Keith Urban is a big fan of the people who work for him behind the scenes. The 57-year-old praises his crew, especially as he headlines his High and Alive World Tour. Urban recently hosted the CMA Touring Awards, honoring drivers, crew, tour personnel and more.
“The crew, they’re always the unsung heroes of everything that the audience comes to see,” Urban tells the CMA. “Everybody behind the scenes that makes this thing happen, and is happening – to have them celebrated for their level of dedication and commitment and passion for what they get to do, and sacrifices that they make. There are truck drivers and riggers and the carpenters, and everybody that’s behind the scenes, who make this thing happen, city to city to city. They’re away from their families more than most artists are. And so their families are home supporting them. It’s a huge calling and a big ask, and we get to be the beneficiaries out front.”
Few artists like being on the road as much as Urban, which is why he is so grateful to be on his High and Alive World Tour, his first tour in three years.
“I live for touring,” Urban says. “It’s where everything just seems to align in my life, and I feel like I know what my purpose is, and this is what I do. We haven’t toured since 2022, so since then of course we’ve made the HIGH album. And the amount of songs that are on that HIGH album that we get to do live, it’s just made for such a great experience out here on the road.”
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Urban loves being on tour, but he admits it is always a work in progress. The Grand Ole Opry member works hard to make the show perfect every night, even if that means he has to keep changing the setlist.
“It’s a lot of trial and error with setlists for me,” Urban concedes. “I agonize over setlists. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube. I spend months and months over setlists, tweaking, coming back to it every couple of days, looking at it. I put a playlist together and Iisten to the songs back-to-back-to-back and just feel the flow from one song into the next – energy-wise, thematically, the key, tempo, everything.
“Does this feel like it should flow out of that? Is the audience gonna be exhausted right about here? This would be a good time for a ballad,” he continues. “This would be a good time to strip it down to an acoustic song and then BOOM right back out of the gate again. Trying to imagine what the live experience is gonna be, and put a setlist together for it … We’ll just keep making changes as the tour unfolds.”
Urban is part of the CMA Fest TV special lineup. He will play his current single, “Straight Line.” The show airs on June 26 at 8:00 PM ET on ABC, and will stream the next day on Hulu.
Find all of Urban’s music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.
Photo Credit: CMA / Natasha Moustache