Review: Mother Nature tried to spoil Luke Combs’ homecoming. Here’s how he responded.

On Saturday night — for the second night in a row — roughly 50,000 fans packed themselves into Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte for a quasi-homecoming concert for country-music superstar Luke Combs.

For the second night in a row, right after 9 p.m., Combs appeared atop the main stage, raised his arms high in the air, bounded down a ramp, and started performing a rollicking rendition of his country-rock banger “Lovin’ On You” as roughly 50,000 fans roared in a shared fit of ecstasy.

But just five minutes later, Saturday night’s show suddenly took a sharp detour from the path that Friday night’s had followed.

After finishing that first song on that second night, the 33-year-old North Carolina native shared some news that had to have been as frustrating to him as it was to his fans. “They just come in my ears and say I gotta get off stage for lightning,” Combs announced, a bit bitterly. “So listen, here’s the deal. Ain’t nothing I can do about it. But I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I mean, if y’all ain’t goin’ nowhere, I ain’t goin nowhere.”

A huge cheer went up after that, and then another one after this: “If we gotta play till 5 o’ clock tomorrow morning, that’s what we’re gonna do.”

At that point, as fans began filing back out of the tunnels to hunker down in the humid hallways of the stadium, their cowboy-hatted and trucker-capped heads had to be filled with questions: How long is the delay going to last? How late will Luke be allowed to play, per curfew laws and city noise ordinances? If push comes to shove, will Luke really, truly be willing to stay out here till 5 a.m. — and for that matter, will I?

Even before all this, fans had expected to be in for a long night. Some had been inside the stadium since the gates opened at 5 p.m., 45 minutes ahead of the scheduled start of Combs’s first opening act’s set. And Mother Nature was meddling early on.

It rained. It poured. Concertgoers were as glued to their weather apps as they were to their Tik Toks and text messages.

By the time Combs’s second opener, Lainey Wilson, emerged for her set, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out; but it turned out the lightning had done her some damage.

The sunnily dispositioned singer — who has seen a spike in popularity since appearing (as a sunnily dispositioned singer) on the hit television show “Yellowstone” — announced that a strike had disabled some of her band’s equipment, forcing her to call an audible. Instead of performing with a full band, Wilson wound up doing her entire set on her acoustic guitar, accompanied by just one of her musicians.

If that sounds like “settling,” by the way, it wasn’t. Wilson’s strong, soulful voice was on fuller display than it might have otherwise been, with songs like “Things a Man Oughta Know,” “Heart Like a Truck” and her “Yellowstone”-famous hit “Watermelon Moonshine” stunning showcases for it.

Riley Green, meanwhile, got off scot-free with the weather in the on-deck spot for Combs.

Overall, the set by the former footballer (he quarterbacked in the late 2000s for Division I Jacksonville State University) was All-Pro quality — lean, loose, lively. He even nodded to that past pastime by producing a football, autographing it, and launching it a good 35 yards into the crowd in the lower bowl stage right.

His only fumble, from where I sat? Swapping out “Bud Light” for “Busch Light” in the lyrics for his song “I Wish Grandpas Never Died.” It was an apparent dig at Bud Light for the brand’s decision earlier this year to briefly enter a sponsorship deal with a transgender influencer, but he probably should stage his boycott by picking a beer that isn’t also an Anheuser-Busch brand.

Anyway, after Green tapped out, the lightning tapped back in.

There was a flash off to the west first. Then around 8:45 p.m., a bona fide bolt streaked across the sky above the side of the stadium opposite uptown. Another followed. I honestly didn’t think Combs would make it onto the stage before we were booted into the bowels of BofA to shelter in place.

But he did ... for those five fleeting minutes. Then the waiting began.

The good news is we were able to wait under cover, without getting wet, while it poured out on Mint Street. The bad news is — well, think about it. Tens of thousands of people huddled throughout the concourses. It was crowded. It was hot.

It wasn’t the most pleasant way to spend an hour and a half on a Saturday night.

That said, the stadium generally did a decent job of keeping people updated via monitors and Twitter, and there seemed to be minimal confusion about how to navigate the delay as fans. (FWIW, I did hear anecdotally about some who left the stadium to seek shelter, mistakenly assuming that they’d be able to gain re-entry when the show resumed. Oops.)

It was 10:15 when we were finally told we could return to our seats. It was 10:45 when the house lights were finally extinguished.

When Combs once again appeared atop the main stage, raised his arms high in the air, bounded down a ramp, and started performing a rollicking rendition of his country-rock banger “1, 2 Many” — just his second song of the night — the clock read 10:49. Which is about the time he would have been starting his encore if not for the inclement weather.

