Review: Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Well Tour

Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Well Tour truly takes fans into an experience like no other. The tour began in Europe earlier this year and though plenty of fans have seen clips, photos, and other pieces of the tour online, there is no experience like the first-hand. Seeing Kacey in Rosemont, Illinois in a sold-out arena is something that can be cherished by folks of all backgrounds and walks of life, and she made sure that that was the experience given on Thursday night at Allstate Arena. Deeper Well, released earlier this year, then expanded on with Deeper Into the Well,  is an indie folk masterpiece of an album. It is filled with visual references that speak on tapping into your soul and becoming more in tune with yourself, nature, and the world around you. Channeling this imagery for her stage production, lighting, and the overall experience of the tour, Kacey has managed to turn this album into a four-dimensional, multifaceted experience to be had. That is incomparable as far as live performances go. 

It’s no secret that Kacey has always been an incredible live performer and has always worked on creating an incredible experience for her fans. And this tour is just that – an incredible experience – that comes as no shock. Opening the tour with the introductory track of the album, “Cardinal”, Miss Spacey Kacey takes us through a glowing portal into her Deeper Well world. The stage is misty, green, and feels like the lush hills of Scotland as she comes onto it through a white, glowing portal of a doorway, into the concert, and immediately begins this beautiful, mystifying performance reminiscent of early Stevie Nicks. It is so wondrous. Glowing with an aura of light, crooning and strumming her guitar in a pink babydoll dress and pink knee high rain boots, she is mesmerizing. Towards the end of the song, as if she was not ethereal enough, she even levitates as if she’s being sucked up by aliens into another world. Following this, she takes it back a few years, to her Grammy album-of-the-year-winning Golden Hour with the song “Butterflies”, and a stage covered in them, before taking us back to the Deeper Well era with “Sway”. 

Throughout the night, she teeters back-and-forth through every era of her music, and makes sure that her performance is one that is all encompassing of her eras as an artist. She also assures that everyone in the arena has a chance to see her, and each person in the crowd has a chance to be a little bit closer. She performs four songs on a b-stage in the center of the room under a giant three-dimensional Saturn hanging from the ceiling (a great reference to her Saturn returning, something that she says on the title track of Deeper Well). When she’s on her moss-covered, floral, grassy b-stage, performing in the round, she is comfortable on an old wooden chair, strumming her guitar, cracking jokes with the crowd, and taking everyone back with some of her older music. 

Kacey keeps the concert nostalgic for the veteran fans, and creates memories that fans both old and new will remember for a lifetime. While taking it back, she performs Follow Your Arrow, which was one of her first major singles, and a song she defines as a pivotal moment in her career where she had the opportunity as a country artist to create a song that speaks to those from all backgrounds, gender identities, and orientations. This is something that is not often done in country music, and she was warned against by her label – but clearly they were wrong, because over a decade later, a room of a little over 18,000 people is singing every word. After “Follow Your Arrow”, she moves forward to a special treat, playing “Family is Family”, off of her 2015 release Pageant Material. 

After Pageant Material gets its flowers, she decides to change things up a little bit by performing an incredible cover of SZA’s “Kill Bill” with opener Nickel Creek. After sending the crowd into a ballistic frenzy of cheers and screams, she gets a little introspective, bringing us completely full circle (pun intended). She sings and strums out “The Architect”, and speaks on how she wishes that she could speak to whatever or whoever put us all here and ask plenty of questions. An intimate and beautiful experience, everyone in the room will remember these b-stage moments. 

She is then escorted by the Deeper Well bear (a giant, mossy, green bear), as she walks the edge of the floor twirling ribbons all the way back to the stage – and she stops just shy of returning to the stage to gift one of her ribbons to young girl probably in late elementary school, who goes absolutely wild with joy. Miss Musgraves does not miss a moment to bring sunshine to her fans, and the twinkle in her eye the entire night says she knows exactly how much these small moments mean.

After returning to the main stage, she does a beautiful rendition of “Jade Green” under a flood of green lights. The whole crowd sways and dances, and Kacey twirls in her dress like a witch under a full moon. The remainder of the night is a beautiful mix of Golden Hour hits and Deeper Well tracks, along with another cover (Chappell Roan’s infectious party hit “Pink Pony Club” medley’d into Kacey’s “High Horse”), a singular track off of Star-Crossed (“Justified”), and some very grounding and breathtaking Musgraves moments to close out the night.

Between a disco ball, rainbow lights, confetti, a happy birthday chant (directed to “Kate and everyone else in the room with a birthday tonight” – yes, quite a mouthful!), and even some line-dancing from Musgraves and one of her guitarists, this crowd is full of folks grinning, laughing, and moving to the music all night long.

Kacey Musgraves is a beautiful person. She’s a beautiful performer. This is in the sense that yes, she is visually stunning, and that comes as no secret, but she is also so very gracious and kind, and very blatantly makes it clear how thankful she is to each of her fans for showing up for her, and for each other. She spends the entire night thanking everyone. She spends the entire night smiling and laughing and being present in the moment. She has a no-nonsense way about her when she lets us all know that she will not be leaving for an encore, because she thinks “they’re kind of dumb.” (Everyone laughs)! She’s very straight up, and her fans love it. She is happy to tell us what she thinks and has no shame doing it, which makes complete sense. She’s buckets of fun, she’s hilarious, and she does not care what anybody thinks. She never has –  which is part of what makes her stand out as a performer, and part of what makes it even more fun when she’s dancing and spinning barefoot onstage to “Jade Green”, and jumping and skipping to “Pink Pony Club” and “High Horse” later on. She even makes fun of herself during Deeper Well’s title track, miming herself hitting a “gravity bong” and laughing and shaking her head at the line “everything I did seemed better when I was high, I don’t know why.” 

She closes out the night with a stunning performance of Golden Hour’s hit “Rainbow”, sitting on her grassy hill as fog rolls across it mimicking clouds, and the stage is a hazy, glowing rainbow around her, before she finally leaves, the stage darkens into a single twinkling star, and the performance ends. It leaves every person in the room speechless, and for a moment, there is just this stillness that cannot be broken, before the room erupts into cheers loud enough that they’re deafening.

Kacey has lasting power that is seen few and far between. Seeing her performance on this tour is truly like no other experience, and it will be exciting to see where she takes fans next. In the meantime, though, we will all be barefoot in the moss of the rolling hills in our heads, enjoying Deeper Well.