George Strait: "Pretty damn incredible"

By PRESTON JONES

pjones@star-telegram.com

ARLINGTON — "Isn’t the roof supposed to be open?"

For a moment Saturday night, George Strait ceased being the king of country and took a turn as court jester. "You know only one person in here can open it. Say it with me, 'Jerry, open the roof!’ "

The sellout crowd eagerly took up the chant, and before long, Cowboys Stadium’s retractable roof, which takes 12 minutes to fully open, began to part, revealing a warm slice of night air.

Satisfied, Strait turned back to the matter at hand and launched into Texas.

Moments such as this punctuated the official opening of the Cowboys’ new home, as team owner Jerry Jones christened his billion-dollar football palace with the help of country music royalty.

The 3-million-square-foot complex hosted an enthusiastic audience, a sprinkling of celebrities (U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison; former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson; current coach Wade Phillips; Melissa Rycroft, a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and contestant on Dancing With the Stars; and some of Nashville’s biggest names). Absent appeared to be severe technical or logistical problems.

The evening wasn’t without its hiccups, however.

Stadiums, as a rule, don’t generally make for terrific concert venues, and early on, Cowboys Stadium threatened to be particularly temperamental.

During opener Lee Ann Womack’s 30-minute set (she was drafted at the last minute to sub for Julianne Hough, stricken with laryngitis), a wicked echo made her vocals sound as if they were underwater. Nevertheless, Womack, who noted from the stage that she’d been on a beach just the day before, persevered, delivering a string of sterling tunes, including her current single Last Call.

"Don’t you think it’s fitting that a Texan should open this place?" asked Womack, a Jacksonville native.

As the evening progressed, the sonic presentation became sharper, and by the conclusion, the clarity and warmth of the stadium’s sound system outstripped those of other sizable spaces in the Metroplex, such as American Airlines Center or Superpages.com Center.

Blake Shelton, who strolled onto the stage and informed the crowd, "This is not the first beer I’ve held in my hand today," projected a laid-back energy, goofy sense of humor (at one point during his roughly 45-minute set, he turned out a pretty respectable cover of the freecreditreport.com jingle) and an engaging stage presence that let him seamlessly transition between heartfelt hits like She Wouldn’t Be Gone and cornpone shtick like Green.

Shelton also dedicated his song Some Beach to the cars rapidly filling the lots surrounding the stadium. "The traffic coming into this thing sucks," Shelton observed. "I guess that’s just how it’s gonna be."

Reba McEntire’s 80-minute performance was a breathtaking master’s class in effortless brilliance; she noted that she and Strait had not shared a stage since the pair opened for Conway Twitty "many, many moons ago." Her spunky, crowd-pleasing set was heavy on favorites, such as Why Haven’t I Heard From You and her encore, Fancy, for which she donned a spangly red dress.

But the night — and the loudest reception from the audience — belonged to Strait, who took the stage a little after 9:30 p.m. and delivered a roughly 105-minute performance that had fans clamoring at the foot of the stage and flashbulbs popping throughout the arena.

Before he played a single note, the normally reserved Strait stepped back from the microphone, a grin on his face.

"This is pretty damn incredible," he said to ear-piercing cheers. "I can say I’ve done a lot of things in my career, but this is right up there with anything I’ve done."

PRESTON JONES IS THE STAR-TELEGRAM POP MUSIC CRITIC. 817-390-7713

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