For the second leg of the RGB Tour we were more on my home turf, New England and NYC.  This series of shows also had a couple of milestones.  The Hampton Beach show was my 700th concert overall and the NYC show was my 250th Hanson show.  This was extra special because back in 1997, the radio stations were giving away tickets to an exclusive Hanson show at the Beacon Theater in NYC.  I tried and tried and tried to win these tickets, but in the end, didn’t end up being successful.  At the time, I didn’t think to “just show up” and see if I could get in that way and taking trips to NYC wasn’t a common thing with my family at this time.  That Beacon Theater show ended up being used throughout Hanson’s tour VHS, Tulsa, Tokyo and the Middle of Nowhere.  I ended up going to the Beacon several other times over the years – to see Penn & Teller, front row to see The Wanted and even seeing Hanson as part of their String Theory tour.  But I feel like after 25 years I was finally righting a wrong, as I had front row seats to see a proper Hanson show there.

But let’s start with Boston…

Initially I wasn’t going to Boston, it can be difficult for me to get to and the venue is across the street from Fenway Park and the Red Sox also had a game the night of the show.  I also had tickets to see Shawn Mendes, so I was going to skip and meet up with my friends in New Hampshire instead.  Then Shawn ended up postponing and then canceling his tour and when I looked for tickets there was a front row box seat still available so I crashed on my friend’s plans.  I was going to pick my friend up at the airport and then she was going to drive my car in to Boston – but Thursday afternoon we got word that her flight was delayed into the evening, so I was on my own with getting to Boston.  Fortunately I only had to drive about 5 feet into the city before getting into the parking garage at the Prudential Center.

Due to rain supposed to be coming in, we changed our dinner plans and went to Earl’s in the Prudential Center for dinner and spent about $200 between 3 of us.  Here I thought being home for part of this leg it would be the less expensive run!  The next day we did our original dinner plans for lunch at Buttermilk and Bourbon which is a New Orleans inspired Tapas experience.  We had a lot of delicious food to share.  When we left the venue, we tried to get a Lyft to go the mile or so up to the venue and it gave us like 5 different drivers (one even named Hansen) before we swapped over to Uber and finally made it as close to the venue as we could get.

A couple of nights before the Boston show the guys had debuted “Dressed in Brown Eyes” along with the opener John Calvin Abney.  Since we had 3 more shows with John we were hopeful we’d end up getting to see it and we were quite pleased that it made it as the encore in Boston.  We weren’t very pleased that we were now 4 for 4 with Isaac doing River and Taylor doing Save Me as solos.  We were even less pleased when a friend snapped a photo of the selist and we found out that Taylor’s solo was supposed to be “Truth” and followed by “With a Little Help From My Friends”.  We thought maybe they practiced it and it didn’t sound great and weren’t sure if that meant it would never see the light of day or if maybe it would show up later in the tour.

Overall the Boston show was a good one, but the section I was in was not into it at all. I am not sure the woman next to me even moved, which is fine, but she kept giving me looks when I was singing along and swerving my chair around to “dance”.  The vibe was just all off and almost somber.  Until…. MMMBop when a few girls somehow appeared behind me out of nowhere and in true Boston fashion, someone ended up spilling a drink on me. And then you wonder why I think Bostonians are obnoxious. They can’t drive and they literally can’t hold their liquor.  After the show the bus was pretty much chaos (and we missed seeing Zac in the bus door by about 10 seconds!) so we opted to just head back to the hotel.

Saturday morning we took it easy because we knew we had a late night drive ahead of us.  We made the drive up to Hampton Beach and the parking lot I wanted to park in said it was full, but I knew they had a few accessible parking spots which sometimes aren’t included in the count for “full” so we decided to drive in and see if we could get lucky and in fact we ended up finding an even better parking spot, with the bus right behind us.  While waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive, we saw Taylor drive his bus by and knew that he’d need to park it right behind us soon.  We ended up hanging around since we weren’t sure if my car would need to be moved to assist in the parking attempt and well, we didn’t really trust Taylor to safely drive past it either.  First Taylor came and assessed the situation and then pulled the bus in.  There were shouts of “WATCH THE RED CAR” and then some locals came by and finished directing him. When he was finished and we were all pretty impressed he said “You either do it, or you do it” I mean, yeah, I guess there wasn’t really another option there.  But for 10 minutes my anxiety was through the roof watching him. He, on the other hand, appears to be fearless.

