Saturday night I went to The Kate to see Kris Allen. Opening for him was Walker Burroughs, who was on Idol in Season 2019 – aka The Season I can’t Remember. I was working full time and going to grad school full time and I was watching here and there but none of the contestants stuck with me at all and it’s probably the only season where my Mom remembers more of it than I do, but I’m going to see about rewatching it now.
Walker came out and introduced himself and mentioned how he had never been as high as Connecticut, he is from Alabama. Immediately I found him adorable and hilarious. He intro’ed his first song by saying that he was inspired to write it watching a tiktok about the proper way to eat peas – and sure enough the first line was something about not slurping your peas. The second song was about how he grew up with a river in his back yard and now that he lives in Nashville there’s a highway in his backyard. (I didn’t catch the names of most of his songs, unfortunately) His third song was called Made to Me, The next one he did on the piano and it was a hilariously funny song about there being miscommunication between a couple – his comedic timing and delivery was just… spot on. He also did a song about how he used to ask his mom for dating advice as a kid and put the advice in a song. He had also mentioned that she told him he should give the girl he liked a pencil but to make sure it had a good eraser and honestly – in 2nd grade that would have won me over for sure because I wanted to be a writer. (Except that when I was in 2nd grade, he wasn’t even born) He also did a cover of John Denver’s Annie’s Song (aka You Fill up my Senses). He then told us a story about some work he was doing outside in Kentucky and it was hot and there was a dog named Cooter and he wrote a song about him and finished his set up with his song Pretty Penny.
During the break between sets the guy next to me apparently crawled out from under a rock and was telling me how Kris beat Adam Lambert AND Danny Gokey. As someone who is probably partially personally responsible for that happening – yes, I know, I was there lol.
I hadn’t seen Kris with a full band in a while and we were the last show of the tour and it seemed like he was having just so much fun and he was VERY chatty. He even mentioned it himself when the band left him to himself on stage for a few songs, saying that he’d bring the band back out after a couple of songs because he decided he wanted to just keep telling us stories. He did a lot of songs off of his new album, Pole Vaulter, which I haven’t had a chance to listen to in its entirety yet, but a lot of them he had been doing when I had seen him live before and had been sort of releasing them one by one and was finally able to put them all together so I think there was only a couple that I didn’t fully know and then one had had written while he was on a music cruise full of people that didn’t know him to introduce himself. (Which he stopped part of the way in and told us a story about Reba – I told you he was chatty..)
The Meet and Greet for this show I had purchased ended up refunded and they said he would be staying after the show to meet everyone, so I tried to be last in line thinking we would both be chatty, but 2 groups didn’t want to cut me so they insisted I go in front of them… and we were pretty chatty but it was nice to catch up with him! I also got to meet Walker and tell him I thought that he was really funny and he was very humble and was asking me where I lived and trying to figure out where Connecticut was in relation to New York so I got to teach him some geography as well (go figure, I’m not so great at that but I do know that New York City is south of me, at least)
For a show only 45 minutes from my house, I somehow ended up getting home at 1am… I guess because Kris was so chatty! ha. Good thing it was a Saturday 🙂 Always a lovely time seeing Kris and I’m always so thankful he continues to play shows in CT!
