Ah summer, that glorious time of year when we all flock outdoors and listen to music. I chose several fun concerts for this summer season (The Backstreet Boys, Gavin DeGraw, Tim MgGraw and Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan to name a few), but I could not be more excited to see Keith Urban live and in my field of vision. But myself any my two friends had spent quite enough on concert tickets by the time this August show was going on sale, so we opted to get some lawn seats and head to upstate NY for the show. We once got hurricane-like rain sheets on us during a Train concert, so we fully understood what we could be signing up for if it rained.
The Sunday evening show was perfection with no clouds in sight. Keith dazzled us with his Aussie accent and even braved it up to the lawn area to sing a few songs, tossing glow necklaces on his guitar and donning a fan's cowboy hat. He signed his guitar as he sweetly proclaimed "
You Look Good in My Shirt."
Here is my only complaint, the crowd and the general idea of the LAWN. The event was at Bethel Woods, home to the legendary Woodstock Festival, so I imagine there has been some obscenely awful things that happened on that lawn over the years, but still, it was not the best experience.
It might as well have said: prepare to spend 8 hours with some people, you're never going to see again . The crowd was pretty terrible. In fact they were downright annoying. But as it turns out, they would not be the worst concert crowd I found that summer. I'm well under 30, but I felt like a crotchety old woman yelling at a group of kids in front us that they needed to lower the young lady they were tossing around and dropping on the lawn. Most of my videos from the show have a silhouetted fist bumping guy in front of us, preparing for a new reality show that I can only imaged would be called Jersey Sticks.
On top of having to get to the lawn gate promptly a half hour before 5 so we could storm the lawn when the front gate opened, we also couldn't bring in our own lawn chairs to the show and had to rent a $5 seat at the venue. Food was available,e but we managed to bring our own sandwiches and salad for a picnic dinner. Did anyone get charged for food and chairs at the first Woodstock? Don't answer that, on second thought, I'm sure people got charged much more for that event.
When Keith took to the smaller and more intimate lawn stage, there was a mad rush of people over to the area (myself included), turning aside chairs, trampling blankets and generally running any semblance of common decency in the lawn. People were pushed and shoved to get to the tiny stage. I took a space behind a pretty tall guy and held my camera up, bracing for someone the size of a linebacker to tackle me. Thankfully, I returned with a slight crunch to my toe (thanks to my cowboy boots not too bad) and some great videos. I realized that night, as I proclaimed to my two friends, freshly 27 years old, I am way too old to sit on the lawn...even if the videos are this good.
Video courtesy of my private collection (c)2014.
All of a sudden, I have become an insta-Van Gough when it comes to painting. I've become a convert to the popular paint nite events, where you're encouraged to paint creatively and toss back some wine while you paint. I These events are held at local bars and taught by brilliant and entertaining artists. They play music, instruct on color mixing (break out the 2nd grade color wheel for a refresher course in mixing) and drag you through a mini art lesson in the span of two hours. I went from a casual interest in painting to running out to my local craft store and buying mini canvases, acrylic paints and mini brushes. In short, I'm running out of places to hide the canvases, but I truly love it!
The Sunday evening show was perfection with no clouds in sight. Keith dazzled us with his Aussie accent and even braved it up to the lawn area to sing a few songs, tossing glow necklaces on his guitar and donning a fan's cowboy hat. He signed his guitar as he sweetly proclaimed "You Look Good in My Shirt."