After (finally) getting a late lunch we went to sit by the beach for a bit.  When we decided to maybe hit the arcade, we ended up in line waiting to see what they would do for ADA instead  and had a view of all the line drama and the staff trying to keep everything under control.  We weren’t sure if the Casino Ballroom would even have an ADA area and weren’t expecting to see much of the show, but were surprised we had a good spot off to the side of the stage.  Of note: Isaac decided to do Hand in Hand with no fake voting, but Taylor decided to do Save Me again.

ADA ended up being a show within the show as we were interrupted during Go by a medic due to a girl looking like she might end up passing out and needing to be walked out of the crowd. (We had a barricade behind us that she had made her way up against, so she wasn’t actually in ADA.)  Another point during the night a girl came running in and plopped herself down on one of the stools. When security asked if she was ADA she said “Eighty?” and then they had to get another security guard to escort her out of the area.  Also behind the barricade near us were a couple of kids, so Isaac jumped down off the stage at the end of the show and walked along the barricade to give high fives.  The barricade ended up leading him into the ADA area and he couldn’t figure out how to get out.  After they moved the barricade for him, he waved and said thank you to us and made his way backstage.

After the show we hung out by my car and decided to see where things were at around midnight since we had a long drive back to my house after.  In the end we stayed until 12:30, all 3 guys came out and my friend helped get my CD to Zac and Taylor so I could get all 3 signatures.  (I had previously gotten Isaac in Birmingham) We also made song requests for the NYC show and felt the most confident that Zac would try to play what we asked. (The requests were World Goes Around from Zac, Greener Pastures from Isaac and Truth from Taylor – and I told him we knew it was on the setlist in Boston.)

We made it back to my house at 3:30am and ended up taking a 12 something train into the city and a cab to our hotel.  We ubered closer to to the venue to meet some friends for dinner and then made our way to the Beacon.  Unfortunately it was surrounded in scaffolding so my marquee picture dreams were crushed.  I knew this show was going to a bit emotional on several levels – one being the last time I was there front row, was for my last time seeing The Wanted.  When I saw the hallway we had to wait in before the Wanted M&G I started to cry a bit. Fortunately it was all before the show and I was able to get it out of my system.  During John Calvin Abney’s set, he leaned down and said “Miss, do you know what time it is?” so I told him it was 8:25 and he said “25? I have time for one more song!” and finished up his set.  Hanson ended up taking the stage about 10 minutes earlier than usual and the end seemed a bit rushed so I think they had a hard 11pm curfew.  While I’ve been kind of annoyed that this tour seems to skew more towards MON than RGB – all those old MON songs hit differently this night, since I remember seeing so many of them over and over and over being played here on TTMON from the video they filmed back in 1997.  I somehow managed to push myself to stand for the entire show – figuring if Taylor did Save Me again, that would be my break.  But he ended up doing Truth – which has been converted from a guitar song to a piano song – the other 2 joined him for the end of it and then they went into With a Little Help From My Friends.  I’m not sure why they decided last second to cut it in Boston because it was AWESOME.  At the end of the show, they didn’t do a bow just the 3 of them which was disappointing because they would have been right in front of me and I would have gotten a great photo!

After the show we waited by the bus but it was straight up 1997 with the fans singing MMMBop. *eye roll*.  Taylor ended up coming out and driving his bus away and we called it a night and ubered back to the hotel, only to see Zac came out about half an hour or so after we left.  But after standing for an entire show and being 3 shows deep for the weekend, I was ready to lay down.

On the train back home in the morning I was getting texts from work and needing to be on site so I have had a wild week and have been unable to sleep in like I was hoping. But the blog is finished, the work week is almost done and I have to get packed to do it all over again this weeknd.

When I was first heading to this concert, I was pretty excited because for the first time in a long time I actually wanted to see ALL the acts.  Since actually going to the show, my position on that has changed and I was not wowed by One Republic at all.  I couldn’t remember if I had seen them before, but when Ryan mentioned during his set he had family from Mystic, that seemed vaguely familiar. But looking at my stats I have seen them THREE times before.  Clearly, all shows were quite memorable. 😉 [For those keeping score – it was Q102 Jingle Ball 2012, Mixtape Festival 2013, and All Star Music 2016 – so it had been quite a while.]

Initially I had thought that the show was going to start at 8 like NKOTB did earlier this month, but double checking both tickets – NKOTB said 8 and One Republic said 7 (Good thing I screen capped since the e-tix go POOF after the show) so I raced to get up there earlier than intended because John K had been announced as the first opening act just a week or so ago.  For those of you who don’t know who he is – he was my absolute obsession from American Idol Season 11 and was robbed and didn’t even make it past I think the Top 24. Back then, he went by Johnny Keysar.  I’ve been following him on social media ever since, he has rebranded as “John K” and in March 2020 was supposed to do a radio station thing in CT that I managed to win my way in to.  The show was set for March 11 and ended up being my first cancelation of many.  He ended up taking the stage at 6:55 to a nearly empty arena, though people did start filling in and seemed to be receptive to him as his set went on.  I found it amusing he kept talking about playing “new music” when there was maybe a handful of us in there who had any idea who he was.

