If you were to list the Top 5 things that Shelley and I like to do together, it would include: canoeing, eating, finding new beers, travelling and attending concerts.
I'm not sure the particular order of those Top 5s, and it might depend on the day, but concert going always will be near the top.
We've seen dozens of concerts together, in big and small venues, outdoors and indoors, in our hometown and travelling 1,600 miles to see our favorite band together on a delayed honeymoon.
But maybe our most epic concert adventure took place last summer when in two days we traveled some 350 miles to see a handful of our favorite bands just because the timing worked so well.
So in July of last year, we found out that Train and the Goo Goo Dolls were playing the same night at a regional rock festival here in Minnesota called Moondance Jam, and we already had planned to be on the road the very next night for Lynyrd Skynyrd, which was playing an outdoor venue at Treasure Island Resort and Casino in Red Wing, Minn., that we love. So, I scrambled to pick up tickets to the rock festival too, and we made concert weekend out of it.
What prompted such a road trip? ... Well, Shelley absolutely loves Train, a product of her younger years, and she has also gotten me to be Johnny-come-lately fan after I had pretty much missed the Train boat in my college years. As for me, I'm fairly certain that the Goo Goo Dolls are one of my two favorite bands, because they were the formative soundtrack to my college years. So picking up some cheap, general admission tickets to one night of the Moondance Jam rock festival on our way to see Skynyrd seemed like a no-brainer. ... It was win-win for both of us.
Besides, the concert was a trip down nostalgia lane for me because 20 years earlier when I was a regional report at The Bemidji Pioneer, I convinced my editor to allow me to cover the rock festival for our paper. And for several years, I got to head to Walker, Minn., for the annual festival and cover it as a music/culture/events writer. In the second year, the owner of the festival liked the coverage so much that he started to treat me like royalty. And I ended up getting to cover a lot of the main acts from the side of the stage. ... I mean, how cool was that for young 20-something journalist? ... (As an aside, there was one particularly memorable night when I was within spitting distance as I watched first The Wallflowers and then Blues Traveler.)
So, while we had long before booked our tickets for the Lynyrd Skynyrd concert that was going to take place 200 miles to the south after the night at Moondance Jam, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to throw in another night in Walker to see Train and the Goo Goo Dolls.
That meant that the epic road trip was set, and while the first leg of the trip made sense because of our personal fandom for the two bands, what about adding another couple hundred miles and a couple of days to go see Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Well, admittedly, neither of us are huge Skynyrd fans. But, it was more of a decision that there are just certain legendary acts that we want to see before they hang it up. We both have our share of regrets of bands or musicians that we didn't take the opportunity to go see while they were playing, and so we didn't want to make that mistake Skynyrd. ... And, frankly, the mantra I dreamed up for the trip was: If you're going to call yourself a music fan, you have to see "Free Bird" played live at least once in your concert going career.
But in addition to seeing eight great bands in those two days, there was so much more that made this particular trip memorable too.
Admittedly, as the logistical man for most of our trips, I made the rookie mistake of trying to book hotel rooms in both cities in the weeks just before the concerts. Well, in Walker, there's only a few hotels, and they are often booked up months in advance of Moondance Jam, but I had forgotten that because two decades earlier when I was covering the festival, I was always put up by the concert owner. And, as for Red Wing, it too only has a limited number of hotels, and everything within an hour's drive of the concert was booked up for that weekend.
So, what do you do when your concert tickets are purchased, you've taken your PTO and you've promised your bride she was going to see Train? ... You get creative!
I hit the airbnb site, and the nearest thing I could find near Walker, 35 miles away, was a tee pee plunked down in the middle of the woods. ... Seriously! A tee pee for rent on airbnb! ... I checked out the photos and reviews, and even exchanged a few messages with the owner, before I felt comfortable enough bringing up the proposition with my wife. ... You can about imagine the initial response. ... "No, honey, this is not a joke. ... It is actually our best option for housing for the night."
Well, with a lot of convincing, Shelley gave in, and I booked the tee pee. We left early enough on the day of the concert so that we could swing by the place and check it out. And it actually turned out to be a pretty dang cool place. So we did some nature seeing, hiking and adventuring at the site before it was time to head into town for the concert. ... Shelley was tickled pink that she found some wild raspberries to eat, and after a while on the spartan campsite, she actually got into the idea.
Unfortunately for her, when we returned from the concerts at about midnight, it was a sweltering July night and the only bed in the tee pee was a blow-up mattress. Well, as a big guy, I take up a lot of space, and you can imagine what the displacement of air in a mattress was going to be like when I laid down. ... And then there was the fact that there was no place to plug in my CPAP machine, and so I would be snoring up a storm that night. ... Well, Shelley ended up sleeping in the car! ... I think it worked out better for both us!
The next day, on just a couple of hours of sleep, we brushed our teeth with some well water available through a spout nearby, jumped in the car in our sweaty cloths, and drove on to Red Wing.
But the best part of the story is that we were going to spend the next night at the home of a work colleague who offered it up because I couldn't find anywhere to stay within an hour of the Skynyrd concert. While we had worked in the same company for years, me in Fargo, N.D., and he in Duluth, Minn., Erik and I had only met through video chats and emails. ... Never in person. But he and his wife had recently moved to Red Wing as he took on another job in our company.
When he heard about our dilemma, he and his wife graciously opened up their home for us to use for the weekend because they were driving back to Duluth, where they still had a home they hadn't yet sold.
So about lunch time, we pulled up into Eric's drive. We were both covered in mosquito bites, in need of showers and looked pretty sketchy, not to mention stinky from head to toe for not having had showers in a day and a half. I can't even imagine what we looked like, but to Eric and his wife's credit, they didn't blink an eye. They handed us the keys to their new house and took off. ... And there Shelley and I sat, in a near-stranger's house, looking about as sorry as a couple could.
We still laugh about that experience, and marvel at the fact that Eric and his wife so graciously opened up their home to us. ... Frankly, I don't know what we would have done if they wouldn't have been so hospitable. It likely would have been another night of camping for us.
All of it made for a concert road trip that we will never forget!
コメント