Keith Urban thinks drive-in gigs are the future of music.
The 52-year-old singer/songwriter played an intimate gig to around 200 healthcare workers from Vanderbilt Health at Stardust Drive-In movie drive-in outside Nashville, Tennessee earlier this week, as a thank you for their efforts fighting against Covid-19, and Keith believes this type of show could be a great way to get the live music scene back up and running amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, he said: "I think this can get scaled up. We can play to a lot more people. The drive-in was the most amazing place, because it’s already built for cars to be properly all spaced out, it’s got everybody angled up towards the screen. You’ve got this mammoth video wall behind you already prebuilt, so you just gotta wheel in your stage and you’ve got your video wall.
"At the end of the day, we’re just trying to think of how we can play, you know. Where and how we can play. We wanna play, we wanna do it safely, and we just have to figure it out.
"We’re figuring everything else out. The performance, it was a big chunk of a proof of concept performance. It was about, ‘OK, what works, what doesn’t work, what can we do differently?’ I loved the idea of being able to play with minimal guys on stage. It just helps, not only keeping a distance on stage, but also very, very minimal crew. Everything was real skeletal and I think there’s a way to do it and keep everybody safe."
Keith performed classics alongside songs from his upcoming album, ‘The Speed of Now: Part 1’ from the back of a flatbed truck and he thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
He explained: "It felt great to be on a flatbed truck. I salute the very shrunken version of my band. Small PA system, everything was downsized. And of course we’re playing to folks in cars or sitting in the bed of their pickup trucks and so forth, so it was a unique experience. I felt like I was actually in the cartoon, you know, ‘Car’s? I felt like I was looking for Larry the Cable Guy out there. Tater, I was looking for him."
Keith Urban backs drive-in gigs as future of music
