If Keith Anderson had not injured his shoulder shortly after he was approached by the Kansas City Royals, he may still have played in front of large crowds but it would have been a completely different kind of playing. 

Anderson’s passion, even while he was earning his engineering degree at Oklahoma State University, was sports. Although he was becoming more interested in music every day, he played baseball in college and still graduated first in his class with a 3.9 GPA. His older brother Brian, who built the computer system for NASA’s Mission control in Houston, taught him to play guitar.

“That’s why in my show, I joke and say, ‘It really did take a rocket scientist to teach me to play guitar,’” Anderson says on his website. 

After a few tough jobs, moving to Nashville and recording a demo CD, he was able to start a band in 2000. Two years later his enthusiasm while opening for Montgomery Gentry led him to his Arista Records contract.

In order to promote some of his new songs and of course excite fans with his old ones, Anderson has been touring the U.S. in 2007. His performance at “Stars & Guitars” in Rockford, Illinois, although only a nine-song set, was outstanding. He knew he’d see what level of excitement he could get out of that crowd if he opened his set with his humorous tune “XXL.” Inspired by the small town of Miami, Oklahoma, which he grew up in, “Podunk” was next. 

He then told the crowd that he wrote a song quite a while ago that was recorded by Garth Brooks and George Jones. I must say that Anderson’s extremely quick and upbeat version of “Beer Run” is definitely going to be a popular one when it is heard on his new CD coming out this fall. Anderson mentioned two more songs that he wrote, one being “The Bed,” which Gretchen Wilson recorded, and the other being “Lost In This Moment,” Big and Rich’s current single. 

After performing “Lost In This Moment,” he sang his current single from his new album, “Sunday Morning In America.” “Every Time I Hear Your Name,” his most recent top 10 hit from his Three Chord Country CD was followed by “Wrap Around,” which Anderson knew would be a “drunken sing-along.” 

Just before he ended his set, he found out how many White Sox fans and Cubs fans there were in the crowd, realizing it was the first of a three-day series between the two Chicago Major League Baseball teams. Smiling big, Anderson left the stage and re-entered wearing a white pinstriped Cubs jersey. 

He introduced his band, sang “Three Chord Country,” and fireworks lit up the sky as he finished the night with his first top 10 hit, “Pickin’ Wildflowers.”