ZBB in KC - 2011

What a fabulous road trip! I love seeing live music - one of my absolutely most favorite things to do, hands down. This concert was a blast- great performers, AND great company, with my friend Laura, sis Tara and BIL Luke. Laura and I hit the road Saturday morning at 8:30AM, coffee in hand, ready for the three hour drive to friends Garry and Heather's house in north KC.

I made a "ZBB KC Trip" playlist on my iPod, to play on the trip up - and it was a good thing, because Laura really didn't know much about them at all. In fact, she had told someone the day before that we were going to see "Jack Brown, or something like that" ... so I had to make sure she was educated on their tunes before arriving at the concert!   We had a great time, I was so glad that she was able to come with me, and hang out with my family and other friends - she's been such a good friend to me over the past several years, and especially recently, over the past month. 

We got to Garry/Heather's house about noon, and got to catch up a bit with them before heading to the concert.  Garry turned 40 a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't get to make it up for his big birthday bash at one of the casinos... He and I had a cocktail at noon, so he could break out the glasses that he got in honor of his birthday - they say "Established 1971" and have a "40" engraved on the bottom... sweet!

Heather and 13-year-old Ryleigh - she's grown up so much!

I was so glad that Garry/Heather and Tara/Luke finally all met - Garry and Heather are some of my best friends and have met my siblings Ann and Thomas, but have only heard me talk about the rest.   They all hit it off wonderfully, as I knew they would - hopefully we'll all be able to get together again sometime.

With an estimated 70,000 people at this concert (according to Garry, who opted NOT to come and tailgate with us, for that reason),  I wondered how parking would be, and how close we would be to the stadium.  We did fine, not too far from the main entrance:

Holy smokes, was it HOT!   We put our chairs out and sat down to enjoy our lunch.  But about 30 minutes in, this was how we all felt, although Tara was particularly intolerant of the heat (and we had fun giving her crap about this picture!):

Shortly after this we took my Springfield friends Renee and Brad up on their offer to come hang with them in the shade... Luke was impressed with their set-up- the tent, table, and more.  Definitely not amatuer tailgaters like we were!

Laura, me, Tara and Luke

Thanks, Renee, for sharing your shade!

We headed into the concert in the middle of Billy Currington's set - personally, I don't know a single one of his songs, so I wasn't too worried about getting inside to hear him.   Uncle Kracker opened the concert, but we passed on him as well - I was there to see Zac Brown Band, they started at 6:20PM.  

The stadium was FULL, with the entire field set up with seating and a sandbar area right near the stage:

 

I saw Kenny Chesney with Tara and Luke about three years ago, in St. Louis, and we had a lot of fun then, but this took it up a notch.  This was probably the rowdiest concert I've been to - don't know if it was because it was a mid-afternoon Saturday concert (plenty of time for tailgating), or because it was there in Arrowhead, but everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves, including us!  And because it was so hot, we really didn't have much beer beforehand or during the concert - it was too hot to drink much other than water, and then I think we danced and sweated all that out over the 4+ hours we were in the stadium!



Luke, wallflower that he is, made friends with the guys
in front of us over the course of the evening

 I left my camera with Tara for safekeeping when I went to get a hot dog and drink, and she and Luke had a good time:

Ok, what about the music?  Amazing, both ZBB and Kenny.  Zac Brown is great, but his band is just as big a part of the show- some very, very talented musicians - they played "Devil Went Down to Georgia"
again, and it was just as awesome as it was when we heard it back in November.  As far as getting any good pictures, I was right - I've got to buy a longer lens.  I had to steal these two close-ups from Renee and Brad's FB site, they had a Nikon DSLR with a great lens, and got some awesome shots:

Kenny came on at 8:30 and played for two hours.  When he finished up and the crowd cheered him back out for an encore, Zac Brown came back out with him.   They jammed out for another eight or nine songs, including "Sweet Home Alabama" (Skynyrd), "Dixieland Delight" (Alabama) and Tom Petty's "Runnin' Down a Dream"  -  we sang and danced until they played the last chord and the stadium lights came on.  We were tired, and our feet were aching from dancing in flip flops all night, but we all agreed that we got our money's worth and then some.

Garry, Heather and the kids were still awake and had pizza ready for us when we got to their house about 12:15AM - we managed to stay up and talk for about 45 minutes, and then it was time to call it a night.  They fixed a wonderful breakfast for us this morning, before Laura and I had to head back to Springfield.

Great weekend - hopefully I'll make a return trip to KC in September or October.  We talked about taking Jace and Ryleigh to see Train/Maroon 5 in September at the Starlite. I would love to take him to his first concert - he loves music, just like his mom - and I better take him while we still like the same stuff!