FARGO - After a slim year for concerts, the Fargodome is starting 2012 off on the right foot. Or rather, boot.
Country star Miranda Lambert kicked off the year with a flash. After a video montage of female artists set to Beyoncé's "Run the World (Girls)," Lambert and her band stormed the stage for "Fastest Girl in Town," backed by a seizure-inducing light show.
The lights let up, but Lambert didn't as she charged through a blistering "Kerosene" and "Heart Like Mine."
Lambert may be classified as country (as she showed in "Famous in a Small Town"), but Saturday night was mostly a rock show, including covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Up Around the Bend" and Tom Petty's "Free Girl Now."
Whether rock or country, the singer is one of the best performers in either camp, and she showed it Saturday.
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After supporting headliners at previous dome shows and at WE Fest last summer, the feisty singer showed she could hold down a headline gig, even if she didn't quite fill the half-dome setting.
She gave fans an up-close look as she sat on the side of the stage to sing the ballad "More Like Her" and then was back on her feet and standing tall on the sassy "Baggage Claim."
She played it quiet again, hushing the crowd on a touching "The House That Built Me" and then torched them with "Gunpowder & Lead" and "White Liar."
Jerrod Niemann showed the same party-hard charm he opened WE Fest with in August. He knocked back "One More Drinking Song," "Good Ride Cowboy" and "What Do You Want" before closing his 30-minute set with his chart-topper, "Lover, Lover, Lover," which he claimed Fargo downloaded more than any other area in the country.
Former "Nashville Star" winner Chris Young filled the middle bill with "Save Water, Drink Beer," "Getting You Home (The Black Dress Song)" and "The Man I Want to Be."
But it was girls' night as Lambert held the stage, working the crowd. She returned for an encore, paying respects to all of her female role models with a faithful rendition of Aretha Franklin's "Do Right Woman" and then showed her roots with Niemann and Young pitching in on Waylon Jennings "My Honky-Tonk Heroes."
It won't be long before some young singers start paying respect to Lambert in songs like that.
