Tim McGraw: A country star aims higher
By CHRIS PAGE
Get Out
July 25, 2004

You get the feeling, watching Tim McGraw in concert nowadays, that he’s starting to move on.

Not that he’s putting aside the half-rowdy, solid country numbers that made him famous in the mid- to late-’90s: plucky radio candy like “I Like It, I Love It” and “Indian Outlaw.” He’ll shove those tunes near the back of his set list — or sprinkle them throughout a mostly greatest-hits tour stop, like Sunday night’s slick stint at Cricket Pavilion. After all, he’s a multi-platinum entertainer who knows what to give his fans.

But “Outlaw’s” disposable novelty is over, and, set against extreme sports footage on a slew of the 18 moving video screens that serve as McGraw’s background pieces on the current tour, “I Like It, I Love It” comes off like little more than an ESPN commercial jingle.

Instead, McGraw’s musical heart seems to be beating slower, settling closer to breezy pop songs like “Where the Green Grass Grows” (a No. 1 single in 1998) and what’s likely to be one of his next singles, the melody-hugging, heart-tugging “My Old Friend.”

While they may not carry country’s kick, those lighter, almost power-poppy ballads are helping McGraw, 37, get something his wife, Faith Hill, earned years ago — status as a cross-genre performer, a onetime country superstar who can play to more than that core big-hat-no-cattle constituency. After hearing some of them in concert, one imagines several of the laid-back but deeper-hearted tracks from McGraw’s forthcoming album “Live Like You Were Dying,” (including its title single, a current hit) getting some Faith-sized love from VH1 and pop radio. It’s due in stores Aug. 24.

“I like his older stuff, the redneck stuff,” said Chandler’s Allison Knippen, 22, laughing. “But he’s kind of evolving, getting married and having kids and all that. I think it’s awesome.”

McGraw brought his band, the Dancehall Doctors, along with opening acts the Warren Brothers and the Kid Rock-esque Big & Rich to play Cricket with a lean show that was less of an endurance trial for himself and his audience than his previous gig here, a two-and-a-half hour, no-opener, date last year at America West Arena.

“He could play for three hours and there’d still be songs I wanted him to play,” said longtime fan Carrie Johnson of Chandler.

McGraw — whose voice isn’t the strongest in country, but the no-frills singer compensates for it with sheer gusto — worked the crowd in standard-issue blue jeans, a black tank top and the buffest arms in the genre, this side of Aaron Tippin.

When not pulling audience members up to join him onstage, McGraw delighted the 15,000-strong crowd with appearances by guest artist Cowboy Troy — a 6-foot-5-inch black country rapper who’s touring with overeager party act Big & Rich — on “She’s My Kind of Rain” (Troy added a PM Dawn-ish rap in the song’s middle) and wife Hill on the delicate Warren Brothers’ tune “Blank Sheet of Paper.” (Does anyone else think McGraw and his spouse could be the “Nick and Jessica” of country?). The song will show up on his forthcoming album. Set list, (new songs denoted with asterisk):

Mostly, though, McGraw’s show gave fans the opportunity to see him going further into the crossover he’s been hinting at since 1997’s “Everywhere” — straight into the pop world where plucking heartstrings means everything. Perhaps the key’s in the carpe-diem title of his new album; he may be a country boy at heart, but McGraw seems poised to prove he can be even more.

1. How Bad Do You Want It*
2. Illegal
3. Unbroken
4. Where the Green Grass Grows
5. Watch the Wind Blow By
6. Down on the Farm
7. Red Ragtop
8. She’s My Kind of Rain (with Cowboy Troy)
9. For a Little While
10. My Old Friend*
11. Don’t Take the Girl
12. Just to See You Smile
13. Blank Sheet of Paper (with the Warren Brothers and Faith Hill)
14. Live Like You Were Dying*
15. I Like It, I Love It
16. Indian Outlaw
17. (Drum solo)
18. Drugs or Jesus*

Encore:
1. Something Like That
2. The Cowboy in Me
3. Real Good Man
4. The Ride

* denotes song from forthcoming album