Stevie Nicks Jiffy Lube Live 9/3

Over Labor Day weekend I went down to the Washington, DC area to hang out with a friend and go see the Mets. Before I got down there, she emailed me to let me know that her fiance managed to score us 3 free tickets to see Stevie Nicks on Saturday night. Not one to turn down a free show, I figured it would be fun. When I looked up Jiffy Lube Live, it reminded me of the Comcast Theater we have in Hartford, just on a bigger scale. I thought that we probably had lawn seats since they were given free to the USO. I was pleasantly surprised when I was told that we did in fact have seats. And neither my friend or her fiance even knew that places with lawn existed. It had been quite a while since I had gone to a concert with such newbies!

Our seats were in the last section of the pavilion, but dead center so they were not too bad at all! The opening act was Michael Grimm who won America’s Got Talent. I had heard that he was great, but I really could not get in to his performance. He also seemed to be promoting a new album that he had just released, but did multiple covers during his set. His chatting while he was on stage wasn’t all that engaging either, though he did have a good voice. Maybe with some more practice he will be more interesting and grab peoples attention.

A cool thing that Jiffy Lube Live had was a text number that you could send a message to if someone nearby was ruining your concert experience. I thought that was pretty cool, although I suppose if you actually used it, it would be pretty obvious who “tattled”. I had a minor issue with the couple in front of me who were either recording or just taking a really long time to decide to snap a photo (and before Stevie came on they announced she had requested no video, etc) and the camera was blocking pretty much my entire view of Stevie. Fortunately, this was easily solved by us all moving over a seat – we had several on either side of us that was empty so it was not a big deal.

Stevie came on about 5 minutes to 9 and several times mentioned that there was a curfew so she was going to talk quickly so that they would not end up pulling the plug in the middle of her set. I had found a setlist from an earlier show and typed it in my phone to follow along with, and panicked a bit when she said that the show would be unlike any other on the tour, but for the most part it was the same just in a different order. But it is nice that she uses her “sequencer” to randomize the order of the songs and switch things out each night so there is a balance of new and old. (I think there was 1 addition and 2 omissions, probably due to the curfew but she did almost all the songs that we had expected to hear!)

Before she sang Soldiers Angel she talked about her time at Walter Reed hospital and encouraged us all to donate to the hospital or to the USO. It was nice that she mentioned that, since we got our tickets through the USO. She also read a URL that was “.org” and said that she was not a computer person and did not know what .org meant. A lot in our section yelled “organization” and I’m assuming some people up front did too so hopefully that was Stevie’s new thing to learn for the day! She also talked about how she was not the governor or the mayor so she had no control over the curfew – but that SHE COULD BE! haha.  For Leather and Lace she talked a bit about how she couldn’t figure out how to do a duet as one person and she never knew who to sing the song with.  Then she realized that her vocal coach was on tour and he had a wonderful voice so she had him join her for the song.

Another thing we found fascinating is that after Edge of Seventeen (the last song in the main set) she made a conscious effort to shake EVERYONE in the front row’s hand. She went from one extreme end to the other, not missing a person, collecting gifts as she went along. My friend turned to me and asked if that was typical of concerts, that the artist shake everyone’s hand like that, and I said not in my experience! I thought that was a really touching aspect of her set that she cared so much about her fans and audience to do that!

Stand Back
Secret Love
Dreams
Moonlight
Gold Dust Woman
Soldiers angel
Annabel Lee
For What Its Worth
Rhiannon
Landslide
Ghosts are Gone
Leather and Lace
Edge of Seventeen

Love Is