Western-clad crowds gathered from Moscow, Pullman and surrounding areas to attend the Welcome Back concert held at the University of Idaho’s ICCU Arena on Friday, Aug. 28. The concert featured Dustin Lynch and Adrien Nunez, who were accompanied by the country/dance music act “Country Night.”
The performers offered a significant stray from traditional country music that they have all, in their own ways, become known for. Despite this, much of their appeal was their country personas. “We brought in a lot of non-country acts… Last semester, we did a bunch of smaller EDM concerts to kind of just see what the taste was. In the meantime, we were doing polls with students,” said John Kosh, the director of business development marketing and communications at UI. “And though they did want a wide range of things, pop, rock and country always came to the top of the list.”
“We had some wiggle room there… [to] kind of push the genre,” Kosh continued. “Dustin Lynch is pushing the genre himself with his dance music set at the end. [We thought] this would be kind of a fun thing to try, so we said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”
Country Night performed first, taking the stage at about 6:30 and briefly playing Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” as a tribute to the late country musician before segueing into mixes of country and dance music. Aside from children dancing in the bleachers, the audience – many of which had bought tickets particularly to see Lynch – took some time to warm up to the act.
By the end of their performance, during which they’d distributed snacks and milk, the audience was sufficiently warmed up; after an interlude, Nunez took the stage, causing the audience to throng towards the front for the rest of their evening. Nunez has been an interesting case in the country music world, notable for his background outside of music and, particularly, for his sudden pivot to country music. This was touched upon in UI’s promotions for him, which described him as a “rising country artist and former college athlete-turned-social media sensation.”
While performing, Nunez was very down to earth, quick in his observations and responses to the audience. Primarily, he reached out to the students clustered around the stage for connection by talking about his experience with love and jaded relationships between songs.
The most notable thing about Nunez’s performance, however, was how distinctly it crossed genres. Many of his songs opened with booming, grandiose chords more reminiscent of rock than the plucked-out, light styles of country and country-adjacent music.
The audience responded to this deviation with ample cheering.
One eventgoer screamed out, “I love you, Adrien,” to which Nunez immediately responded, “I love you, too. That was emotional, and you meant it.”
Lynch’s performance was vastly different from that of Nunez. When he took to the stage, he sped through a few songs before beginning to chat with the audience.
“I think [Lynch’s performance] was awesome,” said Stetson Hook, a Moscow local that went with a friend to see the show. “It was very engaging. There are other concerts I’ve been to where there’s very clear breaks between songs and it gets a little boring. This one was – you didn’t really know where it’d stop or finish.”
Once he’d gotten through the first few songs, Lynch began to address the Vandals much more, getting the men and women in the audience to sing alternating verses of his hit song “Thinking ‘Bout You” (featuring MacKenzie Porter).
During his performance, he even donned a jersey he’d gotten from the UI basketball team; he also hugged and got the audience to sing “Happy Birthday” to a woman that had gotten onstage with a sign asking for a hug for her 39th birthday and took selfies with various audience members’ phones.
Lynch’s initial performance, while of a more standard country variety than that of Nunez or Country Night, was modernized particularly by the graphics employed in the background. Using a screen on stage, images of Americana – neon signs, maps of different parts of the United States, and videos of cars, camping and roads – were displayed to complement various songs.
After Lynch’s initial performance was over, an “after-party” was thrown at the arena, beginning with a showing of the University of Idaho’s then-ongoing football game against Cal Poly. Upon the conclusion of the game, audience members ceased watching and either left or took to the floor to start dancing.
In a genre with a strong culture and musical tradition, eventgoers were pleased with both the freshness and faithfulness of the Welcome Back concert and its performers.
“I feel like [Lynch’s music] is just familiar,” said Kailee Scott, a resident of Lewiston and longtime fan that had driven up to see Lynch. “[Country music] feels home-y and familiar. It’s hard to describe it.”
Cal can be reached at [email protected].