Friday May 11, Matt Nathanson played a show in Bethel Woods, New York. This is the site where the Woodstock festival took place in 1969. They have a museum that I have been wanting to check out for quite some time now. So when I saw that Matt was going to be playing there? I jumped at the chance to get a ticket and for $10 was able to get an add on ticket to visit the museum before the show.
I made the 2 hour trek out to New York and got to the museum at about 5 o’clock. When doors to the show are gonna be opening at 7. I started my way through the museum. Learning all about the 60s and what was going on in the world and what led to the Woodstock festival happening as well as lots of videos from the event live performances and things like that. It was really well done and very colorful and I very much so enjoyed it.
It took me about 1 hour to go through but admittedly. I didn’t watch all the videos that they had, but the tour ends with a 21 minute video with some live performances from the festival, which was pretty cool. Of course, the end of the tour pops you in to the gift shop where I somehow managed to spend nearly a $100. Everything was a bit more expensive than I was expecting it to be, but there were a few things that I just had to have like my own peace and love VW bus because, why not?
They also have a small cafe on-site. I was able to get a wrap and some fries for dinner before the show which was incredibly convenient. The staff was all super awesome. Very kind, very helpful, very knowledgeable.
At 7 o’clock, it was time for doors for Matt, so I went into the event gallery, which is a round room with really cool ceilings and a giant fireplace.
A little bit around 8, Matt took the stage and said it, the only way that he was able to get to the stage was to walk down the middle aisle because he couldn’t come in from outside. So he ended up awkwardly standing outside the ladies room waiting to come up the stairs to start the show.
The show was a lot of fun as I expected. Every time I see Matt, I say to myself that I should travel and go to see him more. And then for whatever reason every tour I only end up seeing you once and then regretting not buy more tickets but hopefully, in the future, I will switch it up and do a little New England tour.
He played until about 10 o’clock. He told us a bit about his feud with Taylor Swift’s fans. And thought the room looked a little bit like a spaceship or that aliens were invading us, so there was a lot of talk about that and he ended the night singing Suspended from about 4 rows back standing on a chair with no microphone or amplification. And we all sang along with him. He seems to be very impressed by our singing along and singing back up because it was just him and his guitar. He didn’t have Aaron or anyone else with him. He was joking that he might not need to bring them on tour any more, because we did a great job.
I had seen on the news that the Northern Lights might be visible that night. I was hoping since we were pretty much in a field in the middle of nowhere, I could see something, but I couldn’t really see anything by the naked eye when I walked out. However, there were groups of people all with their phones pointed to the sky. And getting really excited, so I overheard them say that if you put your phone Night mode into take a picture through the camera, you’d be able to see the northern lights through the camera, so I figured what the heck gave it a try and oh my goodness, it was amazing. It’s very pink and there were various spots in the sky that had pink streak. I guess some people said that they saw green as well. My camera didn’t pick up on that, but that was pretty cool. I do wish that I could have seen them with my eyes and not through the lens, but it was still a pretty cool experience and a really amazing way to cap off a bit of a bucket list trip.
I’m probably going to have to head to Bethel again some time because it was raining and I wasn’t able to see the monument and I’ve also heard that they’re now doing golf cart tours where they bring you to the main gate and you can go on a tour and see every thing as if you were going to be attending the festival of Woodstock 1969. So that sounds pretty cool and it’s something that I definitely consider doing in the future if there was another show up that way that I wanted to check it out.
