Shinedown Part II
OK so here is how Tuesday went.
After not falling asleep until about 3:30am.........I get up around 6:30am and get Bradley ready for school. He leaves and I jump in the shower, get ready to go and leave about 9:45am. Sarah and I wanted to go to Target and eat on the way out of town so that's why we left that early.
I wanted to get a thermal (or long john's whatever you call them) because I can't find any of my old ones. And here it gets cold at nyte time so I wanted it to wear under my tee. OK - so Target decided to be gay and NOT have any. Not in boys, girls, women's or men's. WTF!!!!!! Ok so as much as I HATE this place, we trek it over to Wal*Mart. They have a Medium in men's so I grab it and go. I went into McDonald's to grab a Mr. Pibb Kathy - (alaskalady, you can appreciate that extra stop LOL) and Sarah runs in the bathroom. Well I got done first so I went ahead and went to the bathroom too. While in there I decided to go ahead and out my thermal on and not fuck with it later. OK, I'm in the stall and when I turned around.....BOOM there goes my LARGE drink all over the bathroom floor. DAMN, we should have turned around right then and went home. But no, it's cool....just go fill it up again, we're still there. So I walk out and this damn thermal.......I'm swimming in it. It's HUGE. So I'm like fuckity fuck, now what. OK little boy's dept. Cool, go to the lil boys dept, and I decide to just open the damn package and try it on my arm to see if they are big and baggy too. Large first.....too big. Hmm, ok medium, too large. UM, ok. Small. Yes SMALL in freaking little boys for God's sake. And I'm not that little so go figure. Thermal's USED to be meant to fit tight. Don't know what happened there. OK....pay and leave. (With my second large drink.)
So we're on HWY 46 which we are going to be on for most of the 3 hour drive. About 10 minutes into that HWY we're at a DEAD stop. DAMN!!!!! Road construction:
It was already like 12:30pm or so. I wanted to leave town about 11am since it's 3 hours there and I wasn't familiar with the place and all. Plus we had to pick up the tickets at 3pm so I just wanted to be there early. (I am one of those annoying "Did I leave the stove on" types.) ANYWAYS.....Ok there was this impatient man in front of us. So funny, he kept getting out of his truck thinking that he was going to make a difference I guess :
Finally get going again and we drive. And drive and drive and drive some more. We have a blast tho, taking goofy pictures and listening to music. (Life is so sweet. <3) :
Sarah
Me
I swear that damn hat shows up all the time now. Hahaha.
So we are on the last 3 roads of this trip and I'm at a red light and my damn clutch starts fucking around and then the gears are sticking. Damn, WTF now?!?! So we get there at 3:30pm and I needed gas but more importantly I needed to get to the Budweiser Pavillion to get my damn tickets. :) So....... we get there, get the tickets and then relax time. Well that was actually fun. We sat in the car from then till about 6:45pm with the exception of going in to pee like 3 times. I still had to put on some make up and then we just jammed, listening to music again.
Bored Sarah:
She put this damn barrett thingy in my hair and I said "Yeh you better take a pic of it because you will NEVER see that in my hair again" haha.:
Don't ask.......
We walk in about 6:45pm and then line was already long. DAMN! Owell what can you do. We just got in line and waited for an hour. I honestly didn't think it was going to be that many people because not to many people know who they are. Well I wanted to buy some shit from their merchandise stand but more importantly wanted to get a good seat. There was 3 things of bleachers and down by the stage was these blue chairs. You know the ones in school those blue plastic chairs? Yeh those. I was like WTF!?? If they would have done a GA type of arrangement that would have been cool. No dumbass chairs and everyone could have fit down by the stage. Who the HELL sits at a rock concert?????? Whatever....I'm there that's all that matters. We ended up in the left hand side bleachers - 3rd row. Here is my gimpy - it's - late - cheap - version of a drawing of that.
