DE Assistant Politics Editor

In what was probably the best country performance to play the SIU Arena this year, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill took over the Arena for nearly three hours for McGraw’s Spontaneous Combustion tour.

Video screens displaying the ocean, mountains, fire and other natural elements built up to the entrance of the black leather jacket, black cowboy hat, jeans-wearing McGraw.

Performing his hits Down on the Farm, It’s Just Me, Not A Moment Too Soon and Refried Dreams, McGraw kept audience members excited by encouraging them to be loud and to sing along.

One particularly crowd-pleasing highlight was during McGraw’s remake of the Tony Rich song Nobody Knows It But Me, as opener Faith Hill took the stage again to make it a duet.

Another powerful moment was when McGraw sang his hit Don’t Take The Girl. The song is about a little boy who does not want the little girl next door to go fishing with him and his father, but 10 years later, the two are in love and the boy is afraid of losing the girl to a stranger with a gun. During the chorus of the song McGraw stopped singing to let the audience have its moment of glory.

Following I Like it, I Love It, McGraw ended his show. However, he was prompted back onto the stage for an encore, where he performed a remake of Steve Miller’s Space Cowboy and his own Indian Outlaw, bringing the crowd to its feet singing and screaming.

Strutting across the stage like a biker girl from a 1960s rebel motorcycle movie, Faith Hill opened her performance with Someone Else’s Dream, the first track from her second album, It Matters To Me.

Hill put on more than just an opening act, she and her band played and wailed as if they were the headliner. It was not the usual lackadaisical performance put on by an opening act.

In a dress which looked more like paint than fabric, Hill performed the title song from It Matters To Me while a couple slow-danced in the aisle.

In her third outfit of the evening, a black suit, Hill performed Keep Walkin’ On, which had the sounds of an old-fashioned church revival.

Hill also performed the songs Wild One, Let’s Go To Vegas and Janis Joplin’s Piece of My Heart to end the show, until the cheering audience brought her back for an encore. Clad in a white T-shirt and jeans, Hill performed a remake of Journey’s Open Arms.

McGraw’s energy and Hill’s powerful voice made the show one of the best to perform at the Arena since last November’s Reba McEntire concert.