Either Tim McGraw knows how to throw a birthday party, or his fans do.

Maybe both, because with near-perfect weather and thousands of country music fans ready for a concert season without masks or vaccination cards, the atmosphere itself felt like a gift on Friday night at MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre.

And McGraw, who turned 55 on last Sunday, delivered a seamless set of 20-plus of the hits he’s rolled up over 30 years of making music.

He opened with “How Bad Do You Want It?” and the answer must have been “quite badly” as the sing-along got started and kept going for most of the next 90 minutes.

There wasn’t much chit-chat, which McGraw explained after the third song by telling the crowd: “If you haven’t been to our show, we don’t do a lot of (BS). We just play music.”

The “McGraw Tour 2022” eschews a fancy stage, the better to showcase the eight-man band that backs McGraw so ably. So ably, in fact, that when the singer occasionally strums his own guitar, it’s really not needed.

McGraw is a master at firing up his fans and mixing up his set list. He introduced “our first No. 1 record” before launching into “Don’t Take the Girl” and then offering the most recent single with “7500 OBO.”

And after “Where the Green Grass Grows” he engaged in a call and response with the crowd — a straightforward “Hell, yeah!” It felt like a tent revival but without the tent.

The audience likely hoped for a guest appearance by Nelly when McGraw started “Over and Over” but instead got a snippet of that crossover hit before moving into “Shotgun Rider.”

Some of McGraw’s songs feel confessional, due in part to him being open about changing his lifestyle and getting sober in 2008. So listening to “Better Than I Used to Be” feels intimate, even if he is singing to more than 13,000 fans.

McGraw closed his main set with the monster hit “Live Like You Were Dying” and “The Cowboy in Me,” which ties into his starring role on “1883,” the prequel to the Paramount Network series “Yellowstone.”

The most touching moment of the evening came for those who stuck around for the encore, when he returned to the stage for “Indian Outlaw” and “Humble and Kind.” As that song wound down and many fans headed out, though, McGraw began a short a cappella chorus of “Love Can Build a Bridge” — one of the many hits by the Judds. Naomi Judd, the mother in the mother-daughter duo, died Saturday of what her daughters called mental illness.

And McGraw’s wife, Faith Hill, joined him onstage for the brief tribute. Touching and straight from the heart.

The opening acts were Russell Dickerson, Alexandra Kay and Brandon Davis. Dickerson, of “Blue Tacoma” fame, is the best-known of the trio and played for 50 minutes. He led the crowd in “Happy Birthday” for McGraw and did a medley of “Shut Up and Dance” and “I Just Wanna Dance” that included booty-shaking and some moonwalking that fired the crowd up.

Kay looked and sounded great on the big stage. Her song “That’s What Love Is” is atop the iTunes country chart, and she sang some cuts from her new album, “Backroad Therapy.” For a singer who got started as a contestant on “American Idol” (she made it three rounds before being eliminated in 2011), that’s pretty good progress.