Keith Urban Keeps Concerts Music-Driven

Country heartthrob Keith Urban is trying something new at his concerts: letting his bandmates sing. In order to let his fans know his musicians are multi-talented, he has each band member sing a song of their choice during his live show.

"The guys in my band are phenomenal musicians, but they're also particularly gifted vocalists," Urban told AOL's The Boot in an interview. "There's something about personalizing everyone, so they're not just in the back with the bass guitar. I like to give everybody an identity and a moment, because they're incredibly talented and any of them could be fronting their own band. I feel honored to have them in my band, and I love to show the audience what they can do."

Urban isn't into a flashy, out-there performance. For his stage props, the Aussie simply likes to play a video on a big screen behind the band.

"I try to use the technology in two ways ... One, to take the experience to another place. But also to supplement and expand upon what we're doing, as opposed to being the thing and we provide the music for it," Urban said. "Maybe some images take the emotion of a song to a new place. And for the short attention span people, like myself, who can only hear about three songs and then say, 'Well, what else have you got?,' I just try to keep the show interesting. Once you think you've seen everything, you see something new. The best concerts I've ever been to are the ones that went for a couple of hours but I never felt it. Hopefully it's multi-layered, so that days after, if I'm telling people about the concert, I'm like 'Then this happened ... and then this happened ...' Hopefully there are intricate parts that stay with you, and those are the concerts I love the most."

Urban is known for trying something new at concerts. For example, during a performance in New York last year, he left the building while playing his last song. The cameras followed him out the doors and into a taxi cab. In Virginia, he left the stage during the middle of a song, went up into the stands and gave a fan his guitar.

"That is the greatest feeling ever," Urban said, "walking out with a guitar, playing a whole song with it and then giving it to somebody!"

Look for Urban when he stops in Florence, Ariz., on April 16.

Source: TheBoot.com