Tim McGraw & The Dancehall Doctors at the Xcel Energy Center
April 12, 2003

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For Tim Mcgraw, It's All About Polish Tim McGraw may be the last of the commercial cowboys. While Nashville is under assault from bluegrass-roots movements and do-it-yourself singer-songwriters, Tim McGraw has stepped into a leadership role with the counterrevolutionary forces. He's a triumph of the old star system, in which a singer plucks songs from among the multitude of Nashville writers and spreads his success around town. And, if the avid cheers of 17,815 fans at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center on Saturday night are any indication, it's a system happily embraced by a core of country fans. Virtually every song of McGraw's two-hour-and-45-minute performance with his eight-piece band, the Dancehall Doctors, was greeted with screams of glee from a predominantly female audience.

Despite advance spin that McGraw would be leaning upon obscurities and covers this tour, he and the band opened with five straight No. 1 singles, most from his '90s peak of popularity. And, if anyone was expecting a band-based show in which the Stetson-clad frontman would just be one of the boys, such visions were quickly erased by a stage design that included a model's runway reaching into the audience's midst, ideal for glad-handing. This performance was as polished and smooth as McGraw's black leather cowboy hat, and the commercial country costume fit him as snugly as his pec-exposing satin shirt and tight, flared jeans. As evidenced by a seven-song interlude with pianist Jeff McMahon, McGraw came to country late. Covering such smarmy pop piffles of the '70s as Dr. Hook's "Sharing the Night Together" and the Commodores' "Easy," it became clear that this 30-something singer has never outgrown the Top-40 ballads he heard in grade school.

And speaking of childish things, McGraw has recorded too many good songs in recent years to feel compelled to revive "Indian Outlaw," a song that pays tribute to Native American culture in the manner that "Amos 'n' Andy" did African-Americans. With its litany of clichéd cultural stereotypes, the song is a piece of embarrassing juvenilia for McGraw. McGraw proved most compelling when at his most intimate and vulnerable, leaving his band and giant video screens behind for a solo acoustic version of "Angry All the Time." It was a disarmingly emotional rendition that could leave one wondering what McGraw might accomplish if he decided to rethink, rather than just rehash, the songs he's recorded.

But soon he was stirring up the crowd with lowest-common-denominator anthems like "Things Change" and "Who Are They?" as well as precision flying team videos. While concluding his set of encores with a ballad like Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" may seem like a low-key ending, the song fit for an evening that ambled along at a moderate gait, leaving one wishing that this cowboy kick it into a gallop more often. - BY ROB HUBBARD Pioneer Press - Apr. 14, 2003

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