Doing some quick math, I decide Hellz Yes I’m in. That’s like $20 a person for the entire trip, including gas money. So I make the necessary manipulations at work to get my schedule covered for that Friday (the concert was the night of Friday, Sept 18th) and—since I don’t work Saturdays anyway—I’m ready to rock.
Friday shows up. I wake up and head off to the gym to get my day started. After a quick workout I shower and eat, but I’ve got an hour to kill before she arrives to pick me up. I decide to do a little research; after all, I have no idea who the opener is and I figure I should probably check that shit out. A quick bit of googlage reveals that the “special guest” is none other that Darius Rucker. Fuckin Hootie! Sweet!
I will admit that am a so-so fan of Rascal Flatts. I like their music but I don’t really love it. I basically jumped at this concert opportunity because 1.)It was practically free, something I’m always a fan of, 2.)I’ve never been to Fort Wayne, and 3.)It’s a country concert, so pretty much by definition there should be tons of scantily-clad hotties there.
But Hootie is a different matter. I will admit that I have a man-crush on Darius Rucker. I loved him as Hootie and I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since he done and “gone country.” By the way, thank you for that obnoxious and uncultured-sounding (but accurate) euphemism, Alan Jackson.
So I’m all fired up by the time Amanda shows up to grab me at 12:30. We leave A2 and have to stop in Pleasant Lake to pick up Veronica and her friend, Jennifer. Apparently I have met Veronica before, although I don’t particularly remember it. No biggie; she seems nice enough, as does Jennifer.
We roll out and pit stop at the Meijer in Jackson en route to Fort Wayne. Fifteen minutes and ten buck apiece later we are back in the car, now accompanied by a case of bottled water, two bottles of booze, four sippy-cups full of ice and various mixers. No shocker as I play bartender on the way there, mixing up delightful refreshments to ease the thirst of our travel. After only one (yes, ONE!) bathroom pit stop, we arrive in Fort Wayne. Amanda’s new Garmin gets us to the Hampton Inn where we check out our digs for the night.
We relax for a bit and change clothes before getting ready. This involves the women applying copious amounts of makeup, hairspray and various other nice-smelling things. This involves me sitting on the bed with a cocktail as I try and not laugh at girls being girls. About an hour later, the taxi we called shows up and we’re off to the show.
We arrive at the will-call booth to pick up our tickets and…uh-oh. Nothing there. Veronica gets mad. Jennifer panics. Amanda and I laugh. V gets on the phone and calls her friend Cee (yes, his real name) in Chicago who is the aforementioned tour-bus guy and our hookup for these tickets. He tells her to wait and the tickets should be there shortly. We head outside and sit on a stone bench to wait. The girls smoke and seethe, while I chuckle inside. Hey, I’m in a new town with nothing to do tonight…could be fun, right?
About 20 minutes later the girl in the will-call booth motions at us from behind the glass with the thumbs-up. Wow, I’m impressed. V wasn’t bullshitting, I’m thinking: that’s some kind of hookup. We get our tickets, grab a beer and head into the Coliseum. I nearly pissed myself when we got to our seats. Wow! We were practically on top of the stage. These are seriously the best seats I’ve ever had at a major concert.
FUN FACT 1—People in Fort Wayne, Indiana are not attractive. I don’t care if it’s Nevada or Texas, Georgia or Michigan, everywhere I’ve ever attended a country concert there’s always been a seriously high talent ratio. Not so in Fort Wayne. Lots of pasty, semi-chubby white chicks. The Coliseum that night made a Brad Paisley show at Pine Knob look like a night at the Playboy Mansion—END FUN FACT 1.
Before long, Cletus T. Judd comes out and does a few songs, setting the stage and getting everyone amped up. Then it’s time for Hootie! Rucker comes out and he’s good. He does his country stuff, mixes in a few old Hootie songs as well as a sweet rendition of Prince’s “Purple Rain” that no one in the audience expected but everyone loved. After Rucker finishes up, Rascal Flatts comes out and I have to say I’m impressed in spite of myself. These guys sound almost exactly the same in concert as they do on their albums, and the show was seriously entertaining.
It’s funny how far the showmanship aspect of country music has evolved over the years. I’ve been going to country concerts since the early 1990’s; I think either Garth or Alan Jackson was my first show. While I enjoyed the music, the whole concert “feel” was much more staid; the overall energy level wasn’t even close to a rock concert. The same cannot be said now. In the last six months I’ve seen Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney and now Rascal Flatts and I have to say that (even though I feel the music has slipped as a genre in general) country music has come a long way in the live performance department.
Moving on, the concert finishes up and we head outside to a nice surprise. Turn’s out V’s friend Cee wanted to make up for his mistake (he didn’t get her the tickets initially because he thought V was going to see Toby Keith in Chicago the next night instead of Rascal Flatts) so he got us a limo to make up for it. Nice, right? So for the next few hours we prance around Fort Wayne in style and hop from club to club.
Eventually we stumble back to the hotel room and crash. The next morning rolls around and we decide to make a pit stop on our way out of town. According to the Garmin, one of Fort Wayne’s most famous attractions is the gravesite of Johnny Appleseed. WTF? I mean, I remember hearing about JA as a kid, but I always thought that was some sort of American myth; sort of like Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Oh no, my friends. Turns out this shit is for real.
John Chapman was real guy who lived to an atrociously old age back in the 1800’s and was buried after his passing in Fort Wayne. So as we’re on our way to his gravesite, we discover something else: it appears that the annual Apple Festival is happening right now. Today. And it’s being held in the same place Chapman’s grave is.
So we roll in, just for shits and giggles. Turns out this is a pretty big deal in Fort Wayne. There are probably over ten thousand people congregating on this park. There’s food vendors (and because nothing says “fest” like smoked turkey leg, I had to get one) as well as live music, bagpipes, square dancing, a civil war reenactment (!), and dozens upon dozens of purveyors or old-schools arts and crafts. We’re talking blacksmiths, flint-knappers, leatherworkers, etc. My personal favorite was the stand selling Native American charms; this guy had everything from eagle-feather headdresses to a chief’s staff complete with a coyote skull mounted at the top.
I wasn’t shelling out $75 to buy this thing, but I definitely considered it. It figured it would be an awesome gift for, yunno, like a girlfriend or something. If I had one. Because...well, because nothing says “I love you” quite like coyote head on a stick. See?
After about two hours of ponderous crowds full of slow-moving, pasty, chubby people and turn of the century neo-Americana, I had to get the hell out of there. So we said our goodbyes to Indiana and rolled out. Another weekend in the books.
Sounds like a BLAST!!!!!!
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