Have you ever tried to go on vacation but the Universe tried to injure you *every day*? That’s what my trip this past weekend ended up being. I already wrote about the Fire Alarms going off at “Ain’t Too Proud” the musical. That in and of itself is quite a story – but it just got worse from there. Read on to find out what happened Friday, Saturday AND Sunday…
Friday night was John Mayer at the Bridgestone Arena. We opted for “cheap seats” which ended up being quite steep and high up and I was mildly concerned that I wouldn’t be able to leave them (but I am home, so I did) and ended up dealing with a Tornado Watch during the show. With being so far away, we ended up with the more “casuals” and had 2 or maybe even 3 couples near us who decided the right time to talk about John Mayer was while he was in front of them performing a show. Can’t you just enjoy it while he’s in front of you and discuss it on the drive home like we did? So obnoxious… The Nashville show felt a lot different than Newark. I don’t know if it was because we were further away, if the closer to “hometown” shows for John feel different or if the Nashville crowd was just.. meh. Appropriately this time, John started with Slow Dancing in a Burning Room. The first two songs ended up being repeats from Newark, but then he ended up doing Heartbreak Warfare and In The Blood – the latter I was saying I would hope he would do because it had been stuck in my head. He also threw in another of my favorites, Emoji of a Wave and then went into a medley based on signs of Something Like Olivia, My Stupid Mouth (YESSSS) and Daughters. I had to laugh when he said he was going to play a brand new song nobody would know – but it was the same new one – Driftin’ – that he debuted in Newark. (I’m not sure he’s thrown anything else new into his sets?) Then he said that the tour was just him solo but he was going to break that and bring on a special guest – a legend – and welcomed to the stage Sheryl Crow. They did her song “Strong Enough”. He also updated his stage banter before Your Body Is A Wonderland from Newark’s “is this song stupid?” and spoke a bit more about the song more sincerely. I was hoping that we’d be Free Falling Free – but he ended up closing out the encore with it. When we left the venue, there was an absolute downpour going on and while weren’t so happy about out $54 parking lot right next to the door to the arena, it made for a quick getaway and not getting completely soaked, so maybe it was worth it after all.
The next morning we got up early in an attempt to make it to the Brookhaven Festival in time for Deep Blue Something. Initially, we were going to make it in plenty of time but unfortunately the traffic had other plans. After making a pitstop for lunch, my friend says “There’s a person in the road” I look up and there is a semi-truck in front of us that is stopped and a man walks out from the front of the truck. He wanders to the left lane and ends up running a couple of cars off the road because they are trying not to hit him or anyone else. We are in the middle lane and I think that once he made it to the other side of the road he would stop – but no – he ends up coming at our car. My friend avoids him and we continue on, wondering if we should call the cops but not knowing quite where we were. We ended up not calling, but hopefully someone did. We thought we’d se a broken down car a bit further up, but there was nothing and the man did seem out of it but didn’t seem to have any visible injuries so we weren’t really sure what was going on and if he wanted to get hit or if he was trying to get help.
We made it to the festival and found the ADA parking lot that was supposed to be ‘close’. Entered the festival, walked through the vendor area and 3/4 of a mile later… we made it to the stage. Deep Blue Something was doing their last song as we were walking their (and from what I could hear, it wasn’t “Breakfast at Tiffanys”) so we waited for Don McLean, who ended up enjoying the sing a long of American Pie so much, he sang most of it again. Finishing out the festival was Band of Horses, but we opted to leave a bit early into their set because we wanted to beat the mad rush leaving and also hit up the Harry Potter Exhibition in Atlanta.
The Exhibition had interactive displays where you could win house points, a bunch of photo ops as well as some of the clothing worn during the movies. It was pretty cool, though I have to say that the price of admission seemed to be a bit steep for what it was. But it takes a good hour and a half to two hours to go through and then they have a cute cafe with some themed desserts and of course a gift shop – complete with a penny machine.
When we got to the hotel for the night, completely exhausted, we found that the front desk was swarming with a high school marching band trying to buy snacks. Of course, I tried to skip the front desk and get a digital key, but they needed to see my ID so we had to wait. Ugh!
The next day it was supposed to be a pretty stormy day so our plans for getting to the festival were up in the air. With thunderstorms in the morning we opted to sleep in, went to Walmart and picked up rain gear and got to the festival in time to see Lissie. Or so we thought. About 3 songs into her set she got cut short because the radar was showing lightning. We were instructed to take shelter in our cars. Yes, the one that was 3/4 of a mile away. (And the able bodied attendees, even further, they were being shuttled in) We ended up snagging umbrellas they were giving away and hunkering down for the storm that rolled through. Things got back on track with All-4-One taking the stage a bit earlier than scheduled, then The Fray, and finally Hanson!
This was a pretty expected setlist for Hanson as they have their typical “festival” setlist that is single heavy – though we were surprised with the inclusion of “Runaway Run”, and not at all surprised with the inclusion of “Georgia”. They started the set with Fired Up which we were joking they would because our weekend started with the fire alarms. And we also got a kick of them singing, “isn’t it hard, standing in the rain” I mean, yes, sort of… poncho on poncho kind of makes things slippery.
After the show we hit up McDonalds for their bathroom and then made another pistop at Buc-ees! I was glad to pick up a few boxes of their animal crackers that I loved so much when we went last summer, but I couldn’t find any of the overbite chocolates that I had liked 🙁 Oh well, I’m trying to count calories and it would have just complicated things too much for me.
I am happy to report that I had absolutely no flight issues there or back home – direct flights from Nashville to Hartford and back via Southwest. I guess with everything else going wrong, something HAD to go right for once, right?
Katie 
Lately I have been trying to avoid shows that don’t fall during the weekend because it can be difficult to make work with my work schedule, however when the chance to see Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken from American Idol Season 2 on a Monday night arose, I took it. As luck would have it, work was pretty hectic and I had to actually go into the office for most of the morning but we ended up making it to the show with time to spare to grab some dinner (at the appropriately named El Idolo).
