CONCERT REVIEW: Lainey Wilson Proves She’s More Than a Country Star in Canton

Marc Kirby
2 days ago
3 min read

There may not be a more fitting place to end Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Week than under the lights of Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton. On Sunday night, the Raising Cane’s Concert for Legends brought country music to a venue normally reserved for football, with CMA Entertainer of the Year, Lainey Wilson, headlining and rising Texas country artist Braxton Keith opening the night.

The crowd was decidedly multigenerational, with plenty of cowboy hats and boots mixed into a stadium that was mostly full by the time Wilson took the stage. It was a big setting. Tom Benson Stadium feels vast from field level, and that made what happened onstage even more impressive.

Before Wilson, Braxton Keith had the difficult job of winning over a crowd that was clearly there primarily for the headliner.

He did exactly that.

Keith is a young artist with an old soul sound. His deep, twangy voice sounds like something coming straight out of a Texas honky-tonk, and the rest of his sound follows suit. His debut album, Real Damn Deal, draws heavily from Texas honky-tonk and Western swing, and that traditional country identity translated naturally to the stage.

What was perhaps most impressive was how comfortable Keith looked in such a large setting. There wasn't much need for extended conversation with the audience. Instead, he let the music do the work. He was commanding for a young performer and gradually won over an audience that may not have arrived knowing much about him.

I certainly didn't, and I was surprised by how much I liked him. Keith has a great sound, and he left me wanting to hear more.

Then Lainey Wilson appeared.

She walked to the top of the stage and almost immediately demonstrated the difference between being a successful recording artist and being a star.

I'll admit that I went into the night only casually familiar with Wilson's music. I knew who she was. I knew some of the music. I wasn't walking into Tom Benson Stadium as a devoted Lainey Wilson fan.

That may have made what happened next even more striking.

Lainey Wilson is a rock star.

Yes, she's one of the biggest stars in country music, but seeing her live makes the description feel almost too limiting. What stood out wasn't simply how she sounded. She sounded great. It was the physical confidence with which she commanded an enormous stage.

Wilson used all of it.

She moved from one side to the other, leaned into the audience and at one point stepped off the stage and went directly into the crowd. Nothing about her performance felt confined to standing behind a microphone and delivering songs. She was constantly performing to the entire stadium.

The stage itself was impressive, built around a Western desert theme complete with cactus imagery and a large-scale production fitting a performer currently touring behind her award-winning Whirlwind. But for all the size of the production, it never became the star of the show.

It was always about Lainey.

That is harder to accomplish than it sounds in a venue as large as Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium. From field level, the place feels enormous. Wilson somehow filled it.

Perhaps one of the more interesting things to observe was the connection she has developed with younger fans. In a crowd that stretched across generations, young girls in particular seemed drawn to her. You could see her influence before she even took the stage and feel their excitement once she did.

For someone who didn't arrive with a deep connection to Wilson's catalog, that connection became easy to understand once I watched her perform.

The Concert for Legends was the finale of a week in Canton devoted to celebrating football's biggest stars. It seemed appropriate that the week ended with another kind of star taking over the stadium.

I walked into Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium casually familiar with Lainey Wilson.

I walked out a fan.

Even if you don't know a single Lainey Wilson song, she can captivate you. She doesn't simply give you a concert.

She puts on a show.