Keith Had Us 'Feelin' Alright' in Albany!

I had originally bought a pair of tickets for the Albany show because I expected it to be a convenient show for my oldest daughter, who works at Syracuse University, to attend with me. But it turned out that it didn’t fit her schedule : ( But since hubby would be traveling that weekend, I decided to go anyway and sold my extra ticket on the Monkeyville board.

I arrived in Albany the night before the concert and had a lovely dinner at Jack’s Oyster House just down the block from my hotel. That evening I discovered that Samsung was having one of their ticket and BSE giveaways in the morning at a store across the river from Albany in Renssalear. I had no plans (and also no car) but decided to cab out there in hopes of winning a Backstage Experience. I arrived about 90 minutes early and found 6 ambitious fans had beat me there - a couple had arrived at 5 am. It seems that word of these contests is just not getting out very well so that at the appointed time of 10 AM there were still only 8 of us!! So EVERYONE won a pair of good riser tickets and a randomly (sort of) selected person also won a pair of BSE passes. I didn’t need the tickets and tried to find someone to give them to, but had no success (what a shame!).

Maybe the Monkeyville board should keep a list of folks who would like last minute free tickets for each show.

I also “won” in another way in that I made a couple new ‘Keith-crazy” friends, Eileen and Marion. They were nice enough to take me in - giving me a ride back to Albany in their impressively decorated Keith-mobile. We stopped for a Cracker Barrel breakfast on the way, then went to the arena to pick up our will call tickets for the evening. We oggled the couple buses parked right next to the Box Office entrance and saw Jerry relaxing and catching a few rays in a lawn chair between the buses. We would have liked to stay and watch and look around more, but felt rather conspicuous in the Keith-mobile, so eventually left the Box Office parking.

Once I was down on the arena floor that evening I got to see other KU buddies (Leslie and Cindy) but missed talking to Corni who was higher up in the risers.Once again the Christmas presale came through with flying colors - 5th row seats in the center of the left side. But I actually only stayed there for Jake’s set - then moved to my friend Leslie’s seat on the aisle when she went up to the stage (I love the freedom of movement of an aisle seat).

Some of the Albany highlights:

Jake changed his setlist to include Wide Awake. and included some Albany lyrics in Starting With Me.

During his first conversation with the audience, Keith read a sign over in the left risers saying “We’ve got flowers for you.” So he called them down, meeting them halfway, to get the flowers and give them a thank you hug, then set the pretty bouquet where it could be seen, leaning it up against Chris’s drums. “Friendly town tonight!”

Here is Stupid Boy.

When Keith asked how many in the audience were from Albany the response was kind of middling in volume, so then he asked how many were from out of town and got an immense response. This was reinforced later when his Kiss a Girl contestants were all out of towners so he had to kind of fudge and pretend that a woman from PA had recently moved to NY so he could pretend to have a hometown contestant. : )

When he looked at those in the risers way in the back of the arena, He told them those up at the top by the railing looked “like they were in a treehouse” and that they should have a sign saying “No Girls Allowed”.

Keith gave one of his big squeals during Boondocks.

A Long Hot Summer nearly as hot as our weather has been.

Because I had been in Leslie’s aisle seat I headed back to the small stage at just the right time and scored an upfront, on the rail perfect viewing position for his songs there - highlight of my evening! Here is I’m In.

In Jeans On he personalized it for Albany with

“You and me, we'll go motorbike ridin' in the sun

And the wind in upstate New York”

and had fun with the song with his singing upside down from under the mike and giving us an extra deep “Feeling alright!” and plenty of flippage during the guitar interlude.

I must say that, up close, Keith’s blue jeans, although always looking so good on him, had a strange dark sheen like he had been sitting on coal dust. (Perhaps I should have offered to try to brush them off? : )

During Keith’s singing of Kiss a Girl he almost cracked himself up by changing the lyrics to:

“And she broke my heart

Broke it right in FOUR”

He had a silly little boy grin of satisfaction with his little joke and briefly paused in amusement.

Of course the Kiss-a-Girl Sing-off is always a highlight, but Keith must not have been impressed with the performances of the first 3 contestants, because he decided after the fact to bring up a fourth.

Here is Sweet Thing.

When Keith lead the audience in a round of “Yeah, yeah - whoa-ho’s” at the end of Somebody Like You, he encouraged us to “Raise the friskin’ roof!!”

During the final thank yous of the evening Keith thanked everyone for sticking around to the very end (much more so than at the last Uncasville show) rather than heading home, and then sort of added his thoughts, probably referring to the reciprocal feelings of love flowing between he and the audience, saying “You ARE home!” : )