ORONO – Through some freak of PR nature, I ended up with two extra tickets to Tuesday’s Natalie Merchant show, so I started calling my friends. Strangely, each of them had an excuse: Too late. Too busy. Too tired.

Too bad.

They missed one of the best shows that’s come to this part of Maine in a long time. In no time, Merchant and her band had the crowd at Maine Center for the Arts on their feet, dancing at their seats as she twirled and shimmied across the stage, grooving to the music.

It didn’t start out this way, though. Twinkling, starry blue lights framed the stage, making it feel like an old-fashioned caf? as Merchant sat at her piano, singing introspectively. Merchant opened with the sad, serious ballad “Beloved Wife,” and eased into the bluesy “I’m Not Gonna Beg,” off her latest CD, “Motherland.”

Then she got rid of the piano, wrapped a feather boa around her neck and started to dance to the sultry, throaty “Put the Law on You.” After her jubilant rendition of “Wonder,” a crowd favorite, she told the audience how much she was enjoying her stay in Orono – the food at the Thai Orchid and Pat’s Pizza, the graveyard she visited in Stillwater, and the mosquitoes that swarmed her and her band as they walked back from dinner. She had tried to find the Old Town Canoe factory, maker of her beloved green Penobscot, to no avail.

It didn’t seem to bother her too much, though. After her monologue, she jumped into “Life is Sweet” and beckoned the crowd to dance to “These Are Days.” Her contagious energy had everyone from teen-age girls to middle-age men standing up, swaying to the music, singing along. It was bliss.

After the first set (and thunderous applause), Merchant and the band came back for an unplugged encore with the title track from “Motherland.” They eased into Pete Seeger’s “Which Side Are You On?” and slowed things down with the 19th-century hymn “Weeping Pilgrim.” Then, bathed in golden light, Merchant gave the audience the perfect ending.

As the music started for “Kind & Generous,” she thanked the people of Orono for their hospitality, then she thanked the crowd. If she could’ve gone into the audience, she would. And as the spotlights turned from Merchant to the audience, and the crowd once again got up and started to sing and dance, it wasn’t clear who was more thankful, Merchant for the crowd’s enthusiasm, or the audience for Merchant’s own kindness and generosity.

As Merchant would say, “Never before and never since, I promise, will the whole world be warm as this” – and Tuesday’s crowd will agree, it was a day to remember.