturday night — and set a venue record while he did it.
Detroit was the fourth stop on the country star’s 2023 world tour, a stadium run that’s proving the mettle of the CMAs’ Entertainer of the Year now two years running. Saturday, he drew 52,783 to Ford Field, the most in the venue’s 21-year history for an end-stage concert configuration. (Shows staged in the round have topped that attendance figure, led by Garth Brooks’ 70,000-plus in 2020.)
“This is crazy to me,” the North Carolina native said early on. “Never in a million years did I think I’d be doing anything like this.”
The 33-year-old singer-songwriter certainly hit the sweet spot for the multigenerational audience that piled into Ford Field, fans who arrived in full voice to sing along with the well-crafted hits that have propelled Combs to the upper tier of the country music heap.
Combs has become a country music powerhouse despite — or maybe because of — his unassuming personality. There’s a quiet good-dude vibe about him: In 2021, for instance, he privately paid the funeral costs of three young Michigan fans who had died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning during the Faster Horses Festival the weekend he performed. Word of his act emerged only when grieving relatives mentioned it to news media.
With a limber, gruff-edged voice to go with his burly frame, Combs roamed his massive stage Saturday often armed with a red Solo cup — Post Malone-style — and spent most of his time on a catwalk that put him close to fans on the floor.
The feel-good “Lovin’ on You” opened the show to set the tone for a nearly two-hour affair steeped in that brand of melodic, midtempo music, including the live debut of “You Found Yours” from the new “Gettin’ Old,” the companion album to last summer’s “Growin’ Up.”
Rollicking numbers such as “1, 2 Many” were matched by the new slow-burners “Love You Anyway” and “Going, Going, Gone,” while the show’s hit-stacked homestretch featured many of the signature tunes that made his name: “Hurricane,” “When it Rains It Pours,” “Beer Never Broke My Heart” and more.
A brief acoustic departure turned up a lovely performance of “Beautiful Crazy,” soon followed by Combs’ whole-souled rendition of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” which he introduced with a nostalgic anecdote about listening to music with his dad while growing up in North Carolina.
The latter was one of three covers Saturday night, including a rare live appearance of his take on Ed Sheeran’s “Dive” and a show-closing romp through Brooks & Dunn’s “Brand New Man.”
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More:Country chart-topper Morgan Wallen to play Ford Field in June 2023
Lyrically, Combs’ work comes with an eye for telling detail as he traverses the joys of love, agonies of heartache and charms of a cold beer. Musically, he takes cues from elder statesmen such as Brooks & Dunn and Tim McGraw while riding a lane also occupied by contemporaries like Eric Church and Chris Stapleton. Informed as much by ’70s pop as he is by country’s touchstones, Combs has a knack for explosive choruses that can function as instant earworms.
The seven-man band that accompanied him Saturday lent harmonies that helped make the music stadium-sized, while fiddles, banjos and pedal steel guitar gave a touch of traditional twang to go with the power chords and bright hooks.
Combs was the opening salvo in Ford Field’s busiest concert year ever, part of a nine-show 2023 schedule that will bring Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, Beyoncé, Metallica and others to the Detroit Lions’ stadium this summer.
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
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