It was supposed to be the stadium-sized kickoff of “summer” concert season. A dismal forecast wouldn’t stop a few cutoff shorts and sleeveless flannels from coming out to Lumen Field for the first big stadium gig of the season, as one of country music’s leading men, Luke Combs, pulled into Seattle with a case full of good-time drinking tunes and a stellar supporting cast.
But when Mother Nature dumps a bucket of water over your Stetson (for five hours straight), what’s there to do but crank the music, crack a cold one and get on down anyhow? So seemed to be the motto of roughly 50,000 fans who turned Saturday’s concert from the newly minted stadium headliner into a rowdy poncho party.
The Country Music Association’s reigning entertainer of the year didn’t waste much time firing up his nearly two-hour set. After opening with a tender “Doin’ This” — the lead single off his forthcoming “Growin’ Up” LP, arriving later this month — Combs unleashed his crunchy, countrified head banger “Cold as You.” It’s a Grade A tip-one-back, leave-your-troubles-at-the-door jukebox slammer that bowled over the stadium crowd like Marshawn Lynch on an undersized defensive back. Or maybe more accurately, it was the thunderous crowd that bowled over Combs, as early on his vocals struggled to compete with the tens of thousands of voices singing along with every word.
“I wouldn’t expect to be outside in … Seattle, Washington, without getting a little wet!” proclaimed the North Carolina juggernaut from under the brim of a Seahawks cap, unafraid to get as soaked as the rest of us. Ripping through his beer-hoisting Brooks & Dunn collab “1,2 Many,” Combs briefly ditched the red Solo cup that was attached to his hand most of the night to shotgun a Miller Lite during an extended bridge, much to the crowd’s delight. Whether he was straining to match their volume or just warming up on a damp Northwest night, Combs sounded a little coarse on some of first few songs’ more raucous moments before eventually finding his sweet spot.
While Combs can spin an earwormy beer anthem with the best of them, don’t dismiss the singer-songwriter as another country party boy. On the country spectrum, Combs falls somewhere between the purist appeal of Chris Stapleton — one of the genre’s top male vocalists, who played the Gorge on Saturday — and the more slickly produced pop-country hitmakers dotting country radio. Some of his greatest strengths are celebrating the seemingly small things in life with a genuine salt-of-the-earth swagger and expanding sentimental life moments into widescreen country ballads while skirting some of the hokier cliches and cloying tropes of this heavily tilled soil.
Combs’ Seattle date was one of only a handful of spring shows and festival slots that saw the country star headlining stadiums for the first time. After facing rejection from labels, publishers and singing competitions early in his career, the 32-year-old’s rise to stardom has been one of country’s feel-good stories and the occasion had the expecting father feeling particularly reflective.
“We’re at the point where I hope our baby don’t pop out while we’re playing this show,” he said before vivid missing-you love song “Houston, We Got a Problem.” Held together with a voice that’s thick and sweet as honey, Combs deployed a string of typical country signifiers (dirty boots, domestic beer) in a way that makes the heartfelt ballad, which zeros in on a hotel moment when his career was starting to take off, feel tangible but not cookie cutter.
For all the stadium singalongs, none were as carefree as a pre-encore romp through the appropriately titled “When it Rains it Pours,” as drenched fans splash-danced in the stands, thrusting their arms to the gray skies on every sailing chorus. Still, it was hard to top the beer-slugging bulldozer of a closer “Beer Never Broke My Heart,” for which Combs slipped on a Steve Largent jersey. (For all the Seahawks gear gracing the stage over the course of the night, however, Combs’ guitarist takes the best local pandering prize with his Emerald City Guitars T-shirt.)
The only real downer of the night was the absence of Zach Bryan, a breakout star with Western Washington ties who was initially slated to perform. The Navy vet once stationed here is taking the country world by storm since being discharged from active-duty service last year, selling out theaters and lighting up some of the premier country festivals. Last month, the singer-songwriter released his ambitious major-label debut, the sprawling double LP “American Heartbreak,” to critical acclaim.
Although COVID-19 forced the Oklahoma native to bow out of the gig a few days earlier, the late addition of Mitchell Tenpenny, who took the stage after opener Morgan Wade, ensured the undercard didn’t lose any muscle. Before Combs, good old-fashioned you-know-what-kicker Cody Johnson hit the stage like a human cannonball, eager to preach the gospel of “real country music” with a high-octane sermon of fiddle-laced heel stompers and “three chords and the truth” balladry.
“If you’re gonna play country music at all, you better have a fiddle in the band,” he professed at one point. Amen to that. Though he’s already a force in his own right, Johnson made more than a few new believers last night.
Michael Rietmulder: mrietmulder@seattletimes.com; Michael Rietmulder is The Seattle Times music writer.
