CADOTT - If Taylor Hicks wasn't what fans at Country Fest wanted to hear, Sara Evans surely was.

While Hicks, a proclaimed man of soul, set up Sara Evans - the headliner, he couldn't compete with her fan base or powerful vocals.

Evans burst into her 14-song set Friday night with "Coalmine," a song off her 2005 disk, Real Fine Place. Confusion behind the scenes brought Evans to the stage a few seconds after her first song started. She joked about the goof between songs.

"Almost didn't make it out here for the show," she said. "I was still on the golf cart (backstage) when I started singing the first song. Why didn't you wait for me?" she joked to the crowd.

The mix up, which resulted in a few inaudible words, didn't hurt her performance. People leaped out of their folding chairs and clapped above their heads welcoming her as she ran onto the stage.

Evans' stage decor might have been sparse, but her voice and enthusiasm more than made up for it. For true fans, every song was recognizable except for one that will be released on a greatest hits compact disk in the fall.

It was apparent during the show that the fans were as important to her and she was to them.

She walked the stage during each song waving and shielding the stage lights from her eyes so she could see the crowd.

Singers on the fest grounds sang along to one of Evans' more recently released songs, "Cheating."

When Evans was ready to sing "Suds in the Bucket," about a girl who was swept off her feet by a boy in a pickup truck, Evans took a friendly jab at boys from Cadott.

Evans grew up on a farm in a small town in Missouri.

"Every now and then one of those rednecks would drive to our farm and try to convince me to run off with them. I never did, unlike the young lady in this next song," Evans said. "She actually ran off with a redneck from Cadott, Wisconsin. And it broke her mama's heart because she left."

Throughout the 70-minute set, Evans and her band, including sister, Lesley Evans Lyons, a back-up singer; and brother, Matt Evans, the guitarist, attempted to keep the crowd entertained, but the slower songs weeded the fans from the fanatics.

The crowd grew restless and began packing up for the night during the ballad "I Could Not Ask for More."

At least Evans made it 50 minutes into her act before the fans started making their way back to the campsites. It took Hicks, who played before Evans, only a handful of songs to send people back to their tents.

Taylor Hicks

American Idol's Hicks didn't stand a chance with devout country music fans. The blues and jazz crooner, dressed in a black shirt and gray suit coat, warmed up the crowd with "Soul Thing."

But the warmth quickly faded.

Although his voice was right on key and he rocked on the harmonica, Hicks' handful of hard-core fans couldn't persuade the rest of the crowd to play along.

The true winner of Hick's concert was the man on keyboard. One would venture a guess from an internet search that his name is Brian Less, but Hicks didn't bother to mention the band in his 60-minute performance.