Pop-rock star Sheryl Crow performed for a Les Schwab Amphitheater crowd on Aug. 28. Despite flying in from Denver for the show, she played for an hour and 45 minutes.

Walking into Les Schwab Amphitheater after dark is weird.

Until Sheryl Crow’s concert there on Aug. 28, I’d always arrived at Schwab shows, which generally begin around 6:30 p.m., in the daylight.

But this night was different.

First of all, I wanted to see Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on my television.

Obama was scheduled to speak around 7 p.m., and in the days leading up to the Crow show, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do both.

Then came word on Aug. 27 that Crow would get started late — between 9 and 9:30 p.m. (The Schwab’s normal 10 p.m. noise curfew was extended an hour, according to the message I heard when I called The Ticket Mill.)

The reason? She was going to play at the Democratic convention in Denver in the afternoon, then fly to Bend to keep her commitment for a show here.

That’s pretty cool.

If Crow was going to put in that kind of effort, I figured the least I could do would be to haul my lazy butt to her show. So just as Obama wrapped up his speech, I headed for the amphitheater.

And like I said, it was weird.

The dark necessitated lights over the beer garden and VIP sections, giving the venue a festive-but-slightly-ominous look.

The dark also hid blankets sprawled across the grass, creating a sea of tripping hazards.

People slunk from shadow to shadow, their faces occasionally lit up by stage lighting.

And speaking of lit, I’d say the Schwab’s 9 p.m. crowd seems considerably more, um, lubricated than the 7 p.m. crowd.

All that said, I was able to traverse the sizable throng — nearly 4,400, according to amphitheater director Marney Smith — and find a spot near the stage just as opener Brandi Carlile was winding down.

(I’d have liked to have seen more of Carlile, but so it goes. Her cover of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” had some spunk, but that’s about all I know.)

At 9:15 p.m. on the dot, Crow appeared, as promised. Wearing jeans and a brown vest, she showed no ill effects from her long day, launching into a set that reminded me just how many of her songs I can hum along to.

After three songs from her newest album “Detours,” she settled into the hit parade. Two estrogen-fueled anthems — the desperate “Strong Enough” and the defiant “Can’t Cry Anymore” — stirred the crowd’s female majority. During the latter, the house lights sparked to life, illuminating hundreds of women swaying along, feeling each and every word.

Crow seemed appreciative: “I want to move to Bend, Oregon,” she said between songs. The audience roared, of course.

I kept waiting for Crow to use her strange day as a chance to stump for Obama, but she never did. Instead, she simply urged people to visit a booth in the back of the venue to register to vote.

She saved the politics for her songs. Crow lambasted the Iraq war in “God Bless This Mess,” bemoaned poverty in “Shine Over Babylon,” and lamented the Hurricane Katrina disaster in “Love Is Free.”

And during “Gasoline,” she spliced in the chorus of The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” singing, “war … it’s just a shot away” as images of gas pumps and fuel gauges projected onto the stage.

As the amphitheater’s normal curfew passed, I couldn’t help but notice the show’s volume and energy seemed to ratchet up.

“Motivation” poked fun at modern greed and featured a hip-hop drum break. For “My Favorite Mistake,” Crow put down her guitar and showed off her dance moves.

And “There Goes The Neighborhood” rocked hard enough, apparently, to force the folks in the normally staid reserved-seating section onto their feet. Perhaps it was the mid-song segue into the Aerosmith hit “Walk This Way” that did the trick.

After rocking out for a while, Crow shifted back into her wheelhouse, namely sunny, rootsy pop.

Even after a false start, “If It Makes You Happy” was a highlight, thanks in part to Carlile’s guest harmony vocal. The first time she and Crow hit the chorus of that song together was my favorite moment of the evening.

Crow wrapped up her main set with the singalong-y “Out Of Our Heads,” a radiant version of “Soak Up The Sun,” and “Everyday Is A Winding Road,” before a perfect encore of “All I Wanna Do” (14 years later, still probably her best-known song) and a lively cover of the Stevie Wonder classic “Higher Ground.”

All told, she played for 105 minutes, with very little pause, ending her set right at 11 p.m. Despite what had to be an exhausting day, she gave it her all, it seemed, and nailed just about every minute of the show.

Many artists would’ve taken the Denver gig and canceled on Bend. It’s truly, truly cool that Crow didn’t do that. To me, it says something about her character.

And here is where you might expect me to say something about how that effort to fulfill her commitment here made the show worthwhile, a sort of backhanded compliment that implies her music wasn’t enough to carry the night.

But I’m not going to say that, because Crow not only gets an “A” for effort, she gets an “A” for her songs and an “A” for her performance, too.

It was a terrific show.

And well worth the wait.