velessa | Brad Paisley Concert

The concert was amazing! It was awesome to be so close to the stage, and I got a ton of great pictures and souvenirs out of it. Brad Paisley is one of my very favorite country artists, so it was fantastic to see him in person. If you don't know who he is, I implore you to watch these couple of videos from him. He's known for doing a lot of really funny songs, not just your typical country fare. These are hilarious, even if you don't like country, please give them a chance!

Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE6iAjEv9dQ

Celebrity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9mpDAJOPac

I can't remember the last time I came to this place, the Shorline Ampitheater, but I do know I've never been here and had an actual seat, only been on the lawn seating waaaaay in the back. So to have seats RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE STAGE was pretty exciting. And I wasn't going to freeze to death on wet grass out in the open! We thought maybe our seats would be way over to one side, since we had seats 1 and 2, but they turned out to be really decent because our entire "row" only had five seats in it.

I dressed as "western" as I could muster, Wrangler jeans and a t-shirt and black cowboy boots I'd never worn before. They're actually really nice leather boots, but they'd been in storage for ages until we cleaned out our storage unit and I took them. Mom won them (what else is new?), but I guess she decided the size she ordered didn't fit her after all, so she never wore them; they fit me, however, so I went ahead and kept them and finally had a reason to wear them. Kind of wish I hadn't; I have no idea what these boots are meant for, but it sure isn't standing an walking! They have NO padding or support and are slippery as hell, no tread at all. Fashion? Sitting on a horse all day? Who knows. My feet hurt quite a bit by the end of the night. I didn't wear the shirt I had on long, either, because as soon as we got inside I bought a Brad Paisley shirt and changed into that instead. =D

Our seats. There were no seats in front of us.

Me and Mom standing next to the stage between performers

We got there in time to see two of the acts prior to Brad, Justin Moore and Darius Rucker. They're both relatively new country artists, getting popular over the last two years or so, though I'm sure you all know Darius Rucker as "Hootie" of Hootie and the Blowfish fame; he's gone country now and is actually quite good. ;) All of these photos were taken from our seats.

Justin Moore

Darius Rucker. He did do a couple of Hootie songs along with his country stuff.

He pulled his hat off, pulled a pen out and signed it, and threw it into the crowd before he left.

After this I was really thirsty and went to get a drink before Brad started playing. When I came back, people were milling about right up next to the stage and in front of our seats. I asked what was going on, and apparently while I was gone the security people told my mom and everyone there we could stand up in front of the stage if we wanted to. Hell yeah, but it wasn't like we had a lot of choice at that point; more people were coming forward, and sitting in our seats wouldn't have even really been possible by then anyway. So I got to stand actually as close as you can get, leaning against the stage, which was pretty cool even though I was getting crushed from all sides! =p I got pretty cozy with a nice lady next to me, haha.

Me standing in front of the stage

There were a couple of problems with standing next to the stage, though. One was that the way they had the speakers set up, you couldn't actually hear any of the singing if you stood there. =( The lady next to me said Shoreline always has this problem. The speakers sitting on the stage that were directly in front of us went to his guitar, but the speakers that went to the mic he sang into were only waaaay over on both sides of the stage; standing in the middle, you couldn't hear him at all unless he wasn't playing the electric guitar, just singing acoustic. So that sucked, but it wasn't like I didn't know all the words or what he sounded like, anyway, and I did get to see him up super close and touch him. =p I got high fives from both Brad Paisley and Darius Rucker, and other random band members along the way.

The most irritating thing, though, was the asshole teenager standing right behind me. He kept shoving me, throwing his arm over my head, screaming and shriek-whistling right into my ear, but worst of all, "singing" (yelling/screeching the words) at the top of his lungs! I've heard better singing from cats in heat. So even when I could have heard Brad Paisley sing, I still couldn't because of that douchebag behind me. Both me and the lady next to me told him repeatedly to keep it down/shut up/stop shoving us, but he steadfastedly refused to stop acting like an obnoxious brat. I was so close to kicking him or punching him or something, but the security guy was standing right next to me and couldn't do anything about him, and obviously I didn't want to get thrown out. I just tried to lean as far away from him as possible. Ugh, I fucking hate rude people.

Anyway. Being so close, my mom and I got a lot of awesome pics of Brad Paisley. =)

The blue things on the mic stand are guitar picks. Throughout the show he'd pull them off, use them to play, then toss them into the crowd. I got one of them at the end of the show. =)

He ended the show with this song (another funny one), Alcohol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3zkkLckeyM You'll understand the pics better if you listen to it. ;)