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 The country music royals sat close and bantered with each other
before a doubleheader of shows Friday at the Venetian resort,
telling reporters they've outlasted split rumors that started from
the first weeks of their 17-year marriage.
"I wish people would stop buying that stuff, and I wish they'd just
stop printing that stuff," Hill said of the tabloids. "Happy is
good. I don't know why happy can't be a story."
The show, which squeezes the electricity of an arena production into
a 1,800-seat theater with a live band, is a tag team of hits drawn
from two decades of their separate, stellar careers. McGraw saunters
across the stage with an electric guitar slung across his back, face
half-hid in the shadow of a black cowboy hat as he drawls "Real Good
Man."
"He has this charisma and this unexplainable presence. It's
magnetic, and it's incredible," Hill said about her husband, whose
current hits, including "Southern Girl," follow a laundry list of
nearly three dozen chart-toppers. "I just feel like an amateur every
single night."
Hill is the bad boy's angelic foil, luminous in white and gold as
she's lifted from below the stage. A black costume she wears later
in the show evokes both wings and a shroud as she moves between the
sensuous "Breathe" and mournful "Like We Never Loved at All."
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"She walks out and just opens her mouth and it comes out so
beautifully and soulfully," McGraw said. "That's what keeps me on my
toes."
The couple's chemistry takes center stage in the final duet as they
sit on opposite sides of the same old-fashioned microphone, hands on
each other's knees, and sing "I Need You."
McGraw called the Las Vegas shows a chance to "catch your breath"
compared with the whirlwind of touring that he'll pick up once again
this summer.
But even residency may be too much for the couple, who fly from
Nashville to Las Vegas for performance weekends. Hill said she's
less focused on new music projects than what's for dinner and how to
manage social calendars for her three daughters. The oldest is a
high school junior.
"I think this will probably be it," she said of the latest string of
shows. "It's increasingly more difficult with the high school thing.
You've just got to be there."
After Saturday's performances, the next showings of "Soul2Soul" are
set for mid-January.
[Associated
Press; MICHELLE RINDELS]
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