I had been too long without a concert and had no hope of satisfying my KU cravings until March. When hubby was going to be gone for a weekend I decided to take a roadtrip for another combo of artists I enjoy - Lady Antebellum and Tim McGraw. I joined Lady A’s relatively inexpensive fan club in hopes of getting a better seat and bought one for the Madison, WI show. Strange thing about the Lady A presale (don’t know if this was also the case for those in the McGraw fan club)- presale tickets were offered with NO seating info! You had to order a ticket sight unseen and did not know its location until you picked it up at will call the day of the show! I hoped that what I had heard from others about the newer artists often offering good seats was true and went ahead with the purchase. The folks sitting next to me had bought their tickets in the McGraw pre-sale, so it appeared the Lady A and McGraw fan seats were intermingled.
The drive to Madison is a pretty one - winding four-lane cut through Wisconsin’s rocky (sandstone?) hills and the afternoon was bright and sunny. I couldn’t leave town until after my last class of the week, so my timing was a bit tight. I checked into my hotel and walked the half mile to the Alliant, freezing my ears because I left behind my hat. I accidentally managed to briefly “attend” the Tim McGraw backstage experience. Well, actually, I was on the wrong side of the mere curtain that screened off the event and was just 10 feet from Tim singing “Don’t Take the Girl” to his fans. Then I headed into the arena and they turned out the arena lights for the opening act just as I reached my seat.
The Alliant Energy Center (or what used to be the Coliseum) in Madison is one of those round space-ship looking arenas - medium sized, with very shallow rise lower riser seats (almost like elevated floor seats). My will call ticket was a decent floor seat in row G of the rear floor seats. Too far and too many heads for a good view of the stage but not too far from the end of catwalk that Tim and Lady A used some of the time.
The opening act was the Lost Trailers, a band I had seen once or twice before. Not too much of their own music grabs me (partly because it is unfamiliar but also a bit twangy for my tastes), but I do enjoy their covers. This time they chose to sing my favorite Jason Mraz song “I’m Yours” and that was really fun.
Lady Antebellum had a fun prelude to their appearance on the stage. The video screens showed someone doing a Google search of “lady” and brief flashes of other “lady” related entertainers (Lady Gaga, Lionel Richie’s Lady, Styx’s Lady, Tom Jones singing She’s a Lady, etc.) before finally finding Lady Antebellum. The members of Lady Antebellum looked and sounded great. They began with “Stars Tonight” from their new album, with its concert appropriate lyrics “everybody’s singing, everybody’s screamin’. A good song, but since their album is so new I’m afraid there weren’t too many singing during that or the other new tracks they performed (besides Need You Now), but I guess that is part of the point of touring. They got a great response to all their better known songs and the crowd was on their feet throughout. They also totally rocked the audience with a terrific cover of R-O-C-K in the USA. I do wish that they would chat a little or tell a story or two to let us know them a bit. Charles did mention that they had a special guest in the audience - Bob Seeger. Hillary and Charles (what a cutie) also managed to slap quite a few hands while performing (although nothing like the number of fans that McGraw later made contact with!!). Lady A is still performing without any special staging or effects, other than moving out a piano for a couple songs. Hilliary and Charles did begin Need You Now standing on opposite ends of the crosswalk that ran from the left risers to the right risers (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CECpC4TWi48 )
and then joined midway at the climax of the song - that was nice. They closed their set with “Run to You” during which Hillary accepted a cowboy hat from a fan. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Q5Hd41rug Too bad the brilliant lights on them wash out the videos something awful.
A heavy canvas curtain had kept most of the stage hidden during the first two acts. During Tim’s opening they projected his enlarged shadow, with his distinctive cowboy stance and hat, on the curtain, eliciting screams even before the curtain dropped. He riled up all the ladies in the crowd by starting out with a provocative rendition of “I may be a real bad boy, but baby I’m a real good man.” I’d have to say, though, that there was much closer to an even distribution of males and females in this audience than I am used to, as well as more older couples, so the screams weren’t deafening: ) As he walked forward from the rear of the stage I thought Tim was wearing a leopard-spotted black on white shirt, but once he came out on the catwalk I could see it was more of a multi-color seventies style shirt with flowers and stars among those spots. I must say that at first, from stage, he hardly looked like the Tim I expected. He has a pretty heavy dark beard (maybe for the film he is working on?) which really changes his appearance, especially from a distance. (I personally will be glad when the beard goes away).
Tim has an exceptionally wide, unbroken video screen this year, with a top edge that sort of stair-stepped down towards either side. Something about the screen gave it a bit of an “infinity” feel to it, like I was really looking off at the horizon. There was a catwalk that came out nearly to the center of the arena, as well as a crosswalk that paralleled the stage that allowed the performers to walk towards the risers on either side.
Tim’s second song was 1-2-3 - Like a Bird I Sing. I don’t know if his staff had scoped out the audience ahead of time, or if they had guests near the catwalk, but just a couple lines into this song Tim leans down and scoops up a tiny girl in pigtails and a pink cowboy hat from the audience who, not only seemed unruffled by this, but also vigorously sang along with him as he crouched beside her. See my brief YouTube clip at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVamD8hldUo
Tim then sang many favorites (Where the Green Grass Grows, Let It Go, She’s My Kind of Rain, I Like It, Back When, BBQ Tee-shirt, Just to See You Smile to mention a few. A couple times during the show Tim would sit at the end of one of the walks with his legs dangling down among his rapturous fans. He signed lots of autographs while performing (wonder what they actually look like when he is on the move like that!). About midway in his set he brought out a stool and his guitar and a tall narrow fluttering curtain was lowered behind him. That flimsy moving curtain became kind of a translucent video screen projecting a huge somewhat ghostly image of Tim playing his guitar. See my clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rmqLRUE6Xg
Tim did tell us a few fun stories. His first solo acoustic number from his stool he said was the first song he learned to play on the guitar. He went on to say he had gone to a pawn shop and traded his high school ring for a used guitar “ so I could get laid.” LOL “And it worked1” LMAO “For a while anyway.” He also talked about performing for twenty years, claiming 20 years ago he was in 7th grade (see clip at my blog) - LOL. After that he then brought out the Warren Brothers to accompany him on several songs. They cracked the audience up by immediately beginning to sing the chorus from Taylor Swift’s “Tim McGraw”. Then one of them said that Tim had paid them to write that song for Taylor (LOL). Once they got serious, Tim and they did a beautiful rendition of the Warren Brother song “Blank Sheet of Paper”. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inb6GOS2Lls
I was totally surprised later when Tim began singing Elton John’s Tiny Dancer!! See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-qK3AVBm9A I learned later that is not something new, but it was new and unexpected for me, a latecomer to country music. Then more favorites, finally closing with one of my favorites, the inspirational “Live Like You Were Dying” (just what I am trying to do). Tim, by that point, looked cutely casual with one of his shirttails sticking out instead of his usually carefully tucked appearance. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjSWKNe6jys It was a great evening and temporarily eased my concert yearnings.
Postscript: I could see my hotel in the distance when I left the arena. I and many others angled across the parking lot in that direction, only to find ourselves nowhere near a cleared exit or path. So, rather than backtracking, I chose hiking across a snowy field and over a mountain of plowed snow to reach the street ---COLD piggies for sure since I had no boots!
Tim talks a little (below) and sits among fans (next after that):
(Blogger.com seems to be having trouble keeping videos running.
