Blake Shelton pours out the love to country heroes, friends & Gwen at Rupp concert

What good is honest hero worship if you can’t level it off with a dash of pretend envy?

To wit: Blake Shelton’s onstage response Thursday evening at Rupp Arena to an audience sing-a-long that grew out of “Strawberry Wine,” the 1996 hit served up solemnly by Deana Carter, the second of three guests making up this opening night bill of the headliner’s Friends and Heroes Tour.

“You all don’t react like that to any of my songs,” he quipped with the kind of playful pathos that marked his many years as judge of the long running TV talent show “The Voice.” It was all a bald-faced fib, of course. The Rupp audience treated Shelton, Carter and the evening’s two other “heroes,” Craig Morgan and Trace Adkins, as if they were Grand Marshals in a parade.

That the nearly three-and-a-hour performance (opened by a pop-friendly and fashionably sparkly 30-minute set by one-time Shelton “Voice” protégé Emily Ann Roberts) satisfied Central Kentucky’s seemingly bottomless thirst for country music was a given. But the novel design of the concert — along with Shelton’s cheery role as headliner, cheerleader and ringmaster — went deeper than that in terms of sentiment and way deeper in terms of a timeline.

Shelton’s performance — which featured the three guests for short sets inserted like interludes — possessed an electric accessibility that typified country’s more rock-friendly melodies of the late ’70s and early ’80s. The show-opening “Pour Me a Drink,” in fact, may have originated as a 2024 single with rapper-turned-country immigrant Post Malone, but Shelton’s version at Rupp blew up with the kind of rockish honky-tonk heart that would have been right at home in the “Urban Cowboy” era. That the song played out amid projections of barroom neon and Las Vegas marquees onto above-stage screens (holdovers, no doubt from Shelton’s pre-tour residency earlier this month at Caesars Palace) cemented a celebratory feel removed from more modern, pop-centric country concerns.

The throwback mood surfaced regularly throughout Shelton’s punctuated set. “Some Beach” was pure ’70s Jimmy Buffett while “Ol’ Red” rolled out with a swampy feel akin to early ’80s Hank Williams, Jr. Even the moderately contemporary tone of Shelton’s newest single, “Texas,” was balanced by a preceding performance of his very ’80s-sounding debut hit — ironically titled “Austin.”

Shelton’s biggest nod of the night to the here and now came with the very non-era specific love song “Nobody But You,” which he performed alongside a huge black-and-white film projection of wife (and duet partner for the 2020 single) Gwen Stefani.

The show’s nostalgia was further enhanced by the fact that the three “heroes” on the bill were staples of country radio during the late ’90s and early aughts. All maintain active careers today (each, in fact, have Kentucky concerts of their own slated for the summer), but the music they reached for at Rupp reflected yet another country age.

The manner in which the three were woven into the performance was initially unexpected. None were introduced prior to their entrances. Morgan, who was first up, bounded onstage like a cannonball after Shelton’s first five songs and dug into “Redneck Yacht Club” with a jolt of vocal immediacy and vigor. His entrance was so sudden that a patron beside me asked, “Who’s that?”

Carter and Adkins made their entrances with a similar lack of fanfare. Their performances were reserved compared to Morgan’s brief set, but no less inviting. Carter delivered “We Danced Away” and “How Do I Get There” with elegant assuredness while Adkins shifted gears with ease between the steamrolling grind of “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” and the more openly sentimental (and familial) “You’re Gonna Miss This.”

None of this took away from Shelton’s tireless sense of cheerful command. From the moment he invited, in very impromptu fashion, a fan onstage for a selfie during “All About Tonight” to the very honest camaraderie created when he performed with all three guests during an acoustic set on a mid-court second stage late into the program — a segment highlighted by the mix of vulnerability and confessional detail painted by Morgan during “Almost Home” — Shelton was immovably at the helm.

The heroes were obviously his guests, but Shelton made sure he was the one pouring the drinks.

This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 8:26 AM.