Next up was NEEDTOBREATHE and it was my second time seeing them. They don’t seem to hit up CT all that often, so I was pumped when they were announced with this tour and their set did not disappoint. Despite their set time being much shorter than that of the headliners, they managed to squeeze in 11 songs to One Republic’s 16. They put up a QR code that would pick one lucky person to go backstage after their set, but unfortunately I was not the winner.  I did see Seth walking around after the show though!

With how many Hanson shows I am going to this tour I had to decide how to break up my blog posts.  Every show separate seemed excessive (and there wouldn’t be all that much new to say after each night) so I landed on doing one post per ‘leg’, of which I have 4.. or maybe 5…

Here we are after leg one – which included 3 shows – Nashville, Atlanta and Birmingham, a birthday and a trip to Buc-ees.

Thursday I had a direct flight from Hartford to Nashville. I was extremely anxious and nervous with the flight luck I had already this year, but I managed to get there without incident and met up with my friend.  We checked into our AirBnB that was home base for the trip and I spotted Daddy’s Dogs up the street (owned by a friend of Kris Allen’s) and so we had to go there for dinner. We also had a stand off with a spider in the lobby on the way to get the hot dogs because it was crawling a little too close to the exit door for our liking.

Friday we got off to a slower start and headed to the Hard Rock Cafe to get a bear (which was more than enough time spent on Broadway) – and then did a tour of the Ryman, where Hanson would be playing that evening.  The video before you start on your self guided tour was really cool and it was neat to learn so much about such a historic venue before going to the show that night.  At the end of the tour you are able to get a photo on stage, so we got a kick out of being able to have the Hanson RGB backdrop behind us.  As we were finishing up and getting ready to head to our dinner reservations across the street, Hanson came out to film something about the venue. They ended it with an acapella chorus of “This Time Around” – what an unexpected and fun surprise!

We went to dinner across the street at Sixty Vines which had a nice view of the Ryman and some great food as well. By the time we were done eating it was time to head into line for the show!  We headed to merch first since there were seats and we didn’t need to snag a good spot.  Our seats were the front row of the balcony and had a great view and great sound. Opening was John Calvin Abney. I was hoping to like him since I will be seeing him 6 times.  His guitar got messed up during one of the songs and kept making popping noises so he decided to just unplug it, hold it up near the mic, and keep on going.  While his music isn’t necessarily something I’d listen to, I was really impressed with him and how he thought on his feet and the crowd reaction clapping along with him and cheering was great too.

The setlist was very similar to what I was expecting based on what they had done in Europe on the previous leg of the tour.  Since Paul McDonald is from Nashville, he was at the show and joined the guys for the song he cowrote with Isaac on RGB – Write You a Song.  We were hoping they’d do something acapella since the venue was originally a church and built for acoustics and they came out and did “Change in my Life” with no mics completely acapella for the encore. (Even though a lot of the crowd didn’t seem to understand that they needed to be quiet.) Of note: They seemed to decide to last minute cut a song from the set (Penny and Me?) and Taylor jumped up to the drum platform to do something midway through his solo of Save Me.

The next day we had an early morning to drive to Atlanta.  Traffic was horrendous.  We stopped for lunch at Zaxbys, somewhere I had not been before. Then we pulled up to the hotel… which was not at all what we were expecting, nor was it in an area we’d want to be in after dark. After going inside anyway and being met by an incredibly rude staff, we started finding a new place to stay instead and ended up in a massive suite in midtown instead.

We got in line in Atlanta, where they had split Members Only and regular GA – but the GA line was in the shade and the members line was in the HOT HOT HOT Sun. (I figured out why they call it “hotlanta”!)  Finally we were let inside only to find out that the ADA areas left something to be desired.  Once the mezzanine filled in, the already no so great view became almost non existent.  But it is what it is (and the staff was wonderful and organized and the venue was really nice otherwise – especially the food!)

I was very happy that John Calvin Abney didn’t seem to have a script he was using for each show (at least not yet) like some of the openers in the past.  Hanson ended up shaking up the setlist a bit, starting with I’ve Got Soul, appropriately playing Georgia, then they added You Never Know to the mix followed by a cover of Low Rider that went into Ooh La La La. Where did that come from?!  Isaac has been allowing the crowd to vote on his solo but doesn’t give all the options beforehand and both nights it was Hand in Hand vs Deeper vs River – and River has won every night of the tour so far.  Zac seems to be mixing up his the most and it is much appreciated!  After 2 nights I had 2 new songs heard live, but I’m not sure for how long that will be sustainable.

