McEntire-Clarkson tour blasts off at Nutter Center
Friday, January 18, 2008
FAIRBORN - Reba McEntire, the country music superstar and actress, and Kelly Clarkson, the Grammy-winning pop-rock singer and 2002 "American Idol" winner, launched their limited-run "Two Voices, Two Worlds" tour Thursday night to a sell-out crowd at Wright State University's Ervin J. Nutter Center.
Launched? Let's say they blasted off, as into the stratosphere.
And they did it without fancy sets, fog machines or fireworks. They even did it without costume changes, which McEntire fans have come to expect.
No, all the pyrotechnics were saved for the women's vocalizations, which when combined at times reached out-of-this-world proportions.
The concert tour, which will hit 15 towns before its conclusion next month, grew out of a CMT cable television "Crossroads" special that paired the two singers last summer, though they had shared a stage once before when McEntire appeared as a guest on the first season of "American Idol" to sing with then-contestant Clarkson.
The tour brings together performers of different generations who have been primarily associated with different musical genres. Though side-by-side, their stylings had more similarities than might have been expected.
In terms of their age, let's just say that five years before Kelly was born in 1982, Reba was a full-fledged member of the Grand Ole Opry.
Let's say it, and forget it, because McEntire made it irrelevant Thursday night.
Dressed in matching tight black jeans and similar black sequined-fronted tank tops, the fit and trim McEntire came nowhere close to assuming any matron-like persona beside the younger Clarkson.
But while age didn't show, experience did.
Clarkson, who seemed a little star struck, had moments in the vocal stratosphere. But her performance level was more erratic than McEntire's, who hit a high mark from the start and stayed there.
McEntire exhibited a honed mastery of the material - be it Clarkson's or her own - and a professional command of the stage. Clarkson will undoubtedly learn a lot in the coming month.
The women made their way through nearly two dozen songs in a little more than 90 minutes, concluding with a three-song encore.
Clarkson's biggest hits were all there, along with some of McEntire's most popular, including "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," "The Greatest Man I Never Knew," "Is There Life Out There?," "Still," "I'm a Survivor" and "Fancy."
The duet "Does He Love You" (which McEntire originally recorded with Linda Davis and sang with Clarkson in her "American Idol" appearance) was a favorite of the 9,694-strong audience, with the singers achieving ever high levels of dramatic intensity.
Being opening night, the show wasn't as tight as it surely will be after a couple of performances, though McEntire seemed as if she'd been doing it for years.
Warming up the crowd with a 30-minute routine of self-deprecating humor was actress and comedian Melissa Peterman.
For much of Peterman's anecdotal material, she cast herself as a fan and would-be friend to Clarkson and McEntire, with whom she worked for six years, playing the character of Barbra Jean on McEntire's WB/CW sitcom, "Reba."
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7309 or csimmons@DaytonDailyNews.com
http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/oh/story/entertainment/music/2008/01/18/ddn011808rebaweb.html
to everything everyone said!!! 
