Keith Urban kicks off his Graffiti U World Tour in St. Louis, Missouri on Friday (June 15th). He’s taking along special guest, Kelsea Ballerini, and he feels their type of music will gel together quite well.
#GraffitiUWorldTour • FRIDAY!!! pic.twitter.com/yqN8pMqLt3
— Keith Urban (@KeithUrban) June 14, 2018
“I just felt musically it’s such a great compatibility of fusion that we both sort of work in. it’s certainly not pure country, neither of us,” says Keith. “We obviously grew up with contemporary country influences, pop country influences, and I just felt that it was a great, great collaborative blend of the two of us. I always think about my audiences too and who are they going to respond to, and I think they’ll love Kelsea.”
Keith finds it a little difficult to find where he can incorporate new music into the set list for his shows. “I’m the indecisive guy looking at a buffet with way too much food [laughs] ‘cause the mountain of it. ‘I’m not too sure, and so I’ll just take it all and I’ll figure it out at the table,’” he said. “That’s a little bit of what the set list looks like right now. It’s a buffet. It’s a conundrum because I want to play what the audience wants to hear, obviously, and there’s a mix of people in the audience. You’ve got new people that have never seen us live, and they’re hoping you do X song, whatever it might be. It could be ‘Kiss a Girl,’ it could ‘Sweet Thing,’ it could be ‘You’ll Think of Me,’ it could be ‘Days Go By.’ It could be so many songs. And then you’ve got other people who’ve seen us hundreds and hundreds of times and they’re like, ‘Please don’t do that song again. We’ve heard that a million times. We want to hear more of the new ones.’ So, it’s a beautiful challenge that I feel very blessed, very, very blessed to have, and at the end of the day I’ll put together a set list that feels energy and emotion and thematically and musically and every other way right from top to bottom, covering as much as we can without playing for four hours.”
For more tour dates, go to keithurban.net.
Keith is currently sitting inside the Top 10 with “Coming Home” featuring Julia Michaels.
Audio / Keith Urban talks about taking Kelsea Ballerini out on his Graffiti U World Tour.
DownloadKeith Urban (Kelsea on tour) OC: …love Kelsea. :34
“We talked about touring [together before] and not enough of the dates lined up for us to do it, and they just did this time. One of those stars lining up moments. I just felt musically it’s such a great compatibility of fusion that we both sort of work in. it’s certainly not pure country, neither of us. We obviously grew up with contemporary country influences, pop country influences, and I just felt that it was a great, great collaborative blend of the two of us. I always think about my audiences too and who are they going to respond to, and I think they’ll love Kelsea.”
Audio / Keith Urban says it’s a balancing act trying to incorporate new music into his set list for his Graffiti U World Tour, kicking off in St. Louis on Friday (June 15th).
DownloadKeith Urban (incorporating new songs) OC: …time to play.
“I’m the indecisive guy looking at a buffet with way too much food [laughs] ‘cause the mountain of it. ‘I’m not too sure, and so I’ll just take it all and I’ll figure it out at the table.’ That’s a little bit of what the set list looks like right now. It’s a buffet. It’s a conundrum because I want to play what the audience wants to hear, obviously, and there’s a mix of people in the audience. You’ve got new people that have never seen us live, and they’re hoping you do X song, whatever it might be. It could be ‘Kiss a Girl,’ it could ‘Sweet Thing,’ it could be ‘You’ll Think of Me,’ it could be ‘Days Go By.’ It could be so many songs. And then you’ve got other people who’ve seen us hundreds and hundreds of times and they’re like, ‘Please don’t do that song again. We’ve heard that a million times. We want to hear more of the new ones.’ So, it’s a beautiful challenge that I feel very blessed, very, very blessed to have, and at the end of the day I’ll put together a set list that feels energy and emotion and thematically and musically and every other way right from top to bottom, covering as much as we can without playing for four hours. It’s also a part of the reason why we didn’t take out a third act on the tour. We’re just taking out Kelsea and us. It gives us more time to play.”