After the show we waited by the bus. We had been told that Taylor came out very quickly and wasn’t going to have time to sign, but Isaac and Zac came out and we were able to get photos. Then there were all sorts of weird giant bugs hanging around and a small child walked up to us, pointed to the ground, said “bug” and walked away. (It was later stepped on.)  Turns out, Taylor is driving his own tour bus – or at least pulled it away from the Atlanta venue with him in the drivers seat.  I hope that there will be a driver joining the crew soon because that too seems like it’s not sustainable.

Our next day was an off day so we decided to go to World of Coke.  Probably not the best choice with it being a weekend, but fortunately my friend said she’d push me in a wheelchair which was the way to go once I saw how crowded it was. I never would have been able to deal with those crowds on my own. We ended the trip in the tasting room and took a spin through the gift shop where they had a funny Hanson-ish shirt – but all were 2XL.

We then met up with another friend and her family and got some ice cream before heading to Buc-ees.  Where I fell twice. Once I’m not sure why, though I was trying to get to a shopping cart to hold to have some stability and the second because someone had spilled something and my cane caught it. Fortunately no major injury – a skinned knee and a busted pinky.  At Buc-ees I managed to get some pressed pennies despite the machine not quite working, some snacks and dinner as well as a couple of t-shirts.

Then it was back to Nashville where Monday we had the day off and my friends put in a day of work.  We ordered in for lunch and headed to a brewery for dinner.

Tuesday was my birthday! We headed from Nashville to Birmingham. There wasn’t too much we wanted to do, but checked out some murals, had some BBQ for lunch at SAW’s and went to Rickwood Field, America’s Oldest Baseball Field. I had to be at the show early because I’d be meeting the guys for my BTTI make up photo.  We hit up Target and Walmart the night before looking for red, green, blue birthday hats and were successful.  At 5:30 I got my pass and at 6:30 it was time to go in.  The guys did not want to wear the hats, but said they would hold them, with Taylor being silly and holding his in one photo like an ice cream cone.  He said happy birthday to me so many times, all of the ushers became aware (I was wearing a sash too) and said happy birthday on my way out – and then some of them again on my way back in for the show!

We were second row for the show and there wasn’t really anything too different about this setlist.  Zac had switched up his solo all 3 shows.  Isaac played River all 3 shows and Taylor did Save Me all 3 shows – but for this show he started front and center (right in front of me) acapella, and then went back to the piano.  Different, but, I’d have preferred a totally different song.  Hopefully by the time my next shows roll around, they’ll have mixed things up a bit more again.

As we were getting ready to head out, I realized Isaac threw a pick right at my feet! That was my first time not being given a pick by someone else or finding it outside the venue after the show so that was a nice birthday treat!  We went and waited out by the bus again, assuming that Taylor once again had a long drive and wouldn’t come out.  Isaac did come out and signed my RGB CD and he mentioned that Zac wasn’t going to come out so once midnight hit and it was no longer my birthday, we made the trek back to Nashville, getting back about 3:30am only to be leaving for an airport drop at 7:30am.

My Nashville friend had to go to work so even though there was 3 of us leaving there was just one airport drop. My flight was the latest out so I sat there delirious for a couple of hours until we finally boarded at 10:35 where I promptly fell asleep and was asleep so hard I have 0 recollection of the plane ever taking off. I woke up mid flight confused due to some turbulence but otherwise it was a great flight home.  The only problem was, I brought the southern heat home with me and we have been in the middle of a heat wave ever since!

Friday and Saturday I made my return to the Arena at Mohegan Sun for the first time since 2019 for NKOTB and their Mixtape Tour 2 – featuring Rick Astley, En Vogue and Salt n Pepa.  The show was supposed to start at 8 and I assumed doors were at 7, so I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived on Friday at 6:45 and was able to get right in.  For Friday’s show I had front row upper level, right by the main stage. For Saturday’s show I was further back in the accessible section, but with a straight on view of the main stage (Friday the screen was a bit obstructed) and a closer view of the B Stage.  While Saturday night was a more head on view, when NKOTB first took the stage with all the flashing lights I really thought I may have had to ask to be relocated because it was just way too much for me. (While I’ve never had a seizure, with CP it is always a possibility) Fortunately after the first song or two it calmed down a lot and I was able to stay where I was.

