CONCORD, Calif. — Country star Lainey Wilson, current holder of the Grammy for Country Album of the Year and the first woman to win entertainer of the year at the CMAs since Taylor Swift in 2011, hit the stage at Toyota Pavilion on Saturday, hours after releasing her ambitious sophomore album, Whirlwind.

At the Concord show on her Country’s Cool Again Tour, she delivered a heaping of the new songs in addition to prior hits like her first breakout, “Things A Man Oughta Know,” “Watermelon Moonshine” and a medley of the collaborations with Jelly Roll, Cole Swindell and Hardy that contributed to her rapid rise after nearly a decade of toiling away in Nashville bars. She’s got more than these three, of course. She’s on Post Malone’s new album, and her work with The Black Crowes and Lukas Nelson were highlights on those artists’ albums.

But perhaps the very best part of the performance was the show’s production, which consisted mostly of a rotating red pickup truck (a real one, as best we could tell) in front of a large video screen. The headlights and hazards worked, but the coolest thing was how the vehicle was rotated in time with the backdrops of country roads, gas stations, desert peaks, star fields and sunrises, which gave the performance a realistic quality. Snoop Dogg brought cars with him to the same venues a couple of years earlier, but those weren’t nearly as cool as how Wilson and co. used her truck.

The show kicked off with the truck horn blaring and engine revving before it drove from inside a large barn and into the desert — somewhere near Sedona, perhaps. Wilson appeared from behind the truck and hopped atop it as her five-member band kicked into opener “Hang Tight Honey.” Throughout the show she’d go on to use the bed, the hood and even inside the cab during “Heart Like a Truck,” complete with a steering wheel camera. The door slam on the way out was a nice touch; it wasn’t plywood!

The song, one of several truck-themed tunes in her arsenal, was especially a highlight, leading to a massive singalong on the chorus, followed by her holding a note for an impressively long time.

Complementing the big set pieces, the stage was decorated with desert shrubbery and the bed of the truck with flowers. Even Wilson’s outfit—denim bellbottoms and vest with a white cowboy had pushing down two long pigtails—seemed to add to the overall design.

The Louisiana native was in an excited mood, leading the band from song to song, most of them supercharged with driving guitar lines and hard-hitting rock percussion. “Straight Up Sideways” started as such before it morphed into a pop-country tune. “Smell Like Smoke,” during which a fan handed Wilson a  bouquet of flowers, shifted into mid-tempo rocker “Dirty Looks.”

Before getting to her Miranda Lambert collaboration, “Good Horses”—Lainey Wilson also has plenty of horse songs in her arsenal—she paused to talk about how her life had been a whirlwind as of late, which is what inspired the new album’s title.

“I’m trying to keep one foot on the ground,” she said, before talking about the song specifically. “It brought me home at a time in my life when I was far away.”

While Lambert was of course not there, opener Jackson Dean stepped in, but ceded the vocal star power to Wilson, singing Lambert’s parts with a muted voice.

The two of them finished the song sitting on the tailgate of the truck, which had swung completely around.

The most memorable story of the night was about new song “Middle Of It,” which she’d just debuted the previous night in Southern California.

The song followed the folky, mandolin-tinged “Things a Man Oughta Know,” which helped to set the mood. She talked about writing the song with friends, who prompted her by asking how she was doing. At the time, her career was taking off, but her dad was seriously ill. She responded that she was “smack dab in the middle of it.” The story had a happy ending when Wilson announced that the doctor who saved her dad’s life was inside the amphitheater in Concord.

Wilson then went to work, picking the pace back up with a stream of Southern rock songs like “Whirlwind” (with guitar soloing galore and an extended jam session of an outro), a moody “Bar in Baton Rouge” that had her on her knees, belting to the sky once again and a dizzying, sped-up rendition of CCR’s “Proud Mary.”

The best song of the night was the one that stood out the most: the slinky, sassy and funky “Ring Finger,” which had her singing into a voice-modulating walkie talkie that made her voice sound tinny and far away. It wasn’t really country (or rock), but it worked oh-so-well. She threw in some goofy country Western dance moves from atop the truck’s roof for good measure.

During “Atta Girl,” as she has been doing on the Country’s Cool Again Tour, she pulled up one young fan. She had the starstruck girl repeat self-affirming mantras like “I am beautiful, I am smart… I can do anything,” before placing a cowboy hat on her head and declaring her the “cowgirl of the night.”

“My favorite part of the night, y’all!” Wilson shouted.

If there was one thing Wilson’s set was light in, that would be traditional country music. She remedied that with a collection of classic songs she’s been calling the “country history medley.”

The band took its time running through Hank Williams’ “Hey, Good Lookin’,” Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” Randy Travis’ “Forever and Ever, Amen” and Reba McEntire’s “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.”

Between the songs, Wilson narrated factoids about songs and the years they came out. It went over with the crowd like gangbusters. The night’s other opener, Zach Top, guested on the Travis cover, during which the two shared their worst jobs ever. For her it was being a Hannah Montana impersonator (makes sense). For him it was a math tutor at a college, which didn’t hit as strongly.

Wilson, who’s also made a name for herself as a recurring character on the TV show “Yellowstone” and this summer was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, rounded out the show with honky tonk single “Country’s Cool Again,” and an encore that included the collab medley, “4 x 4 x U” and “Wildflowers and Wild Horses.”

Jackson Dean and his band preceded Wilson with their own set that hewed closer to rock than country. After opening with the souring “Big Blue Sky,” Dean and company shifted noise, reverb-laden “Trailer Park” and bluesy “Duct Tape Heart.” He introduced “Don’t Take Much” as a song about his first place living alone, a few miles from home, which had just the bare essentials.

“Train” had ringing guitar fingerpicking and a heartbeat rhythm that recalled Coldplay. On the atmospheric song, he even sang in falsetto. “Heavens to Betsy” had a  similar vibe, starting slowly before building and exploding in a cacophony of guitar stabs and four-on-the-floor drumming.

After slow-burning country hit “Fearless” and the mandolin-tinged “Sweet Appalachia” (at least at first; it also ended as a noisy rocker), Jason Dean rounded out the set with thumper “1971” (which he said was about being born in the wrong generation) and driving rock song “Don’t Come Lookin’.”

Unlike the other acts on the bill, Zach Top and his four-member band leaned into traditional country music. After kicking the show off with shuffling line-dancing tune “Sounds Like the Radio,” Top introduced “I Never Lie” as his favorite song from his new album, Cold Beer and Country Music.

The foxtrot melody and wistful pedal steel solo drew cheers from the crowd. The propulsive “Bad Luck” and ballad “Use Me” showed the artist’s variety. He introduced the latter as a “cheating’ song,” before throwing in a disclaimer that it should not be taken literally as guidance.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter. Follow photographer Sean Liming at Instagram.com/S.Liming.