Strait told the crowd, in that easy, unaffected manner he wears like a cowboy hat, that he had a lot of music to get through and he hoped we didn’t have anywhere to be.

In a cowboy hat, flannel and jeans, the 73-year-old was as comfortable onstage as his pedigree would suggest. He enthusiastically ran through more than 30 songs.

At first blush, the music that played over the Gillette Stadium loudspeakers Saturday evening as the audience waited for George Strait to take the stage was nothing more than a country-music mix ...