While Bruce Springsteen and U2 have spent the past few weeks teasing fans with dress rehearsals and mini-sets in advance of their upcoming tours, Keith Urban [ tickets ] has done them one better by mounting a national mini-tour of free shows for fans and friends as he works out the setlist for his impending arena run and road test's some of the material from his new album.

That album, "Defying Gravity," out this week, fueled about a quarter of the 15-song set Urban performed at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, CA, on Friday (3/27).

The overall scene, highly branded by tour sponsor Verizon, was positioned as an opportunity for fans to connect with Urban in a rare club setting, though by night's end, it seemed clear that Urban was as hungry as his audience for the intimacy of the packed room; he suggested at one point that they scrap the tour's upcoming stop at the nearby Staples Center and do 25 more nights at the club instead.

Urban was loose and playful through the roughly 90-minute set, fronting a five-piece band that packed a wallop on the rock-leaning songs and showed admirable restraint on the night's ballads. In a room packed with true-believers, Urban gamely let the audience take the chorus and full verses on several of his hits, drinking in the scene from the stage.

Early in the set, Urban also made it clear that he came to play some serious guitar, knocking out some sweet melodic lines in "You're My Better Half" followed by some tangy, bluesy fretwork in "Stupid Boy."

While Urban hasn't made guitar wizardry a major piece of his recorded output--it was his playing skills that opened early doors in Nashville for him--he demonstrates remarkable facility on stage, pushing out lead runs that owe as much to Pete Townshend and Dickey Betts as to the likes of Lindsey Buckingham (an influence noted in his bio) or Vince Gill.

Indeed, a shade of Betts turned up late in the set when a few bars of The Allman Brothers' "Jessica" surfaced during a jam in "Somebody Like You."

The new material fared quite well, particularly the pairing of "'Til Summer Comes Around," a strong ballad that's probably another hit single in waiting, and album-opener "Kiss A Girl" with it's effortless hook and sing-along chorus.

Urban's formal tour launches May 7th in Uncasville, CT.

Setlist:
Days Go By
You're My Better Half
Stupid Boy
I Told You So
'Til Summer Comes Around
Kiss A Girl
Making Memories Of Us
Only You Can Love Me This Way
Sweet Thing
You Look Good In My Shirt
Raining On Sunday
You'll Think Of Me
Who Wouldn't Want To Be Me
Somebody Like You

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