Keith Urban Wants to Give Fans ‘the Greatest Night’ at His Concerts

Keith Urban knows how to command a crowd. The singer-songwriter, who is currently crossing the globe on his Ripcord World Tour, tries to engage with fans at every one of his shows, making sure that each person is having the time of their life while he's onstage.

"Without the audience, it’s just one long soundcheck," Urban recently explained to The Boot and other reporters. "So the audience is everything -- everything."

The country star cites a line in Jackson Browne's "The Load-Out" -- "People, you’ve got the power over what we do / You can sit there [and wait] or you can pull us through" -- to make his point.

"The audience has so much power to make or break a show; we as a performer can only do so much," Urban admits. "On this tour especially, I’ve watched our audience, night after night after night, just give so much to me onstage. And when that happens, you could just play forever. If we didn’t have curfews, we’d play way longer, but these buildings have these union curfews, so you’ve got to be offstage on time."

Urban, who is known to stay each night until everyone who wants to meet him has had the opportunity (even if it takes a couple hours), says that it's imperative to him that each person gets their money's worth out of his concerts.

"The other thing that I’m aware of, especially having kids, is when you want to go to a concert, it’s a big deal," Urban notes. "It’s not just, ‘Yeah, we’ll go.’ It’s not like going to the movies; it’s a very different thing: It’s parking and babysitters and are we going to carpool ... all the expenses. It goes through the roof. So my want is to give them the greatest night, with everything I’ve got. I don’t take that for granted. It’s a big deal."

The American leg of Urban's Ripcord World Tour, which included Brett Eldredge and Maren Morris as his opening acts, wrapped up with a show in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Nov. 19. But soon, the Aussie will return Down Under for a series of shows with his good friend Carrie Underwood; the two have toured together before, but Urban is especially excited about this trek, as they'll be able to sing "The Fighter," their song from his Ripcord album, together.

"We’ve toured together before, but we’ve never had a song together," Urban says. "So it’s great that we get to do "The Fighter," especially because it was released as a single in Australia quite a while back, and was a hit down there, so people down there know that song."

Following his shows in Australia and New Zealand, Urban will wrap up the year with a New Year's Eve concert in Nashville: He's headlining the Jack Daniel’s Music City Midnight: New Years Eve event and is "really looking forward to it."

"As cold as it will be, it won’t be as cold as the New Year’s Eve we had last time we played outdoors, which was on the rim of Niagara Falls ..." he adds, "which sounds like a dare, but we accepted it."

More information on Urban's upcoming tour dates can be found on his website.

See Keith Urban + More Country Stars Then and Now

Unforgettable Keith Urban Moments