There were more chairs and bleachers than I drew, but you get the point. So finally after being antsy and watching some dumbasses get in a fight and get arrested, they come out. The kicked ass. I'm serious. They give off SO much damn energy. It just amazes me. I could go on and on about their set list and how they are amazing musicians, and even the girly part of me saying how hot they are.
But the thing that left and impression on me most of all was that in between each song Brent Smith would stop and talk.
Almost like a motivational speaker.
Saying how if it weren't for us they wouldn't be there, and that for every band we are into that it's the same thing... they are nothing with out the fans that support them. They seem to be so humble.
They talk about following your dreams, and having something to live for and such. I mean I was even motivated by the man and I don't get motivated to much, lol. The funniest thing was that after the first song, he says 'Hold On a minute' (just like if he was talking on the phone with a buddy er something) and he sets down the mic and props his foot up and ties his shoe. Classic! :) Brent Smith at one point got down into the crowd and walked around, and also crowd surfed for a minute.
I love it. I just love it when a band (or any celeb really) doesn't think that they are better than you. My favorites LIVE were In Memory,
45,
Burning Bright,
Fly From the Inside,
and of course Simple Man.
Now what I absolutely LOVED about when they did Simple Man was this: Before the song started they said "You ever hear of a band called Lynyrd Skynyrd?" Everyone went crazy (surprised me especially for out here in CA) Well Brent proceeds to tell everyone that the song was never intended to be recorded, never meant to be such this big deal that it is now. I knew this already but there are a LOT of people out there that think that this is Shinedown's song. They were doing an interview on the radio (which I actually heard on the air on our trip out to CA back in January) and they were asked about influences and stuff and they talked about Lynyrd Skynyrd. And they played acoustic and sang Simple Man. That got lots of response and even boosted sales for them. People started knowing who they were and stuff. Pretty interesting. OH and Trent (vanillajoke), you would have appreicaiated this: They did the acoustic part in the begining like you said you heard, then half way thru BOOM there goes the drums and bass. Very nice.
People kept throwing stuff up on the stage and since it was some Mardi Gras thing at this fair there were lots of beads. Well how cool is this......... After the show, Brent Smith goes and picks up all the stuff. That REALLY impressed me.
Anyway after the show was over I wanted to go over by the merchandise stand to get something and to wait around for them. They usually do autographs and meet with the fans and such. Well the security guards had it blocked and we had to go all the way around. OK no biggie but when we got around there to it, there were people lined up buying shit. So I finally get my turn and I wanted this baseball type fitted tee. Ok so the dumbass lady that worked there, turned her head the other way right at my turn and saw these people walking up from the way WE WEREN'T ALLOWED TO WALK........ that person pointed to the baseball shirt and the lady that worked there sold it to HER. It was the LAST EFFIN one. I was bummed. I said ok, how much for the picture. (It was like a B&W 8x10 promo shot) She said "Well it's free but you gotta buy something" GRRRR, no shit. So........ I wanted the hoodie. It was $35. The didn't take freakin VISA, and I only had like $29. OK so then I walked away for a minute. Then I saw this other poster type thing I wanted. There was some dude in front of me also having a hard time finding something and so he asked for HER copy of the promo pic that was autographed. She said "You can't have this one - they signed it for me, this is my copy, but you can have this if you want" And handed him the promo poster.......... IT WAS THE LAST ONE! DDAAAAAAMMMMMMNNNNNNN it. I said "Sarah let's just go" SO walked away and we were sitting on a bench waiting to see if the boys were going to come out. I was mopp-y about not getting anything and so she says "Do you want me to go ask the guy if you can have the poster?" I said no, but I kept on and on, so she walks over to him and says some shit (that I can't hear) and come back with it. GAH! Yay for me, I thanked her and all, and the guy walked by and give off this sympathetic smile. WTF! I said "What did you say to him........" She laughed and said how I was so sad and crying and all this blah blah blah. OMG, hahahaha. How funny. Whatever, I got my poster.
And if you notice, there is NO THERMAL ON ME. Yeh it was like 65-70 dgrees. Just 3 hours away it's like 45. Go figure. So all that was a waste of time and money. The guys never came out. I was disappointed. Not disappointed because I didn't get pics and autographs but because I didn't get to meet the boys. :( Maybe next time.
