CONCERT REVIEW – REBA McENTIRE

The first time I saw Reba McEntire in concert was in her early cowgirl days, in Oklahoma in the late 1970s. A decade later, when she gave a concert in Virginia, she had gone uptown. Her fancy gowns and choreographed movements made it appear she’d practiced posing on a certain spot of the stage at a certain time. We’ve both traveled a lot of miles since then. I was happy that she came to the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls this January. She told the crowd she’d been waiting two years to do this show, which was the beginning of the tour. They’d worked it up in 2019, and it had been postponed three times due to the pandemic.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT – SCOTTY McCREERY

After reading an article where Scotty McCreery said, “Little Scotty used to sit on the end of his bed with a guitar playing three wooden crosses, forever and ever amen, 1982, diggin’ up bones and so many other Randy Travis songs till 2 in the morning,” I knew I wanted to talk to him. When we connected, he told me he grew up as a kid from North Carolina who loved country music. “That’s all my mom was ever playing in the house was that good ol’ country music,” he said. Scotty, 28, is from Garner, North Carolina, a suburb of Raleigh. He won the 10th season of American Idol, at age 17, in 2011.