I typically try to avoid reviews before going to shows so I can come up with my own thoughts after, but I did read one about this tour.  It said that the acts alternated like a mixtape – so I thought they would rotate out after every song, which was not the case. But the additional acts weren’t treated like openers.  NKOTB kicked off the show and did a handful of songs before En Vogue took the stage.  Both nights on of the En Vogue ladies had her foot in a boot.  On Friday, she sat during their initial set but by Saturday she was up on her feet for all their songs.  Rick Astley was next and then NKOTB came back.  After another handful of NKOTB songs, Salt N Pepa took the stage and was joined for En Vogue on “Whatta Man” before En Vogue got another song to themselves. Another chunk of NKOTB songs and Rick Astley was back to rick roll us all.  Donnie joined Salt N Pepa for Shoop on the B stage. Jordan sang without a shirt. (What else is new) and then it was just about time for the show to be over.

Friday night, when they all came out for the encore, Donnie stopped a young man from leaving and he and another girl were called up on stage.  I thought I had seen the young man with Joey’s son Griffin (Who helped open the show with Illtown Sluggaz both nights) earlier in the night so I thought it might have been a set up and he was a plant.  I figured I’d know for sure if the same thing happened Saturday – but Donnie instead called out a couple on the other side of the stage and made them go back to their seats.  Saturday at the very end Donnie brought a different even younger boy up on stage to dance for a bit.  Joe also grabbed someone from the barstools and had her come up on stage at one point as well.  Even though the setlist may have been the same (and really, has it changed much in the last 10+ years? lol) every night is always a little bit different.

I ended up with 449 photos on my camera over the 2 nights and honestly don’t feel like uploading that many here – so you get the one up top. Maybe if I get bored I’ll add a gallery later, but I’m not liking how the main blog page doesn’t show if I’ve added a gallery so I need to sort that out…

Saturday night Gaelic Storm returned to the Wolf Den at Mohegan Sun.  I had not been to Mohegan since 2019 and was sad to see while everything else seemed to be the same, my favorite machines were no more.

We waited in line for the 3 hours before the show, since the last time we went to see them we barely made it inside.  It seemed like despite being a Saturday night, people were a lot more fashionably late to arrive and for a while we weren’t even sure the small place was even going to fill in.

The band took the stage at 8 with their new fiddle player, Natalya Kay. She seemed to fit right in and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.  Lionel Richie was playing in the Arena and they made a few cracks that we could “even dance on the ceiling!” “Hello!” showing that they knew what they were up against (and at the end, thanked us for going to see them instead of Lionel)

While there was a lot of clapping in the first song, for the second we were told we needed to wave at them… for the whole song… and that the song was 46 minutes long.  It turns out that it wasn’t and we didn’t even need to wave the whole song, just when we were instructed to.  But there was indeed a lot of clapping because at one point my Garmin said I was at 998 steps and by the end I was into the 1200s.

They also made some jokes about driving on 95 and that it has been around since BC but they have been working on it ever since.  I mean, it’s probably not too far from the truth. Some stretch of it is always under construction.

Another cool thing they did was partner with set.live, a website where you can check in to the show you are at and sign up for the artists mailing list.  At the end of the show, they selected 2 winners from those who had checked in to come on stage and get a personalized signed poster.  The site seems really neat and I’d be interested to see if any other shows I go to end up incorporating it.

Friday night, Big Time Rush played their 2nd show on the Forever Tour at the Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater in Bridgeport, CT. (Will that ever not be confusing?)  Connecticut born Dixie D’Amelio opened the night and I am absolutely too old to have any idea who the heck she is. (The mom next to me was reading on her kindle throughout her performance which probably wasn’t a bad idea considering the amount of books I need to get a move on to read and review)

Although the fashion made me think I was back in the ’90s, I knew I was in the ’20s when there was a sea of phone cameras were held up anticipating the curtain in the front of the stage to drop and for Big Time Rush to take the stage.  I opted to take a photo of it with my… actual camera.  No doubt one of only a very few in possession of anyone in the crowd.  (Several tour photographers were out and about however with theirs)  They started with “Windows Down” which samples Blur’s “Song 2” which I remember vividly from 1997 and I honestly wonder how many of these girls jumping around and screaming the “woohoos” were even alive then.  (I heard one of the girls next to me say the last time she saw them was 10 years ago when she was in 4th grade.  I was much older than that the last time I saw them, also about 10 years ago)  I also need to direct some of these girls to check out some *NSYNC performance videos because the dance moves they were cheering for, while I appreciated the choreography, were mediocre at best. (Though I was impressed by James feeling the need to jump all over the platform and not use the stairs – especially since he was seen wearing a knee brace in rehearsal photos.)