SOOOOOOO, we leave. I am thirsty as shit but I wasn't going to pay $2.50 again for a little drink, so I said we'd go get some food somewhere and I'd wait to get a drink till then. So we get in the car and I go to put it in Neutral. Hmmm, it won't go in Neutral. FUCK!! I forgot about the damn clutch. So I turned it off, put it in Reverse, and back out, turn it off, put it in First and go. Now it won't shift in to Second. So I'm like WTF! Remember I needed gas before the show? Yeh bling......there goes the gas light too. Mmmmmk, so I'm doing 15 MPH to a gas station, which took FOREVER mind you......get gas (thank GOD) & a drink (finally) and sit and figure out what the hell to do. We are 3 hours from home. Our truck has been broke down for ages, and plus Keith was at home with the boys. DAMN. SO Sarah calls her hubby and finally we decide to have him pick us up, leave the car there becasue there was a Saturn dealership there. (HATE HATE HATE Saturns by the way). So we find a SONIC!!!! Hell yes, finally something good. We get there at 10:30pm and they closed at 11pm so we sat there until the people that worked there left. Which was like 11:30 Then we trucked it on over to Taco Hell to wait out the remainder of the time:
WE.WERE.SO.BORED
Mmmmmk, ready to go HOME NOW.......
So Allan gets there
and we take the car to the dealer, leave my key and a note in the dropbox and left. Three hours back home, but have to drop him off at work (which is also where Keith works) and finally roll in the driveway at about 6am OMG, wake Keith up, he has to go to work, then I have to get Bradley up and ready for school. Brent wakes up in this time period, then Bradley leaves and Brent is ready to play. UGH. I AM BEAT. I just want to SLEEP. But didn't get to till about 9:30am and then woke back up in like 3 hours to Brent tearing up shit in the house. OMG.
What a trip.
Good times, man. Good times.
"We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said I'll love her 'til I die
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby."
After not falling asleep until about 3:30am.........I get up around 6:30am and get Bradley ready for school. He leaves and I jump in the shower, get ready to go and leave about 9:45am. Sarah and I wanted to go to Target and eat on the way out of town so that's why we left that early.
I wanted to get a thermal (or long john's whatever you call them) because I can't find any of my old ones. And here it gets cold at nyte time so I wanted it to wear under my tee. OK - so Target decided to be gay and NOT have any. Not in boys, girls, women's or men's. WTF!!!!!! Ok so as much as I HATE this place, we trek it over to Wal*Mart. They have a Medium in men's so I grab it and go. I went into McDonald's to grab a Mr. Pibb Kathy - (alaskalady, you can appreciate that extra stop LOL) and Sarah runs in the bathroom. Well I got done first so I went ahead and went to the bathroom too. While in there I decided to go ahead and out my thermal on and not fuck with it later. OK, I'm in the stall and when I turned around.....BOOM there goes my LARGE drink all over the bathroom floor. DAMN, we should have turned around right then and went home. But no, it's cool....just go fill it up again, we're still there. So I walk out and this damn thermal.......I'm swimming in it. It's HUGE. So I'm like fuckity fuck, now what. OK little boy's dept. Cool, go to the lil boys dept, and I decide to just open the damn package and try it on my arm to see if they are big and baggy too. Large first.....too big. Hmm, ok medium, too large. UM, ok. Small. Yes SMALL in freaking little boys for God's sake. And I'm not that little so go figure. Thermal's USED to be meant to fit tight. Don't know what happened there. OK....pay and leave. (With my second large drink.)
