The packed house at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium clearly didn’t have the next day’s classes on its mind when the music started at Thursday night’s concert featuring Easton Corbin and opener Dustin Lynch.
“We better turn the lights down cause we’re not in the library anymore,” Lynch shouted to the crowd at Ohio University when he took the stageto kick off the concert.
Lynch, whose single “She Cranks My Tractor” topped the charts in the Top 25, played songs from his self-titled album, along with an unexpected cover of The Wanted’s summer hit, “Glad You Came.” He finished off the set with the crowd screaming along to his well-known track, “Cowboys and Angels.”
“‘Cowboys and Angels’ is a wonderful song; it’s one of my favorites,” said Candice Cummings, an Athens resident who attended the concert. “He’s pretty fun. I liked the show. They seemed to be having a good time up there.”
There was a mass exit after Lynch left the stage, filling the lobby as the musician signed autographs.
Corbin then took the stage to a revved-up crowd. He also mixed in covers of country staples such as “Play Something Country.” He ran through tracks from his two albums as well, including the No. 1 hits “A Little More Country Than That” and “Roll With It.”
Corbin engaged the audience by throwing guitar picks into the crowd as well as nabbing cellphones from front-row attendees to record himself and the band in action. He stayed onstage after an encore to sign autographs while the band played in the background.
Megan Scalf, a senior studying communications, said she enjoyed the concert and was impressed by this year’s artist selection.
“I think (the show tonight) was an all-around success,” Scalf said. “I think they do a good job of intermixing things like country, R&B and what the students like. They do a good job of making sure they hit every target.”
Andrew Holzaepfel, associate director of the Campus Involvement Center, said the goal was to sell 1,200 tickets to the show. Sales ended up reaching 1,860 tickets, more than covering the artists’ $25,000 contract fee.
“The energy started as soon as Dustin Lynch got on stage, and I don’t think it stopped until right at the end,” he said. “We’re really happy with (how the show went), and we were really happy to correspond our announcement of the Rodney Atkins concert with the show tonight.”
eb104010@ohiou.edu
