George Strait takes the stage Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden arena. He was backed by an eight-piece band and shared the stage with country veteran Ronnie Milsap and newcomer Taylor Swift. Photo by Samantha Clemens.

The cowboy in white took on the man in black, and it was a telling moment: If Johnny Cash was country's id, at least for a time, George Strait is most definitely its conscience, a true believer who defends the mores of traditional honky tonk with Pentecostal zeal.

Tapping out the beat on his guitar in front of a packed house at the MGM Grand Garden arena, smiling like he was running for office, Strait rendered Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" less an outlaw anthem than a rowdy, high-stepping tutorial in country western swing, digging the menace out of the tune the way a dentist mines a cavity.

This was Strait doing what he does best, making pathos palatable, turning heartache into hit after hit after hit (the man's notched more than 30 No. 1 singles in his three-decade career).

After all, Strait's an unabashed romanticist, his songs revolving mostly around the pleasures of honky tonk women and the thrill of hitting the road and chasing down the sun like it owed him money.

His vast back catalog is filled with earthy, windswept Americana with dust in its throat. It's the sound of wanderlust, infatuated with wide-open spaces and all the possibility implied in endless stretches of highway.

At the MGM Grand, Strait alternated spare, hard-luck waltzes about women fed up with their restless beaus ("Amarillo," "I Can Still Make Cheyenne," "I Ain't Her Cowboy Anymore") with raucous, fiddle-driven odes to the open range and drinking one's woes away ("Unwound," "Cowboys Like Us").

But despite his traditionalist bent, Strait is also the forefather of the slick nouveau country that has dominated the airwaves since the early '90s. He's the bridge between the rugged, thick-skinned twang of the '70s and the huge-sounding, hyper-produced country pop of today.

And true to form, on this night, Strait shared the stage with both a fellow country veteran (the venerable Ronnie Milsap, the genre's pre-eminent piano man and one of its most sublime balladeers) and a freshly-scrubbed 17-year-old, Taylor Swift, who was equal parts sass and precociousness ("At this time last year, I was sitting at a desk in high school," she beamed).

But ultimately, Strait is the consummate old-school performer, fond of robust, full-bodied country that becomes that much heartier live.

Buttressed by an eight-piece band (plus two backup singers), Strait and Co. rendered Bob Wills' country western classic "Take Me Back To Tulsa" a sweaty, boisterous hoedown with some white-knuckle piano playing and moaning pedal steel.

Likewise, the band turned Strait's "Milk Cow Blues" into a sock-'em-in-the-jaw jam session peppered with dueling guitars and high-strung fiddle.

It was a love letter to country's freewheeling past, which Strait both celebrates and, paradoxically, waves farewell to in his rearview mirror.

"It's time to say goodbye to yesterday," Strait sang during the show-ending "Cowboy Rides Away," bidding adieu to a bygone era that never will completely fade away as long as this cowboy continues to ride the range.