"We were thinking about what might come next," Lyle Lovett said from the Verizon Wireless Stage Wednesday night, before playing a song he had written with Robert Earl Keen at Texas A&M. "We were thinking about venturing off into the great unknown and, in this case, that meant seeking gainful employment... which scared the heck out of me."

"Because Robert and I both knew that what we wanted to do was make stuff up and sing about it," Lovett said. "And that just didn't seem possible."

Well look at him now, folks.

In front of a packed and uncharacteristically quiet Verizon crowd, Lovett and his band kept the crowd's rapt attention for two full hours. Onstage, he held an acoustic guitar and was accompanied by a standup bassist, a cellist, a violinist and two drummers, one of whom had bongos attached to his kit.

Halfway through the performance, the drummers took a break, the other acoustic guitarist traded in his guitar for a mandolin, and the four remaining members of the band, Lovett included, crowded around the middle microphone as a single light at the back of the stage shone on them as they performed. First, they tugged on the crowd's heart strings with "I'll Come Knockin'" before getting their feet tapping with "Keep It In Your Pantry," an upbeat ditty about a woman who's cheating on her man with food.

After performing "Tolerate," Lovett began tuning his guitar, and the crowd started sporadically shouting requests. On top of being talented, Lovett is also quite charming, and he bantered well with the crowd.

"I'll be right with you," he said in his near-monotone speaking voice. "I'm just taking a little break."

The crowd laughed.