Keith Urban Bullish on Music City

Keith Urban shoots the video for his single, "Sweet Thing" in December 2008 in a barn in Spring Hill, Tenn. Photo by Jeff Johnson, courtesy of Borman Entertainment.

Sept. 23, 2009 — Next month, Keith Urban is headlining a massive All for the Hall benefit concert in Nashville to raise money for the Country Music Hall of Fame. It’s an expression of his appreciation for country music history and for the establishment that chronicles that history.

But it’s also a way for Keith to aid the city he now calls home, even though he was born half a world away.

"Coming to Nashville — that was a time in my life that will always give me a great feeling, because it was really exciting to be a little kid dreaming about Nashville and one day to be driving around here and realizing you’re in it," he told the national radio show GAC Nights: Live From Nashville. "I still remember taking some freeway drives wherever I had to go, and when I would come back to Nashville and I would see seeing those green signs saying ‘Nashville’ on the freeway, and I went, ‘That’s the Nashville.’ It took years for that to really sink in that I’m in the Nashville, not some place that has the same name. This is the one, you know?"

Keith’s fund-raising concert will be held Oct. 13 in downtown Nashville at the Sommet Center. Among his guests at the sold-out show will be Brad Paisley, Taylor Swift, Faith Hill, Little Big Town, Jason Aldean, Lady Antebellum and Vince Gill. Vince shares Keith’s appreciation for Nashville, and the All for the Hall event has an interesting twist for him: Vince is the president of the Hall of Fame’s board of directors, and he was part of the committee that oversaw the design of the Sommet Center.