Vincent Mason Didn't Come to Columbus to Warm Anybody Up
Opening for Thomas Rhett at the Schottenstein Center, the rising country singer delivered a lean, confident set that made a case for his own arena future, even when the seams showed.
There's a particular kind of silence an arena makes for a middle act. The early arrivals have found their seats, the beer lines are still long, and most of the building is waiting for somebody else. Vincent Mason walked into that silence at the Schottenstein Center on Friday night, and within about three songs, he'd broken it.
Mason is still a new name to a lot of people who bought tickets to see Thomas Rhett. His debut album, There I Go, is barely a year old, and his radio breakthrough, "Hell Is A Dancefloor" only arrived in 2024. But the 45 minutes he spent on stage in Columbus played less like an audition than an argument, one that said he already belongs on stages this size.
A Voice Built for Big Rooms
He opened with "Speak of the Devil," and it was the right call. The song arrives with a swagger that doesn't wait for permission, and Mason delivers it like a man who wants your attention more than your approval. By the time he rolled into "Painkiller" and"Train of Thought," the lower bowl had stopped treating him like background music.
The most striking thing about hearing Mason live is how little he oversells. A lot of young country singers in arenas lean on volume and stage-running to fill the space. Mason mostly plants himself and sings. His baritone has a worn, lived-in grain that cuts through a mix without shouting, and it lends real heft to even his breeziest songs.
That restraint paid off in the heartbreak songs, which are his real strength. "Heart Like This" landed with a quiet ache that made an 18,000-seat room feel briefly smaller.
Then came the curveball, and it didn't quite land. Mason's cover of Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance" has become a fixture of his sets, but it's an ambitious swing at a songwriter with one of rock's most untouchable catalogs. On Friday it felt half-hearted, the harmonica fills more decoration than conviction, and much of the crowd seemed content to wait it out rather than sing along. Taking on Petty takes nerve. It also takes a reason, and Mason never quite offered one.
The closing stretch was where he made his case. "Hell Is a Dance Floor," "Don't Ask Me" and "Damned If I Do" ran back-to-back with real momentum. "Damned If I Do," his newest single, is the most musically adventurous thing he's released. Mason has said he wanted a song that felt different to play every night, and on stage, it does. It's the sound of an artist figuring out he can push past the template, and it was the best song he played all night. Bravo to that.
Where the Seams Showed
Not everything clicked. At its low points, watching Mason work the stage was like watching unseasoned chicken prance around a plate: no char, no spice, nothing to taste. Outside of "Damned If I Do," the set was starving for an idea that felt entirely his own.
Next to the arena veterans he's sharing bills with, Mason could seem lethargic, as if stretches of the show were running on autopilot. The middle of the set lacked direction, drifting from song to song without building toward anything. Even the harmonica breaks felt like cosplay, a prop he used to signal grit rather than deliver it.
The good news is that none of this touched the voice, which stayed steady and rich from the first note to the last. The problems are about presentation, and presentation is the easiest thing for a young artist to fix.
The Verdict
Still, the flaws were the kind that come from being early, not from being ordinary. Mason has the voice, the songs, and a rare instinct for knowing when to get out of their way. What he's missing is mostly mileage.
Thomas Rhett closed the night with a decade of hits behind him. Mason doesn't have that yet. But on Friday in Columbus, he sounded like someone who will, and more than a few people who came for the headliner walked out with a new name to look up.