Has Nashville become a rock town? The seat of commercial country music certainly has been going that direction this century. Much of what you heard on country radio sounded pretty poppy back in the ’00s, but now thundering rock riffs seem to be the flavor of favor.
And few popular country artists seem to have embraced this trend as enthusiastically as Brantley Gilbert. As he and his five-piece band demonstrated at Minneapolis’ Target Center on Friday night, his music has a lot more in common with AC/DC and Lynyrd Skynyrd than George Strait or Garth Brooks. Granted, there’s a touch of twang to his sound, but adrenaline-fueled party anthems are his chief modus operandi in concert.
It made for a pretty entertaining concert, too. Opening his set by emerging astride a motorcycle, Gilbert launched into “Fire’t Up” from his latest album, a song accented by upstage bursts of flame, sending some welcome warmth through the hall on a cold night. It was classic arena rock all the way, full of piercing electric guitar solos, seismic bass lines and big thundering drums.
So did the crowd of about 8,000 get fired up by Gilbert’s 21-song set? Well, it took a while, but they warmed to his country-flavored riff rock. Not until “The Ones That Like Me” did this really sound like a country concert, especially when Gilbert and band followed it up with a mandolin-driven cover of Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road” that lasted through one chorus. Then Gilbert set aside his American-flag-bedecked acoustic guitar and started ambling around with his brass-knuckle-clad microphone again, chanting out another rocker, “The Weekend.”
Yet Gilbert’s strongest suit might be as a balladeer. His first of the evening was of the power variety, “You Don’t Know Her Like I Do,” which seemed his most earnest offering, a love song tossed in amid rowdy rockers like “Small Town Throwdown” and two Gilbert-penned songs that were made hits by Jason Aldean: “My Kinda Party” and “Dirt Road Anthem.”
When this Georgia songsmith first emerged in 2009, his sound was far more folk-flavored and acoustic, and he harked back to it on a pair of low-key ballads that were among the evening’s highlights, “Bad Boy” and “Modern Day Prodigal Son.” The latter was the title track to his debut album, and he delivered from the seat of his motorcycle.
Attired entirely in black, from his ballcap to his tattoo-friendly sleeveless shirt to dangling chains on his hip, Gilbert never seemed particularly graceful as he bounced about the stage, coming off more like an amiable bearded brewery employee than a country star. And he indeed seemed a salt-of-the-earth type on his between-songs banter, regaling with tales of experiencing ice fishing for the first time that afternoon on Lake Minnetonka.
But the set grew less engaging as he distanced himself from his relatively individualistic persona and stacked one unimpeachable tribute atop another, from veterans to cancer victims to police officers to all of the redneck clichés litanized in Hank Williams Jr.’s “Country Boy Can Survive.” And, while it’s understandable that Gilbert wanted to perform all of his hits, singing a duet with a video of singer Lindsay Ell, “What Happens in a Small Town,” felt like a decidedly inorganic moment.
When I first caught Gilbert warming up for Tim McGraw early last decade, he seemed at the vanguard of a trend to find common ground between country and hip-hop. Now that the biggest hit of 2019 was just such a hybrid, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” Gilbert has gone in a different direction. But one of his warm-up acts, Dylan Scott, seems to be doubling down on the concept. Unfortunately, his songs aren’t as strong as his stage presence. The same could be said of Brandon Lay, who started the evening with an uninspiring set. Consider it a savvy move on Gilbert’s part not to invite along warm-up acts likely to upstage him.
As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.