Not included in the setlist.fm set is in the acoustic breakdown when they did a medley of songs with Carlos playing the ukelele.  Carlos did Na Na Na, Kendall morphed it into CeeLo Green’s “Forget You”, Logan decided it sounded more like Sublime’s “What I Got” and James… well he started singing “I’m Too Sexy” which made Logan jump up in front of him when he started to take of his shirt.

Big Time Rush played for nearly 2 hours, the amphitheater was absolutely PACKED and they even went out in the crowd for a song with Kendall and James ending up dancing on one of the Dugout bars which I don’t think was part of the plan considering they had platforms out in the crowd for them.  Also of note, they had a T-Shirt cannon, but Logan and Carlos opted to throw a shirt out into the crowd by hand – both of them landing with the same person which made Carlos fall to the ground laughing.   What are the odds?  They also brought out a boombox to which one of them said, “Hey there’s a cassette inside!” and one of the others quipped, “no idea what that is.”  Cmon boys, I already felt enough like a grandma in that crowd lol

Sorry not sorry for all the James pics. I clearly have a favorite.

In October 2019, The Ridgefield Playhouse booked a show with Mandy Moore, who hadn’t toured in over 10 years.  On December 20, 2019 I spent $135 on a ticket to see Mandy at The Ridgefield Playhouse on Saturday, March 28, 2020.  You can probably guess what happened then.  March 24th – it was postponed to a date TBD.  In October 2020, it was rescheduled to Sunday, June 20, 2021.  Then nearly the whole tour got canceled, but somehow the CT and NJ date survived.  It was then rescheduled for Tuesday, June 21, 2022.  914 days after I had bought the ticket, I got to see the show.  I am not sure I have waited that long for anything else before in my life! The Playhouse even renovated their lobby in the time we waited – and it looks awesome! Way more spacious than it had been.  Mandy had some changes too – she and her husband (who is on tour with her in her band!) welcomed their first son, Gus, and now she is 6 months pregnant with their 2nd son right now!

The opening act was named AHI – a singer from Toronto.  His set was a bit of a roller coaster – but in all the best ways.  He did one song about having to give up on someone because the love you have for them isn’t more than the love they have for themselves, a song for his wife (who is also his manager and currently at home taking care of their 4 kids!) and probably the most powerful a song that he had dreamt and woke up to write about the senseless gun violence against blacks that he dedicated to all the mothers who have lost their children.  Definitely check him out if you can – he seems to be doing pretty well on Spotify and I really enjoyed his songs and his storytelling in between his songs!

Then it was time for Mandy – who came out and said “We finally made it!”  I also liked the stories that Mandy told in between her songs as well.  If you knew me in high school – you’d know I absolutely was NOT a Mandy fan.  Mostly due to jealousy because she got to open for *NSYNC and was in an episode of 2gether!  You know, all the legitimate reasons for a teenage girl to not like another teenage girl.  I obviously knew “Candy” and “I Wanna Be With You” but that was the extent of it until her 2020 release “Silver Landings”.  I also hadn’t gotten the chance to listen to her latest release, “In Real Life”, before the show. (Though I’ve had it on in the background as I write this!) But I thought she did a great job of mixing in some older songs (Apparently “Only Hope” is a popular oldie – I’ve had 3 people ask me if she sang it – and she did!) as well as songs from both of the new albums she is kind of touring with together.  I unfortunately opted to not keep track of the setlist and while setlist.fm has several shows up, it doesn’t have anything from CT so the following is a bit pieced together from me seeing what seemed familiar and what she seemed to play consistently at her other shows on the tour.

Every Light was done acoustically with just her husband on guitar and the rest of the band had left the stage.  I’m not sure if it was my spot in the theater or what, but I found for some of the softer ballads her voice was a bit drowned out and overpowered by her band (who were excellent, by the way).  But overall the show was a lot of fun and dare I say worth the 914 day wait. And I’m probably still a bit jealous of Mandy (now she got to work with Milo Ventimiglia and Justin Hartley!?) but can deal with it like an adult. 😉

She kept saying she just had a few more songs – but hadn’t done Candy yet! (And she was selling a Candy shirt so I figured it HAD to have been coming, even though she did talk about trying to come to terms with that chapter of her life and moving on)  When she came back out for the encore she said of course she couldn’t NOT do the song.  The second song of the encore was a song that she had sung on This Is Us and talked a bit about how she had spent the last 6 years on the show and initially wasn’t sure if she wanted to get back into music or not – and Mike and Taylor (members of her band/her best friend and husband) had kind of gotten her back into it and also that This Is Us did as well with her character’s backstory.  It seemed fitting that the encore was kind of her first song and last song (for now, anyway) and kind of bookended her career thus far.

