Are You Busy One Year From Now?

   
     I am the first of all my friends to get excited about a concert announcement. If I really want to go to an event, the furious link sharing, venue debates, and messages that begin. The hype lasts about 2-3 days between the tour announcement and the pre-sale date with comments like "Does your sister want to go so we can get the 4-pack seats?" or "Are we all agreeing that we will stick with this unless the seats are over $70.00?" * If we strike out during the pre-sale it is not guaranteed there will be any trinkets left for general on sale, although I do fondly remember the Maroon 5 ticket miracle in the Fall of 2014.
   

McGraw at the 2014 "Sundown Heaventown"
tour (c)PipPepPop

    With all of this background knowledge, one might ask why I even bother seeing live music. Some people are addicted to drugs or gambling or drinking, but I am addicted to live music!  I am delighted to hear Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's announcement they are re-booting their 2006 Soul2Soul tour for 2017. On top of that, the country power couple is celebrating 20 years of  a as co-parents and marriage champions. What could be better than that news?  Tickets begin going on sale this Friday for concert dates. Yes, this Friday the 20th!

     When I looked to see where my local shows would be, I discovered the last stop on the tour is at Brooklyn's Barclays Center (sigh). (For various reasons, I have had bad associations with attending events at the center, but that is a story for another time). The date of that tour-ending show? It's October 27th of next year! Let me remind you, we haven't even passed this October 27th yet.  I'm a bit shocked the tour would announce dates over a year into the future. While I can't see this show going in sale yet, I have reached the point in my life where I like making plans, but I don't like paying for tickets and arranging my entire October a year from now around this date.  I enjoyed seeing Tim (or Timmy McGee as my friends lovingly call him) in 2014, and I committed to that show 2 months out, which is more than reasonable. I'm certainly not going to "Live Like You Were Dying" and commit to pricey concert tickets a year in advance.


* I wish I was joking about the prices. The cheapest concert tickets I purchased this year were $20.00 lawn seats for Daruis Rucker (during a ticket discount sale) and it rained on our uncovered lawn seats. See my recent piece on the difficulty to even procure concert tickets and the accompanying skyrocketing prices.