Keith Urban Makes Memorable Live Stage Comeback After 18 Months

Keith Urban has been absent from the live stage for exactly 18 months. Tuesday night (August 24) changed that when he took to The ACM Party for a Cause concert.

For the live show, which took place in Nashville, the country veteran, 53, appeared on stage without his guitar in tow and made a grand entrance that spoke volumes. Walking out onto the Ascend Amphitheater stage, Urban dropped to his knees, took in the moment and tapped on his heart. "Real people," he told the soldout crowd via PEOPLE. "It's the most amazing feeling being back on the live stage. This is my first time since February last year."

Urban's three-song set, which included a performance of his new single, "Wild Hearts." served as the grand finale to an evening with other country hitmakers, including Old Dominion, Sam Hunt, Maren Morris, Trisha Yearwood, Lee Brice and Carly Pearce, to coincide with the ACM Honors.

Elsewhere in his set, Urban shared his first memory of a major country show at age 5 when he and his family took to a Johnny Cash concert. "The thing I noticed was when this guy walked out on stage with a guitar, this crowd was screaming and going crazy," he recalled. "And when he picked up the guitar and started playing, it went real quiet. And I was mesmerized. And then I looked up at my dad, and I saw him staring at this guy in a way that I had never seen him look at me and I went, 'I want to do that.'"