In Real Life
I’d Rather Lose
Little Dreams
Fifteen
Extraordinary
Save a Little For Yourself
When I Wasn’t Watching
Heartlands
Only Hope
Every Light (acoustic)
Gardenia
I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week
In Other Words
Brand New Nowhere
Four Moons
I Wanna Be With You

Candy
The Forever Now

I had been intrigued by the idea of the Masked Singer Tour since it was announced a few years back.  I went back and forth on buying tickets and then eventually ended up finding out I had the opportunity to get free VIP tickets and I couldn’t pass that up.

My VIP access gave me a M&G with the host of the show, Season 6’s Pepper, Natasha Bedingfield.  She was super sweet, loved the shirt I had made of the Russian Doll’s face and we chatted a bit about that.  I also got to meet 2 of the characters – Banana (from Banana Split) and Pineapple.  Pineapple also was pretty into my shirt lol  We also got a free drink coupon and access to the venue early for “crowd free” merchandise shopping so I got myself some pins and a magnet.

I wasn’t entirely sure how the show was going to work and even after seeing it I am not sure it totally worked.  There were costumes “from the show” that performed songs and there was a bit of a storyline as well – Alien and Taco got engaged, an audience member got to come up on stage for Alien’s bachelorette party and got a lap dance from Thingamabob and Robot among other characters. Another audience member (or perhaps a plant) came up on stage when they were looking for the golden mic (that allowed the characters to sing any song they wanted like the original) and then there were performances from Natasha mixed in (she killed it on Purple Rain!)  The costumes were not celebrities, just I guess dancers who “lip synched” to the original songs. (Or whatever costumes with no moving lips do!)

Each night the show has a “local” celeb that performs and is unmasked. I had been following along with the tour’s instagram to try and guess each night.  It started off pretty nice with Drew Lachey and Maddie Poppe – but quickly went into a bunch of local Fox news station reporters and weather people so I wasn’t entirely sure who CT would end up getting.  The clues ended up being someone from The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. Of course, a show I have never seen one episode from.  It turned out to be Matt Munson from Season 13 of The Bachelorette who is from CT. He sang “It’s Tricky” as his song.

Overall, for free, I enjoyed the show but if they did it again I am not sure I’d pay for it – dependent on who the host might be.

Wednesday, May 11,  I made my way to Westchester County Airport in White Plains to begin my trip to Tulsa.  For whatever reason, Delta had no options out of Hartford with longer than a 40 minute layover and the ones out of White Plains were 3+ hours each way.  When it was about time to board I overheard someone talking about “lots of damage” and figured I’d end up going 0 for 4 on trips this year going smoothly.  I was right.  It turns out the plane I was set to board had hit a bird (“a big bird”) on its way into NY and they needed to call someone to inspect it and clear it for flying before we could board. With the talk of damage I thought for sure we’d need to wait for a new aircraft, but fortunately once someone came on site it was cleared and we were only delayed about an hour. (Good thing for that 4 hour layover in Atlanta, I guess.)

I met up with a friend upon landing in Tulsa and we go the shuttle to the hotel.  I immediately changed out of my plane clothes to hit up Ida Red for some special T-Shirts they had made, but ended up getting distracted by spotting Taylor on the sidewalk outside the studio.  I said hey, got a quick pic, made it to Ida Red only to find out they already sold out of all the shirts (what!? hardly anyone was even in town) and met up with friends for dinner at The Tavern.

Thursday I lined up early for the store and was able to get almost everything I wanted (one item was the wrong thing but hopefully customer service will be correcting that for me!) being one of the first ones in there.  I ended up doing some volunteering and then it was time for HTP Live.  This is the first time that they had done it, and one of my friends got to be one of the reporters to interview them so that was really cool.  We weren’t entirely sure how it was going to work or if it was going to be running on time, but it did end in time to remove the chairs for karaoke!  Isaac has been hosting karaoke for the past few years but this time it was 90s themed and people really went all out with their outfits for it.  I liked the 90s throw back songs way more than the excessive Hanson songs, but it’s a Hanson event so of course that’s what most of the fans are most comfortable performing.

