Boy, do we love live music. Recently, Andrew and I have been to 2 big, well-known concerts. Along with live music in general, we also like some sweet country. I've been a fan since early in college, and have turned Andrew into a country lover too. Shh, don't tell him I'm telling you this, he's not proud of it. :o)
In February, Brad Paisley was in Madison with The Band Perry and Scotty McCreery (winner of American Idol last year). Brad isn't one of our most favorites, but when a good concert comes to Madison, we thought we should take advantage.
The concert was great! Scotty is such a little cutie, with such a fabulous deep voice. The Band Perry was incredible. They've got quite a few big hits lately and they were awesome. They just might be my new favorite band. Kimberly, the lead singer is a rock star.
When Brad came on, he played a lot of his oldies which was nice because those are the songs that we know. You know, Alcohol, American Saturday Night, the good ones. We were not super excited about his newest CD, Camouflage, but it was a big hit with all the rural farming folks who were also at the concert.
Here are a couple pictures. I like to enjoy the concert so I don't take a lot of pictures, but here are a few.
The Band Perry
Brad walking to the circle stage in the middle of the main floor.
He's singing to me. Not sure if this was before or after he GAVE AWAY a guitar.
The hologram of Carrie Underwood for their song, Remind Me. I'm pretty sure the drunks behind us thought she was actually there. It did look super real.
In March, we traveled back to the Chicago suburbs to go to Lady Antebellum at the Allstate. Thompson Square and Darius Rucker opened for them. This was also an awesome concert. We totally splurged on tickets for this concert and sat in the 100 level several rows up from the floor. They were great seats.
Thompson Square was the first opener. They were OK. I like their song, Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not, but they were not very good live. I wasn't very impressed.
After them, Darius came on. We've seen him before and we like him a lot. He's had quite the solo career after leaving Hootie and the Blowfish and has done really well. He's just a laid back kinda guy who we would like to hang out with. He has a lot of well-known country radio songs and he sang I'm a Joker, by Steve Miller Band and ended with Purple Rain-great stuff!
Then for the main event: LADY A! I had seen them way back when they opened for Tim McGraw (see here). Now, they are the headliner. Andrew also got me tickets to see them at the Iowa Jones County Fair last summer when we almost lost our lives as a super-severe thunderstorm came rolling through right at the end. But that's a whole other story. They rushed to get their set in before the storms, so we only saw them for about 40 minutes.
This time, we saw the whole thing! We know all of their songs and rocked out the whole time. One of the good things about the seats we had, everyone stood the entire time so we could sing and dance our hearts out. I'm sure you can picture Andrew dong that. Not so much, but I totally did! It was an awesome show.
The whole group.
Hottie, Charles Kelley. Brother of one of our faves, Josh Kelley.
The band. They brought the whole group up onto the catwalk to rock out.
Ange and I!
The only bad thing about this concert was the parking situation. We paid $20, compared to the $5 we paid in Madison. After paying that much, we got blocked in by 3(!!) cars. Which means we got out pretty quickly, but had to wait for the others around us to get out. It was a mess. When we finally got moving, people just don't think and sit there, when they should be driving around following the cars that actually ARE moving. I got out to direct traffic a couple of times, knocking on windows to tell people to go the other way. It was a mess, and a frustrating end to a great night. You'd think the Allstate, one of the biggest venues in Chicago would know how to handle the parking situation. Apparently not.
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