So we're on HWY 46 which we are going to be on for most of the 3 hour drive. About 10 minutes into that HWY we're at a DEAD stop. DAMN!!!!! Road construction:
It was already like 12:30pm or so. I wanted to leave town about 11am since it's 3 hours there and I wasn't familiar with the place and all. Plus we had to pick up the tickets at 3pm so I just wanted to be there early. (I am one of those annoying "Did I leave the stove on" types.) ANYWAYS.....Ok there was this impatient man in front of us. So funny, he kept getting out of his truck thinking that he was going to make a difference I guess :
Finally get going again and we drive. And drive and drive and drive some more. We have a blast tho, taking goofy pictures and listening to music. (Life is so sweet. <3) :
Sarah
Me
I swear that damn hat shows up all the time now. Hahaha.
So we are on the last 3 roads of this trip and I'm at a red light and my damn clutch starts fucking around and then the gears are sticking. Damn, WTF now?!?! So we get there at 3:30pm and I needed gas but more importantly I needed to get to the Budweiser Pavillion to get my damn tickets. :) So....... we get there, get the tickets and then relax time. Well that was actually fun. We sat in the car from then till about 6:45pm with the exception of going in to pee like 3 times. I still had to put on some make up and then we just jammed, listening to music again.
Bored Sarah:
She put this damn barrett thingy in my hair and I said "Yeh you better take a pic of it because you will NEVER see that in my hair again" haha.:
Don't ask.......
We walk in about 6:45pm and then line was already long. DAMN! Owell what can you do. We just got in line and waited for an hour. I honestly didn't think it was going to be that many people because not to many people know who they are. Well I wanted to buy some shit from their merchandise stand but more importantly wanted to get a good seat. There was 3 things of bleachers and down by the stage was these blue chairs. You know the ones in school those blue plastic chairs? Yeh those. I was like WTF!?? If they would have done a GA type of arrangement that would have been cool. No dumbass chairs and everyone could have fit down by the stage. Who the HELL sits at a rock concert?????? Whatever....I'm there that's all that matters. We ended up in the left hand side bleachers - 3rd row. Here is my gimpy - it's - late - cheap - version of a drawing of that.
There were more chairs and bleachers than I drew, but you get the point. So finally after being antsy and watching some dumbasses get in a fight and get arrested, they come out. The kicked ass. I'm serious. They give off SO much damn energy. It just amazes me. I could go on and on about their set list and how they are amazing musicians, and even the girly part of me saying how hot they are.
But the thing that left and impression on me most of all was that in between each song Brent Smith would stop and talk.
Almost like a motivational speaker.
Saying how if it weren't for us they wouldn't be there, and that for every band we are into that it's the same thing... they are nothing with out the fans that support them. They seem to be so humble.
They talk about following your dreams, and having something to live for and such. I mean I was even motivated by the man and I don't get motivated to much, lol. The funniest thing was that after the first song, he says 'Hold On a minute' (just like if he was talking on the phone with a buddy er something) and he sets down the mic and props his foot up and ties his shoe. Classic! :) Brent Smith at one point got down into the crowd and walked around, and also crowd surfed for a minute.
I love it. I just love it when a band (or any celeb really) doesn't think that they are better than you. My favorites LIVE were In Memory,
45,
Burning Bright,
Fly From the Inside,
and of course Simple Man.
Now what I absolutely LOVED about when they did Simple Man was this: Before the song started they said "You ever hear of a band called Lynyrd Skynyrd?" Everyone went crazy (surprised me especially for out here in CA) Well Brent proceeds to tell everyone that the song was never intended to be recorded, never meant to be such this big deal that it is now. I knew this already but there are a LOT of people out there that think that this is Shinedown's song. They were doing an interview on the radio (which I actually heard on the air on our trip out to CA back in January) and they were asked about influences and stuff and they talked about Lynyrd Skynyrd. And they played acoustic and sang Simple Man. That got lots of response and even boosted sales for them. People started knowing who they were and stuff. Pretty interesting. OH and Trent (vanillajoke), you would have appreicaiated this: They did the acoustic part in the begining like you said you heard, then half way thru BOOM there goes the drums and bass. Very nice.
People kept throwing stuff up on the stage and since it was some Mardi Gras thing at this fair there were lots of beads. Well how cool is this......... After the show, Brent Smith goes and picks up all the stuff. That REALLY impressed me.
