AUSXIP MaryD's Blog

An Extraordinary Night with Dolly Parton

Last night I ventured to the AllPhones Arena for my first Dolly Parton concert. I have been waiting 30 years to see this woman perform live on stage. I had high expectations from one of my all time favourite singers and I was not disappointed.

The woman is INCREDIBLE. She owned the stage and owned the audience. Right from the first song to the very end, Dolly was without doubt the Queen of Country (she is as far as I'm concerned).

She didn't have a gaggle of dancers or anything else to distract you from the main game. She was it. She played 6 different instruments all the while singing like a songbird. Her energy was off the scale and it was pretty obvious the woman just loves what she does.

When she sang "Little Sparrow" she sang it acapella with two of her backup singers and I had goosebumps. The woman's voice was so rich and so beautiful. If I wasn't a fan I would have been converted on the spot.

She wasn't afraid to poke fun at herself and acknowledged the drag queens in the audience (that was hysterical). I love her Better Day CD but seeing her perform some of my favourite songs was just amazing. One of the funniest things I've seen is Dolly doing rap. Her and Queen Latifah are in a movie coming out in January 2012. She did a rap about Queen Latifah which was hysterical. As she said at the end...country and rap is crap :)

This is the song list from last night

1."Light of a Clear Blue Morning" (Instrumental Introduction)
2."Walking on Sunshine" (contains excerpts from "Shine Like the Sun")
3."Better Get to Livin'"
4."Jolene"
5."Rocky Top"
6."Dueling Banjos" (Instrumental Interlude)
7."Mule Skinner Blues"
8."Help!"
9."Shine"
10."Stairway to Heaven"
11."My Tennessee Mountain Home"
12."Precious Memories"
13."Coat of Many Colors"
14."Smoky Mountain Memories"
15."Son of a Preacher Man"
16."Better Day"
17."Together You and I"
18."Holding Everything"
19."Joyful Noise"
20."Queen Latifah Rap" (Performance Interlude)
21."He Will Take You Higher" (contains excerpts from "I Want to Take You Higher")
22."He's Everything"
23."White Limozeen"
24."The Best of Both Worlds"
25."The Sacrifice"
26."In the Meantime"
27."Little Sparrow"
28."River Deep Mountain High"
29."Here You Come Again
30."Islands in the Stream"
31."9 to 5"
Encore 32."I Will Always Love You

She had us up on our feet, singing and dancing to Islands in the Stream, 9 to 5 and I will Always Love You...INCREDIBLE evening and well worth the money and then some!

Thank you Dolly for making this fan EXTREMELY happy!