Concert Review: Dolly Parton at the MTS Centre

Dolly Parton is such a charmer that she could have probably chatted with the Winnipeg audience all evening without performing a single song and the crowd would have been blissfully content (at least until the night ended and they realized what happened). Thankfully, along with her jokes and yarn spinning, Dolly did get around to performing a good cross section of songs from her 40 plus year career as well as selections from her new CD Backwoods Barbie.

Dressed in a dazzling white sequined bellbottomed pantsuit, Dolly made her entrance, turning up the heat early with her 1977 party song Two Doors Down followed by her sultry 1989 chart topper Why'd You Come In Here! Dolly claimed she needed to keep things heated up to ward off the effects of the cold Canadian climate. After greeting the crowd in that delicious southern drawl, she announced, "It's COLD up here! She teased about needing to melt down snow to use as ice water to soothe a sore throat "leastwise I could have!"

Fortunately, her ailment did not effect her energy, humour or that clear sweet Smokey Mountain soprano as she continued with another of her many self-penned songs hits, the hauntingly sad Jolene

Dolly's big blonde hair, long nails and other well known assets often get more attention than her musical abilities. But she served notice early that she was not just another pretty face by launching into a rousing cover of the John Denver 's Thank God I'm A Country Boy, and performing 3 fine instrumental solos herself during the course of the song on violin, banjo and guitar. She also teasingly cavorted with a male dancer she nicknamed "Backwoods Ken," remarking afterwards, "He's a cute one, ain't he girls!"

There were a few small technical glitches, but Dolly calmly weathered the storm with her ever-ready humour. Once, when the spotlight inexplicably moved away from her while she was speaking, she joked, "Don't lose me - I'm pretty small - you might not find me again! "I'm might have been tall, but all my growing seemed to all bunch up around my chest and didn't go no further!"

Dolly once again demonstrated her musical prowess, playing flute on the self-penned Celtic influenced Only Dreamin and finished the first half of the show with a gospel medley built on Neil Diamond's Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show.

After a brief intermission which allowed Dolly a costume change, she returned in glittering blue miniskirt ensemble and performed her latest singles Better Get to Livin' and Shinola. Dolly spotlighted her band's vocal abilities on a snappy a cappella song called Did I Ever Cross Your Mind and finished the night with some of her biggest hits including Here You Come Again, Islands in the Stream, 9 to 5, and ended with the exquisite self-penned Grammy winner I Will Always Love You. Judging from Winnipeg's reaction to Dolly, the feeling's definitely mutual.

Rob Rheubottom