Friday I did some more volunteering and then we had the RGB Listening Party. On first listen, not a huge fan, but it always takes me a few listens to have songs really grow on me. I did miss the harmonies we are so used to hearing though.  Then it was time for the Storytellers Concert – which started off a bit like BTTI part 2 – but fortunately after a couple of songs they changed their direction in a way that made me happy. We’ve always sort of known that MMMBop came from a part in an older song called Boomerang.  Recently discussion about it had come up again on the Hanson.net forums and someone had mentioned that they did a part of it during “The Story” at 5 of 5 in London and I had gone looking for some crappy YouTube footage of it.  Getting to see it all in its entirety was really awesome since they hardly ever play the songs they had written before Middle of Nowhere.  They also threw their shortest song, Watershed, into the set which I had previously heard just once before.  I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get any of the new EP “White Rabbit” especially since Zac had mentioned he had a story about one of the songs (and what better time to tell that than during Storytellers?) but I understand that they put most of their focus into working on the setlist for the RGB Tour.

After the show was the Dance Party – I was giving out glosticks at the door and by the time my “shift” ended, Taylor had decided the equipment was not working and that we’d have a redo the next night instead.  Got 1 photo in my care bear outfit I made just for the dance party… so that was a bit of a bummer.

Saturday we had the ST Leaders lunch with Hanson and due to some communication issues, we were *just* about to eat by the time the guys came in to talk to us.  If you told 12 year old me I would be in a room with Hanson and would opt to stuff my face with pizza instead of engage in conversation with them, she’d have been horrified. Isaac did talk about movies with my group for a bit, but I figured it was the safer bet to not let me get to level “hangry”.  We ended up going to local brewery Nothing’s Left next as they were doing a Hanson collab/inspired flight with 3 sour beers – red, green & blue.  (Blue was my fave) I also had to get my fave stout of theirs, Deez Nuts and then they had a pineapple dole whip as well so… of course.

Then it was nearly time for the “Members Only” show.  While this show typically has more members only content, it was the unofficial kick off to the RGB tour so it was…. lots of singles.  Not my favorite for a trip to Tulsa but as I always say I’d rather be at a Hanson concert than anywhere else, and having most of my friends back by my side made it just a bit sweeter.  I do hope they will end up rotating in and out more RGB songs (maybe through solos) on tour though.

After the concert it was time to try and find food – ended up with MORE PIZZA! And then Taylor’s 2nd attempt at the after party.  This one was a success but I did not have time to change into my dance party outfit again.   (I did still manage to be on theme since I was wearing Chuckie from Rugrats shirt)

Sunday I met up with some friends at the Tulsa Drillers game.  When the visiting team took the lead of 3-0 in the top of the first, but the drillers got 2 back to make it 3-2 after the first, I thought this might be a nice back and forth game.  Unfortunately the Rough Riders kept pounding out HRs and in the end the Drillers lost 18-4.  But most of us were just baseball fans and not really rooting for either team, so having some downtime to chat while at the game was nice compared to the usual hustle and bustle going on Sundays during HDay weekend that is Hop Jam.

Monday I managed to fly home without incident (aside from no one with a wheelchair ever picking me up at the gate in Atlanta) and the shuttle to the parking lot was there waiting for me.  Apparently they had even called looking for me while I was trying to figure out how to reach my luggage on the carousel.  Of course, 2 seconds after we got out of the shuttle, it started sprinkling which gave way to a sudden downpour as I tried to load all my luggage back into my car.  There also was news spreading of a few friends having tested positive for Covid upon arriving home. I joined that club as well. 10 days later I tested negative again and blame the delay of this post on that.  I’m still not 100%, but getting better every day.

Back to the Island 2022… I’m not going to lie, in the days leading up to this trip I was seriously hoping it would be canceled so I wouldn’t have to cancel it myself.  There was so much stress and anxiety about getting a negative covid test to get into the country (even though I went nowhere for 10 days before I left, other than for my covid tests of course) and what would happen if I tested positive while I was there and needed to quarantine for 5-14 days.

But I finally had a negative PCR and Antigen result in hand and was ready to go to sleep at 8pm for a 2am wake up when Southwest emailed me that my flight from Hartford to Baltimore was canceled.  I considered driving 4 hours to Baltimore and cutting out the Hartford portion (since I’d be returning through Baltimore too) but some friends were leaving out of Boston on American Airlines so I last second booked a brand new flight and Southwest rescheduled me for 2 days later when I was panicking.  Arriving 2 days later wasn’t going to cut it, so I canceled that flight and hit the road to Boston to meet a friend. (Shout out to her for staying up all night to wait for me to get there and then for it to be time to go to the airport for a 5am flight #teamnosleep)  We made it there without any other hiccups and got the shuttle to the resort. [Now to wait and hopefully get reimbursed by my travel insurance for all the last minute expenses *fingers crossed*]