I Do Stuff…

a whole lot of man

A couple of months ago Nancy asked if I wanted to go to the Toby Keith concert at Nissan Pavilion.  I was shocked see asked.  I certainly am not a fan of either Toby or country music and neither is she.  But she said her sister was getting tickets for Greg and was looking for others to come along.  With that in mind I told her I would go under one condition, I had to be drunk when I walked in.  Oh what we do for love.

The previous week we planned it out to meet at Greg’s house at 4 to carpool to the venue for a little pre-show tailgating.  Fortunately this allowed me enough time to see the Spanish Harlem Orchestra at the Rosslyn Jazz Festival earlier in the afternoon.  I would have loved to stay the whole day, but I had to get to a country concert.

I arrived right on time at Greg’s house and helped him load the Durango with supplies.  I was in charge of bringing the grill and hot dogs, check.  We waited a few minutes for Marty and Malissa to arrive and we were off.  I already felt a little out of place.  Everyone had jeans on, most had boots, and “southern” shirts on.  I came in shorts and sneakers, I did grab my Phish “High Geere” shirt which is the closest things to country I have.  Oh and my car-wont-start-and-its-cold-as-balls-outside emergency flannel jacket I keep in my truck.  My t-shirt actually fooled a state representative from Illinois and it gets a lot of people.  If you quickly look at it you associate it with John Deere, but if you look closely it is anything but.  Damn hippies!

rock out dude!

Any how we headed to the venue and got there in pretty good time taking a lot of back roads from Centreville.  We lucked out and were able to park right on the access road leading into the lots.  When it was time to leave there was no wait getting out, just jumped off the curb and away we went.  Once parked we broke out the goods and setup quick so the parking attendants couldn’t get anyone behind us.  We got the table out and filled with food and I immediately started getting the grill fired up for to cook some meet.  We also made nice with two couples next to us, they had a cooler full of shots and jello shooters, good people.

I love talking to people.  At this show it was a whole new experience talking to rednecks.  I talked with the minivan next to us, later a Land Rover with three older woman pull up behind us and I chatted with them.  One of the times I headed off to the forest to pee I spoke to a couple for about 10 minutes.  I eventually ran back to the party just when they started to wonder were I was.  It was such a different group of people I stood along the access road and just watched the constant flood of people coming into the show, chatting with some now and again.  Two guys asked for Dixie Cups and I was happy to oblige them.  Saw a lot of rednecks, and trucks, and cowboy hats, etc…  The cliches are absolutely true.  But they are friendly people who love to talk.  I made the mistake of telling one lady that I went to the Obama inauguration and how many port-o-pots on there were on the Mall.  I quickly realized I probably should not have mentioned that trip.  But it was so cool just interacting with a different people than I am use to.

As the sun set across the lot the time came for us to break camp and head into the show.  We all grabbed one last beer and started walking toward the entrance.  Getting in this night was much easier than the Buffett show a few weeks earlier.  Much shorter lines and security didn’t seem to care as much about patting everyone down.  Another round of beers once we got in and we settled in for a long night of country music at the top of the lawn.  Once nice thing about having fewer people was the amount of space we had to ourselves.  There was some pre-opening band on that played for a few minutes, not bad.  Next was Trace Adkins for his one hour set and finally the headliner Toby Keith came out for an hour and a half or so.  Not much to say about the music, it’s country, not my thing.

Trace Adkins

Because of this I didn’t mind talking with fellow concert goers and I got beer a couple of times for everyone too.  That walk up the hill is a bitch however, I made it one to many times that night and I was soar the next morning.  On one of my excursions to the bathroom I decided to slide down the railing.  It’s fun, quick and easy, or so I thought.  I forgot that I was completely drunk and had no balance.  Halfway down the railing I realized I was going over.  To the left of me was the conreat stairs and the right was the grass.  I quickly weighed my options and fell over into the grass.  I was surprised my brain process all this information so quickly.  Scraped my left wrist and right knee.  The worst of the fall was taken by my right wrist.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I sprained it pretty bad.  About 2:30am when I finally went to bed it hurt horrible, I could hardly move it.  Here it is a week later and it still hurts.  Crazy people do crazy things when they are drunk.

After the show we immediately left the lot and were home in 20 minutes.  I was hoping to do a little post-concert tailgating but with our rock star parking there was no need to wait around.  We decided to do the after party at the house where we drank some more, smoked cigars and talked a lot of politics.  The politics got a little heavy by about 2am, but it was fun.  I was the only “liberal” in the group so it was a good debate from my perspective.  I didn’t plan on changing any opinion that night, but I hope I got them to think.

As much as I hate country, it was a great concert.  I can now say I have at least been to a country concert.  Hell I went to Watkins Glen to see a NASCAR race back in August 2008.  Anyone who knows me, knows I absolutely HATE NASCAR, but I did it for the experience.  I think I will stick with Formula 1.  To summarize the Keith/Adkins concert: the people are nice, the tailgating kicked ass and even in the venue it was fun hanging out with everyone.  Not saying I would do it again, pretty sure I have had my fill of country for a lifetime.