Two Hats and a Redhead

By Chris Varias

If you had to name names as to what singers are most responsible for the pop overhaul of country radio over the past quarter century, you would start with Reba McEntire.

The singer has been scoring No. 1 country hits for 23 years, from 1982's "Can't Even Get the Blues No More" to her most recent, "Somebody." She reminded the audience of those facts and figures, when she played the songs back-to-back in the middle of her Riverbend concert Sunday.

For 90 minutes McEntire hit upon all of the notable songs of her colossal career - and a couple of them even sounded like country music - in what was a crowd-pleasing performance on a chilly Riverbend season-opening night.

Her pop-savvy maneuvers ranged from female-centric story songs that functioned like an episode of the "Oprah Winfrey Show" put to adult-contemporary music ("The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," "The Fear of Being Alone," "I'm a Survivor," "My Sister," etc.) to "funky" fake gospel ("Love Revival") and soul ("Take it Back" and "Why Haven't I Heard from You?"). She even closed out the show with a nod to Linda Ronstadt, Reba's predecessor in the country-pop movement, by singing "When Will I Be Loved."

McEntire can credit that crossover sound for her superstardom, but her most-country-sounding tunes rank as her best material. Her take on Bobbi Gentry's "Fancy," a tale of white slavery set in Louisiana, effectively puts to use Reba's sense of melodrama as well as her drawl.

"I'd Rather Ride Around with You" is solid country-rock by Nashville radio standards and ranks as McEntire's finest single of the last decade. But her performance of the song was overshadowed by accompanying video shots of Cincinnati landmarks. Hopefully she didn't waste time gathering the footage. She could have borrowed it from Alan Jackson, who employs the same gimmick during his song "Where I Come From" each time he visits.

Brad Paisley and Terri Clark each played an opening set. The finest moments of Paisley's hour-long set involved either his hot-shot electric-guitar picking or drinking songs. One song was a comedy - the new single "Alcohol" ("...helpin' white people dance," he sang); the other a tragedy - "Whiskey Lullaby," a duet with Alison Krauss, with whose prerecorded video image and voice Paisley sang along.

Clark has hung around the country charts for a decade, long enough for her to release a greatest-hits CD last year. The crowd gave her a few standing ovations, and the most deserving one went to the greatest of her greatest hits: a cover of Warren Zevon's "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me."

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