Up until 3pm the day of this show, I wasn’t sure if I was going to go. Usually for shows that aren’t in CT I employ the “front row or bust” system – but these tickets went on sale when I was at a doctors appointment so I ended up snagging 3rd row instead. Figuring the show was in early February and it would snow, I never was certain if I’d make it there or not. It ended up not snowing but it was ridiculously cold. I ended up putting my ticket on stub hub a couple of days before and after no bites grabbed my ‘heavy coat’ and make the trek to Rhode Island.
I was actually surprised by how many people were walking around town and how few parking spots there were. At 7pm I made my way across the street to enter, only to be face to face with a curb cut out that was pitched FAR too steep. After struggling to climb this mini mountain, I made it inside. Merch was upstairs and while I think they had an elevator, I never did venture up there as I opted to not stay after for selfies due to the hour and a half ride home.
At 8pm Carly Underwood took the stage and then brought Tyler Levs out to join her on guitar. People of the blog – our contender for worst opening act of 2023 is here! (It doesn’t even matter that I haven’t even seen any other openers so far this year) The majority of the crowd was chatting through her set and it was just… bad. I’ll leave it at that.
Just before 9, O-Town took the stage. Last time I saw them was a Pop2k tour with Chris Kirkpatrick – this was just a regular O-Show with no Ryan Cabrera (yay) and no *NSYNCers (Boo). They changed up the setlist a lot and it was a ton of fun! I had planned out a couple of potential sit down songs but didn’t end up sitting at all. (Some of that may had to do with the fact that there was a bumrush to the stage at one point that didn’t let up so while I was supposed to be 3rd row I was more like 7th and wouldn’t have been able to see a thing from sitting) It was a good mix of new and old but I really need to listen to more of the new! I tried to keep track of the setlist as best as I could but I think I missed a bit… but the don’t let me down / treat you better / get ur freak on / cry me a river medley was incredible. Each of them was doing their own song all at once and it should have been absolute chaos but somehow it was amazing instead.
I also loved how when they were mentioning bands from the 00s Trevor threw out a soulDecision mention and Erik said that New England has always been a bit more boyband crazy than the rest of the country. Now if they could schedule some more concerts in the summer here… this is not the first time the show was in jeopardy due to poor weather conditions!
