Carrie Underwood Shakes Nashville With Her Storyteller Tour
Carrie Underwood's concert at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Thursday night (Sept. 22) was perhaps the most superb audio-visual experience currently on the road in country music.
Underwood's Storyteller Tour — Stories in the Round show features a stage with the main riser in the center, flanked by long ramps ending in stages on either side and two smaller stages at the front and back that allow the singer and her band to play to fans on all sides of the stage. That unique setup made for a one-of-a-kind concert, which began with Underwood emerging from under the stage on a riser in the center to kick off her high-energy show with "Renegade Runaway," a hard-hitting rock song that also opens her current Storyteller album.
Underwood kept the energy high with back-to-back-to-back guitar-driven rockers, delivering scorching renditions of "Last Name" — which segued in and out of "Something Bad" — "Undo It" and "Good Girl" before finally taking a moment to address the hometown crowd.
"There is so much energy hitting this stage it's not even funny," a beaming Underwood said. "It's great to be home."
She followed that with her recent smash from Storyteller, "Church Bells," at the end of which she sank into the floor while the band continued to play. She emerged once again from the center of the stage in a dazzling white dress, standing atop a sparkling jukebox that was sending off sparks as she performed her next song, "Jesus Take the Wheel."
Underwood focused primarily on the kind of uptempo, feisty hits that allow her to demonstrate the upper range of her high-octane voice, including "Blown Away," "Two Black Cadillacs" and her current single, "Dirty Laundry." But she also gave fans some more intimate performances, paying tribute to Dolly Parton with a restrained, tasteful acoustic rendition of "I Will Always Love You," during which her band members simply sank from view into the stage.
She choked up while introducing "What I Never Knew I Always Wanted," which she wrote about her husband, Nashville Predator Mike Fisher, and their son Isaiah. "I’ve learned a lot about another group of amazing women in the last 18 months," Underwood said. "That group is mothers." She thanked everyone who serves as a support system for a busy working mom, and commented on how much she enjoys seeing families come to her shows together, wiping away tears and saying, "There's no way I'm going to make it through this next song."
The superstar brought out her opening acts, the Swon Brothers and Easton Corbin, for a jam on Alabama's "Mountain Music," then led the Bridgestone in a singalong of "Before He Cheats" before leaving the stage. She played acoustic guitar when she returned for "Smoke Break," then closed her show with "Something in the Water," drawing roars of approval near the end when she broke into "Amazing Grace" and leaving her audience uplifted as they made their way out of the arena after taking in an absolutely top-notch multi-media spectacle.
Underwood's Storyteller Tour is slated to run through Nov. 28, when it wraps up in Utah.
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