Review: Blake Shelton pulls off making the X 'Minnesota's biggest honky-tonk'

With his high-profile TV gig soon coming to an end, country music hitmaker Blake Shelton came to St. Paul on Saturday to make a strong case for quitting his day job and going back to serving the night life.

The Oklahoman singer returned to Xcel Energy Center on his Back to the Honky-Tonk Tour. A nostalgic tip of the hat to his days playing country dance halls before his early 2000s breakthrough, the 100-minute concert also seemed to be looking ahead to his post-TV career.

Shelton, 46, recently announced that his 12-year, 23-season run as a coach on NBC's "The Voice" will be his last. This throwback-themed concert tour — squeezed in before his final "Voice" run begins in late March — served as a reminder that the fun, wisecracking-but-tender coach we see on television is the same fella country music audiences still love seeing onstage.

Saturday's production had a pretty clever stage setup, too: A few dozen lucky audience members got to pull bar stools right up to the stage at Shelton's boot heels and toss back drinks as he threw out hit after hit.

During the hit that kicked off the show, "Come Back as a Country Boy," the video screens behind him flashed neon signs that read, "Beer," "Whiskey" and "Honky-Tonk." Just in case the 13,000 fans on hand didn't get the theme of the night, he added "Welcome to Minnesota's biggest honky-tonk."

Shelton's songs sometimes sounded as generic as those faux neon signs, but, holy Muskogee, did he still come across as one likable good ol' boy from start to finish.

Starting with the second song, "All About Tonight," he made a lot of the concert all about good-timey nighttime activities. Namely, drinking.

The barroom anthem "Neon Light" was followed by the breezy, Jimmy Buffett knockoff "Sangria." Later, came an acoustic spin through "The More I Drink" (key lyric: "The more I drink, the more I drink") and then the rowdy rouser "No Body" (which name-checks tequila, Old Milwaukee beer and "Dixie cup martinis").

With no new album to promote, Shelton played many of the same songs he offered just last July for the Twin Cities Summer Jam at Canterbury Park. The biggest difference Saturday was the absence of his wife and fellow "Voice" alum, Gwen Stefani, who made a surprise appearance at Summer Jam.

Instead of singing his Stefani duet "Nobody But You" with her by his side like last time, Shelton delivered it at the X staring up at his wife on the video screen as her voice was piped in via prerecorded audio.

That virtual pairing hardly compared with the real thing, but he did bring out burgeoning twanger Carly Pearce for a very real and powerful duet, "Lonely Tonight." Fresh off winning her first Grammy two weeks ago, the Kentucky native already made a strong impression in her opening set. Highlights included her feminist-tinged Loretta Lynn tribute "Dear Miss Loretta" and her set-closing hit "I Hope You're Happy Now."

Pearce really showcased her strong vocal prowess while in the spotlight with Shelton, though — so much so the headliner seemed to regret inviting her up.

"It's hard singing with her," he bluntly admitted afterward, one of many funny, often self-deprecating comments that littered the concert.

Other laughable bits included his explanation for why fellow Nashville star Luke Bryan gets more audience singalongs at his concerts: "It's because I have some highly intelligent lyrics, and people are deep in thought thinking about them." And about his willingness to take requests during his three-song solo acoustic segment: "As long as it's one of the three I'm about to play."

He actually did oblige one request, though, and dropped in "Playboys of the Southwestern World," which turned into one of the highlights of the night. Maybe now that he's leaving TV, Shelton can go off-script more often to create special moments like that.