Anyway after the show was over I wanted to go over by the merchandise stand to get something and to wait around for them. They usually do autographs and meet with the fans and such. Well the security guards had it blocked and we had to go all the way around. OK no biggie but when we got around there to it, there were people lined up buying shit. So I finally get my turn and I wanted this baseball type fitted tee. Ok so the dumbass lady that worked there, turned her head the other way right at my turn and saw these people walking up from the way WE WEREN'T ALLOWED TO WALK........ that person pointed to the baseball shirt and the lady that worked there sold it to HER. It was the LAST EFFIN one. I was bummed. I said ok, how much for the picture. (It was like a B&W 8x10 promo shot) She said "Well it's free but you gotta buy something" GRRRR, no shit. So........ I wanted the hoodie. It was $35. The didn't take freakin VISA, and I only had like $29. OK so then I walked away for a minute. Then I saw this other poster type thing I wanted. There was some dude in front of me also having a hard time finding something and so he asked for HER copy of the promo pic that was autographed. She said "You can't have this one - they signed it for me, this is my copy, but you can have this if you want" And handed him the promo poster.......... IT WAS THE LAST ONE! DDAAAAAAMMMMMMNNNNNNN it. I said "Sarah let's just go" SO walked away and we were sitting on a bench waiting to see if the boys were going to come out. I was mopp-y about not getting anything and so she says "Do you want me to go ask the guy if you can have the poster?" I said no, but I kept on and on, so she walks over to him and says some shit (that I can't hear) and come back with it. GAH! Yay for me, I thanked her and all, and the guy walked by and give off this sympathetic smile. WTF! I said "What did you say to him........" She laughed and said how I was so sad and crying and all this blah blah blah. OMG, hahahaha. How funny. Whatever, I got my poster.
And if you notice, there is NO THERMAL ON ME. Yeh it was like 65-70 dgrees. Just 3 hours away it's like 45. Go figure. So all that was a waste of time and money. The guys never came out. I was disappointed. Not disappointed because I didn't get pics and autographs but because I didn't get to meet the boys. :( Maybe next time.
SOOOOOOO, we leave. I am thirsty as shit but I wasn't going to pay $2.50 again for a little drink, so I said we'd go get some food somewhere and I'd wait to get a drink till then. So we get in the car and I go to put it in Neutral. Hmmm, it won't go in Neutral. FUCK!! I forgot about the damn clutch. So I turned it off, put it in Reverse, and back out, turn it off, put it in First and go. Now it won't shift in to Second. So I'm like WTF! Remember I needed gas before the show? Yeh bling......there goes the gas light too. Mmmmmk, so I'm doing 15 MPH to a gas station, which took FOREVER mind you......get gas (thank GOD) & a drink (finally) and sit and figure out what the hell to do. We are 3 hours from home. Our truck has been broke down for ages, and plus Keith was at home with the boys. DAMN. SO Sarah calls her hubby and finally we decide to have him pick us up, leave the car there becasue there was a Saturn dealership there. (HATE HATE HATE Saturns by the way). So we find a SONIC!!!! Hell yes, finally something good. We get there at 10:30pm and they closed at 11pm so we sat there until the people that worked there left. Which was like 11:30 Then we trucked it on over to Taco Hell to wait out the remainder of the time:
WE.WERE.SO.BORED
Mmmmmk, ready to go HOME NOW.......
So Allan gets there
and we take the car to the dealer, leave my key and a note in the dropbox and left. Three hours back home, but have to drop him off at work (which is also where Keith works) and finally roll in the driveway at about 6am OMG, wake Keith up, he has to go to work, then I have to get Bradley up and ready for school. Brent wakes up in this time period, then Bradley leaves and Brent is ready to play. UGH. I AM BEAT. I just want to SLEEP. But didn't get to till about 9:30am and then woke back up in like 3 hours to Brent tearing up shit in the house. OMG.
What a trip.
Good times, man. Good times.
"We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said I'll love her 'til I die
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby."