Day 40

Well, I've made it as long as Noah. I can't even imagine living in an ark for this long.

Man (and woman), I had an awesome whole day yesterday. It started with a business meeting early that went well, then some golf that you already read about. Then I had a good dinner at Lemmon's (or read a review here). Then it was off to Tom Petty.

So, here's the story. I'm on the way to golf when I get this text message:

"Free ticket to Tom Petty row 10 and
backstage passes meet the drummer,
all for free tonight!
Just say yes"

Well, I did what most people would and said yes. The tickets turned out not to be totally free and we were in the 14th row, but we really did have backstage passes.

Our backstage pass

The view from the seats before the show

The view during the show

The entire experience was awesome. I rode with Joe (the guy that got lost in Oklahoma, who, after reading my blog about his lack of directional skills bought a new car that has a GPS thingy, and also is friends with the drummer and got the tix and passes) and his friend Joe. We had a lot of fun on the way and saw a bunch of interesting people in the parking lot (shocking at a Petty show, I know).

When we finally get in the show, Steve Winwood is just starting to play, but we're not super-huge fans, and we have backstage passes, so we go backstage (and yes, we made several Wayne's World references).

Backstage is nothing like I expected. Here is what I totally unrealistically expected. We would walk through some doors into a chill room where all kinds of people are hanging out, including the band. I see several band members just chilling on a couch with a guitar talking about when they wrote the song, or perhaps when they played it in front of hundreds of thousand of people. I would walk over to Tommy (we'd totally be on a first name basis by now) and have him take a picture with me for this ol' blog. And basically we'd just hang with the band until it was time for them to go on. Then when they played, they would totally point to us and give a little wave or something. It'd be cool, you know?

Here is what did happen. Backstage has several levels of access. We had pretty much the lowest one. We were to the right of the stage behind a big wooden privacy fence. There was a blue tent over us and about 4 people hanging out. Tom's kid came out with about 6 girls and was running all over the place. Then the bass player came out and actually chatted with us for a minute, until the hot girls he met at a bar the night before came, then he took them to the "real" backstage. And we just kinda hung there for a while. It was pretty cool, and they did have private bathrooms, so there's that.

"Our" backstage

The "real" backstage (through the door)

When we saw the lights go down and heard them start playing, we figured no one else from the band was likely to come out and say hey to us, so we went to our seats. The show was really awesome. The lights and videos were pretty sweet, and we were close enough to see pretty much everything. And, even if you're not a huge fan, you know most of the songs he plays well enough to sing along to.

Tom Petty on our end of the stage

All around everything was awesome (maybe except for the guys right behind us that were smoking a huge blunt for most of the show, but again, it's Petty, what else can you expect?).

Here is a video I took with my phone of "American Girl". As my friend Sean pointed out, it may be best to mute it, or at least turn down the speakers before you watch, the audio didn't turn out so hot. If you do listen to it, I think that the voices you can hear towards the end are Joe and I singing along (what else are you gonna do, right?)



And, of course, here's the picture of the day, where I look like I don't have a liver and my eye is swollen shut (my camera phone really does suck, but I assure you I am in good health).


See ya tomorrow!