Rascal Flatts played Verizon Arena Saturday.

For anyone who might try to quibble and suggest that Saturday night’s country concert at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock wasn’t really all that country, that Rascal Flatts was great but more Elton John than Merle Haggard, that opening act Hunter Hayes was handsome and talented and all that, but in a black T-shirt, jeans, tennis shoes and red belt he, um, didn’t remind them of George Strait, we have two words: Sara Evans.

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Sorely missed from the top of the country charts for a few years, Evans returned with a new album in 2011 with plenty of great tracks, but it was her 2004 up-tempo anthem to, as she puts it, “a rotten teenage girl who falls in love with a redneck boy” — that would be “Suds in the Bucket” — that guaranteed none of the 10,417 fans in attendance left without their minimum daily requirement of traditional country.

The girl, of course, runs off with her guy, the big voice in six-inch heels delights the crowd and the evening’s a success long before the headlining act comes out. Evans has a way with a country song — well, she ought to; she’s been on stage since she was four — and with her powerful voice, she doesn’t have to do much more than stroll around in those heels and skin-tight pants, smile, wave and sing her heart out.

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