I don’t know if there were any fines associated with him performing until Saturday night turned into Sunday morning.

I do know, however, that it’s a good thing this all happened on a weekend. The friendly couple that had been seated next to me through Wilson, Green and Combs’s first song didn’t return for Combs’s second, but I’d guess 90% to 95% of the original 50,000-ish returned after the delay. The majority of those made it past midnight.

Frankly, everyone who stuck it out till Sunday probably would have stayed with him till 5 o’clock in the morning in order to hear him sing his parade of hits while singing every last word of every one of them along with him.

And — not that I would ever pray for rain on a night like this, but — I have to say, in the end it may have made a great Carolina story even better.

The broad strokes of his, as you may know, are this: Born in Huntersville; raised here for eight years before his parents moved him to Asheville; graduated from A.C. Reynolds High School in 2008; studied criminal justice at App State in Boone while working as a bouncer and performing at The Town Tavern in Blowing Rock; dropped out 21 course hours shy of his degree to pursue his country-music career; was still playing $5 shows at random bars in 2014; graduated to Coyote Joe’s by 2016; opened for Brantley Gilbert a year after that, then for Jason Aldean a year after that.

Today, he’s bigger than both of those guys. Perhaps bigger than almost all of his peers.

He is by far the youngest person to ever headline a concert at Bank of America Stadium, and only the fourth act to headline two shows there. (The others are The Rolling Stones, Garth Brooks and Kenny Chesney, the latter of whom shared headlining status with Tim McGraw his first time here, in 2012.)

Combs has now played 15 shows at football stadiums since March, and in August he’s off to New Zealand and Australia before setting his sights on European arenas in the fall.

But this clearly was a special night for the N.C. native, who wore an App State ball cap and had a Mountaineers flag on display to the rear of the stage. After wrapping “1, 2 Many” by shotgunning a beer, he beamed as he proudly announced: “I told you we weren’t goin’ nowhere, man.”

Three songs later, the lightning and the rain having officially moved on for good, he responded to the thunderous “LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKE” calls from the audience — which would punctuate every subsequent break in the action — with gratitude.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate y’all sticking around,” Combs said. “I know there’s probably a million other things you could be doing with your time, but the fact that you went inside and stayed right here through all that to see this music tonight, especially in my hometown, means a whole lot to me.”

Ask a dozen Combs fans what the highlight was for them Saturday and you’ll probably get a dozen different responses, but for me, two stood out.

The first was when he brought former longtime guitarist Rob Williford out onto the stage mid-show. Introducing him as a native of Gastonia and as “one of my best friends in the world,” Combs admitted that “it broke my heart” when Williford parted ways with Combs’s band in February after eight years. But he added that “I was real happy for him, to be honest with you. I was proud of him for making that decision ... doing what’s best for you. We love you. We miss you.” Williford then joined Combs for two songs: “Beautiful Crazy” and “Don’t Tempt Me,” both of which were performed acoustically — and both of which Williford helped write.

The second was when he talked about how his dad introduced him to Tracy Chapman via a cassette deck in a 1989 Ford F-150, sparking his love for music and eventually inspiring him to record a cover of Chapman’s “Fast Car” that has boosted both his career and her legacy. Then his delighted-looking father, Chester Combs, emerged from stage right to share a warm embrace with Luke; as he retreated to the wings, Chester pumped both fists in the air.

That moment must have felt like a bit of a victory lap for the elder Combs, while the whole weekend must have felt a lot like one for his son.

Sure, this is probably not the way Luke Combs had envisioned Saturday going. This is probably not the way his fans did, either.

But they stuck around.

He stuck around, till 12:28 a.m., when the singer wrapped up a six-minute autograph session for adoring fans in the pit.

And — like every other time he has tried to achieve success in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds — Combs absolutely stuck his landing.

Luke Combs’s setlist

1. “Lovin’ on You”

2. “1, 2 Many”

3. “Cold as You”

4. “One Number Away”

5. “Houston, We Got a Problem”

6. “Love You Anyway”

7. “Going, Going, Gone”

8. “Must’ve Never Met You”

9. “Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old”

10. “Does to Me”

11. “Forever After All”

12. “Dust on the Bottle” / “Meet in the Middle” / “I Was Your Man”

13. “Beautiful Crazy”

14. “Don’t Tempt Me”

15. “Where the Wild Things Are”

16. “Fast Car”

17. “5 Leaf Clover”

18. “She Got the Best of Me”

19. “Hurricane”

20. “When It Rains It Pours”

21. “Beer Never Broke My Heart”

Encore:

22. “Better Together”

23. “The Kind of Love We Make”