The country-music superstar also announced a major Canada tour, which will begin at Budweiser Stage on June 21.
by Nick Krewen
Special to the Star
Country music superstar Keith Urban had the right idea.
If you’re going to announce a major Canadian tour, do it in style: generate a buzz with a surprise show that turns out to be a glorious party at one of Toronto’s most storied and intimate venues.
The first shoe dropped on Friday when Urban’s website announced Monday night’s concert at the Horseshoe Tavern. Tickets, priced $55, were quickly snapped up.
Then Urban’s camp announced the Canadian dates of his upcoming High and Alive tour, and continue through the rest of the nation in September.
The New Zealand-born Australian Urban, probably the genre’s most proficient guitarist, proved it time and again through the two-hour-plus gig before a capacity crowd of around 400: searing solos that squeezed so many imaginative sounds out of his six-stringed electrics while retaining a slightly Celtic feel — and a pizzicato technique that plucked away at breakneck speeds, most noticeably during the intro to “The Fighter,” his 2017 hit duet with Carrie Underwood.
And that’s not taking anything away from his songwriting prowess: Urban has long been a favourite of Canadian country radio, scoring 25 chart-toppers since the top of the century and still churning out hits 25 years later.
Urban, whose physical appearance has remained pretty much unchanged since he first invaded North American shores with his trio the Ranch in 1997, began the evening solo with his upbeat “Long Hot Summer,” although he announced his intentions to the enraptured audience before starting to strum.
“Tonight is just going to be a jam session,” Urban, clad in a grey T-shirt, proclaimed. “We’re going to fool around; we’re going to jam; we’re going to take requests. We’ve got some obscure covers to play tonight …”
And thus it began, with the engaged crowd singing along to “Long Hot Summer” and participating to a call-and-response, prompting Urban to beam and declare that “this is going to be a great night.”
It should be noted that, even as his band joined him midway through the number, Urban was playing through a slight handicap.
As he was addressing the numerous personnel changes in his band — most notably, his Ranch mate Jerry Flowers is no longer playing bass with him live — he also confessed that “we literally couldn’t find a bass player tonight.” So former Rihanna keyboardist Pete Kuzma played bass parts along with his regular fills.
Not that anyone noticed, sound-wise, as Urban surrounds himself with the best. If you’re not as disciplined as the boss, you simply don’t make it to the stage.
The night’s MVP may have been Maggie Baugh, who filled out on harmonies and filled in for Underwood on “The Fighter,” while also packing a tasteful wallop on fiddle, guitar and mandolin.
As for the show itself, it was as loose as it was meticulous, and found Urban in a playful mood. After a lengthy take on the Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker,” he kidded that they had just performed “the Quaaludes” version of the song.
At one point during the show, a couple of fans near the stage wanted to perform “Somebody Like You” with their hero.
“Can you play?” Urban asked one, a guy named Angel said he lives a few blocks from the Horseshoe. “Everybody here will kill you if you can’t.”
Then the other, singer Peter Peres, came up, and the duo fronted a spirited version of Urban’s breakthrough smash, as the star played an acoustic alongside them. They did an admirable job: Peres even got the crowd clapping along.
But Urban wasn’t about to be upstaged. After switching to electric guitar, he performed his version.
The rest of the evening featured a generous selection of old and new: uplifting love songs like “Kiss a Girl” and “‘Til Summer Comes Around”; High tracks like “Messed Up as Me” and the ebullient “Go Home W U”; the forlorn ballad “Stupid Boy”; the wistful “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” co-written by Canadian Steven Lee Olsen; the anthemic “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16”; and acoustic renditions of “You’ll Think of Me” and “Heart Like a Hometown.”
The only drawback of the evening: if you were claustrophobic or shorter than five-foot-five, you were probably pretty uncomfortable. But that’s the price you pay for seeing an arena act in a tiny club.
Those minor quibbles aside, the festive crowd easily enjoyed a great concert kickoff to 2025 and a much-needed dose of Urban renewal.