The first stop of Kacey Musgraves’ “Deeper Well World Tour” United States leg was State College, Pennsylvania, where she began a night of beautiful singing and colorful lights.
Months ago when the concert was announced, I knew I wanted to go, especially after falling in love with popular songs like “Rainbow” and “High Horse” and watching her Amazon Prime special, “The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show.” She has an effervescent and flowy voice that makes it easy to fall in love with her sound.
Nickel Creek and Father John Misty opened the show and gave a folksy-country-esque vibe for the early concertgoers. As I settled into my seat for the night, I enjoyed all of their songs and noticed how the band contrasted the solo act to follow.
Most people were checking out the merch stands or grabbing concessions before getting to their seats. While they were doing that, my roommate and I were trying to spot my friend and her boyfriend, who had secured floor tickets.
Right around 9:30 p.m., the stage got dark and then slowly started lighting up with stars. The small green hill on the stage became covered in smoke until Musgraves seemed to appear from a lit-up door at the top of the hill.
She then grabbed her guitar, reached the top of the stage and began with “Cardinal,” one of her more popular songs from “Deeper Well.” The whole inside of the Bryce Jordan Center was lit up in cardinal red, enhancing the experience and uplifting her voice, which made for an entrancing performance.
At the end of the song she went back up on the hill and suddenly began to float in the air, surprising everyone in the crowd, including me.
Once she was set back down on the ground, she came back to the top of the stage with her guitar again and started “Butterflies,” which is from her Grammy-award-winning album “Golden Hour.” It was complemented by visuals of butterflies that seemed to fly around the room.
Her next song, “Sway,” had one of my favorite visuals with green spotlights moving across the crowd along with her voice as if they were controlled by her vocal intonations.
“Happy & Sad” was a song I hadn’t really listened to before the concert but became a constant repeat song afterward. The lyrics to the song were on the screen behind her, so anyone who didn’t know it, like me, could follow along.
“Lonely Weekend” and “Lonely Millionaire” were companion songs from two different albums that flowed together. She followed these songs by coming onto a smaller stage in the middle of the floor seats.
As she got settled onto the stage with her band, she talked about some things that have been going on during the tour. Musgraves then opened up the next song saying she hadn’t played it live in a long time, and then she played one of her classics, “Follow Your Arrow.”
She followed that song with a few of songs from “Deeper Well” including “Heaven Is,” “The Architect,” “Dinner with Friends” and “Jade Green,” which she sang as she glided through the floor crowd back to the main stage.
Going through three albums with five songs, Musgraves sang a trio of popular hits from “Golden Hour,” (“Slow Burn,” “Golden Hour” and “Space Cowboy”), one from “Deeper Well” (“Too Good to be True”) and the sole song from “star-crossed’ in the whole setlist, “justified.”
Surprising the whole crowd, Musgraves began singing “Pink Pony Club,” a cover from rising superstar Chappell Roan’s album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” as an intro to her own equine-themed song, “High Horse.” People were getting up to dance under falling confetti, considering it is one of her more upbeat songs.
Her most popular song from “Golden Hour,” “Rainbow” brought back emotions people felt when they heard the same song during THON as a part of last year’s Angel Hour. The rainbow lights and angelic vocals made for a tear-jerking experience for sure, that is if you ask my roommate.
To finish off the “Deeper Well World Tour” Musgraves ended with “Deeper Well,” fittingly. It was the perfect finale to what was an amazing concert experience, even if I was in the highest row.