Beer, sun, music and more beer, in that order, were all the rage at the 30th anniversary Jamboree in the Hills in St. Clairsville, Ohio. One of the largest and oldest country music festivals, Jamboree services some 25,000 fans a day for four consecutive days and has its own temporary post office and medical facility.

This year's event, which ended yesterday, drew such top country stars as Montgomery Gentry, Sugarland, Keith Urban and Clint Black and local boys Brad Paisley, John Corbett and The PovertyNeck Hillbillies.

Nine acts shared the bill Saturday, including morning and afternoon performances by Christian Simmons, Ray Scott, Earl Thomas Conley, The Fabulous Bender Boys, John Corbett Band and Mark Chesnutt.

Tracy Byrd worked the evening shift with an hour of the honky-tonk party anthems and sweet love ballads that made him a star in the '90s, and showcased new material from an album due this fall. Michael Clark and Jeff Steven's "Big Love," Tony Martin's "Just Let Me Be in Love" and Byrd's hit cover of the Gary "U.S." Bonds classic "(Don't Take Her) She's All I've Got" let him show off the crooning qualities of his voice.

But the crowd responded best to, you guessed it, the drinking songs: Casey Beathard's "Ten Rounds of Jose Cuervo" and "Drinkin' Bone," and Buddy Brock's "Watermelon Crawl," which prompted fans to dance with carved-out melons on their heads. Listen up in October for the hook-laden "Rockin'" and a new self-written drinking song, "Saltwater Cowboy."

"American Idol's" fourth-season winner Carrie Underwood nearly underwhelmed the crowd with cuts from her country-pop CD "Some Hearts," but she turned the show around with surprisingly savvy stagecraft. The audience remained mostly idle as Underwood and her four-piece band rocked through poppy album cuts including "We're Young and Beautiful" and her new single, "Don't Forget to Remember Me." And they barely acknowledged a lackluster cover of Dolly Parton's "Jolene."

But they noticed when Underwood picked up a guitar and picked an acoustic version of her electric hit "Independence Day." Underwood put her distinctive imprint on Guns 'N Roses' "Patience" and wailed on the GNR classic "Sweet Child o' Mine." The crowd stayed with her after that through Brett James and Hillary Lindsey's CMA single of the year "Jesus Take the Wheel" and the rest of an impressive set.

Performing, Underwood said, for the largest crowd of her burgeoning career, the country-pop ingenue showed more poise than many performers abruptly thrust into stardom.

Keith Urban didn't bring his new wife, Nicole Kidman, to Ohio. He brought instead a dangerous band, a backlog of radio hits and enough energy to spark a fire in a crowd that was already lit.

In an industry dominated by pretty faces with good voices, Urban writes his songs, plays them live and in the studio, and electrifies concert venues. He has enough radio singles from three solo CDs to fill an hour-plus show with mostly familiar songs, and enough charisma the sell the rest.

"Days Go By" morphed into an acoustic take on "Where the Blacktop Ends." With an electric guitar slung over a shoulder, Urban ran to where the stage ends and jumped into the crowd, surrounded by frantic green-shirted event staff, to sing right into the faces of his fans.

Back on stage, he slowed things down with "Raining on Sunday" and "You're My Better Half." Urban said that after last year's Jamboree performance, he wandered through the campsites surrounding the amphitheater picking songs by firelight because, he said, "Everybody knows that's where the real party is." The audience sang along with "But for the Grace of God," "Making Memories of Us" and "Your Everything."

That said, critiquing the musical caliber of a party show like Jamboree in the Hills is akin to scouting a tailgate party to write about football. The music isn't mainly what matters -- it helps set the atmosphere for what does: hot sun, cool water misters, cold beer and the exciting vibe of partying bare shoulder to bare shoulder with 25,000 friends.

Some policy changes showed the impact of the event's purchase by Live Nation.

A fenced-off corral of unshaded plastic chairs about 100 yards from the stage -- reserved seats priced at $500 for four days -- was mostly empty on Saturday. Regulars said the pricey reserved seating remained practically vacant throughout the festival. Reserved camping sites, available at a higher cost and located closer to the stage, were filled.

First Published: July 17, 2006, 4:00 a.m.