McEntire Soars; Brooks & Dunn Glide

All that is right and wrong with mainstream country music was laid bare at the Pond of Anaheim on Saturday night. Wrapping up this year’s most successful country music tour--grossing $33 million in 69 stops--Reba McEntire and the duo of Brooks & Dunn offered quite a study in contrasts during their co-headlining, 75-minute sets.

Both performed in-the-round before a sold-out crowd that cheered their every move. But the similarities ended right there. While Brooks & Dunn unleashed a predictable, paper-thin parade of greatest hits, McEntire rose to the challenge of investing in the depth and durability of her craft.

Energetic and chatty, the veteran McEntire convincingly drew from a well of wide-ranging emotions and subject matter. A petite yet commanding presence, she was equal parts entertainer and communicator.

In recent years, McEntire has preferred a “big” sound filled with heavy, orchestrated production values. But last year’s excellent “What If It’s You” album offered a more stripped-down approach focusing on the personal nature of the material.

Likewise, her performance Saturday suggested she’s more interested in touching her audience than simply dazzling it. Moving beyond simple black-and-white caricatures in her songs, she offered vivid snapshots of complicated lives. At one point, McEntire revealed, “Ya know, I like story songs,” and her set revealed why.

A mixture of tough, tender and footloose personas, McEntire was equally effective in a variety of moods. She began downright frisky during both her opening number, “Why Haven’t I Heard From You” and the independent-minded “How Was I to Know.”

Kix Brooks (no relation to Garth) and Ronnie Dunn apparently have no such lofty expectations. The duo’s strictly by-the-numbers package was filled with hummable, boogie-bound, crowd-pleasing hits. What the popular duo sorely lacks, however, is any sense of artistic reach.

Rarely did the pair stray in subject matter from the predictable honky-tonk trappings--drinkin’, dancin’, brawlin’ and womanizin’--that dominate their lightweight albums. Song after song eschews descriptive, meaningful detail in favor of more generic, underdeveloped jargon.