(I’m listening to Johnny Cash tonight)

I bought the wife Lady Antebellum tickets for our anniversary.  I hired a sitter for our kids and everything.  It was an official date.  This fit right along with our recent decision to start buying experiences instead of stuff.

The wife and I don’t go to many concerts together.  We like to, but we just don’t.  There are a few reasons why.  It’s hard for us to find a show we both want to attend, which would justify buying tickets and springing for a babysitter.  That could be a $200 night out and if one of us isn’t really “into it,” then it doesn’t make sense to us to spend the money.  When that happens, the other person is like, “Why don’t you just go with a friend and I’ll stay home with the kids.”

We have a hard time finding shows to go to because our tastes in music are a bit different.  I’m a little older than the wife.  The age gap doesn’t make much of a difference for anything else in life, except for the fact that I could be a U.S. Senator or president and she couldn’t, but it actually does play a role in our music preferences.  My years of high school were 1992-1996, which were great years for almost any genre.  Alternative Rock was getting into full swing and had fully taken over from the hair-metal days, R&B and Hip-Hop were mainstream, rap became popular with everyone in urban areas to suburbia, country music was transforming from its twangy sound into a more youthful tone, and some 80’s bands were still making some new albums.  Heck, even pop music was catchy!  Musically, it was a great time to be in the prime of my youth.  The wife, she was still a kid during those years, so when I say, “Oh! (Fill in the name of the 90’s band) is coming to Denver, do you want to go?”  The answer that’s most common is, “I’ve heard of them.  I think my brother used to really like them.”  That means, “I’ll go if you want me to, but feel free to go by yourself or with a friend.”  I’ll say that to the wife too.  During the wife’s formative years, I had already been set in my musical ways.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t or wouldn’t listen to new music, but I just didn’t really get into the musicians that were popular during her time.  We have some crossover; for example, we went to a Coldplay show together a while back, and we’ve seen Counting Crows together, but, finding something we both like and can justify spending the money on can be tricky.

This bring us to Lady Antebellum.  The wife calls them “Lady A.”  I don’t know them well enough to call them that.  It’s kind of like when you barely know someone and they have a nickname, but you call them by their real name because you feel like you don’t know them well enough to call them by their nickname because it would be weird.  I’ll still call them “Lady A” because it’s shorter to type, but just know I feel weird about it.  Anyway, the wife has always wanted to see Lady A and she had dropped a couple of hints, so I decided to get the tickets and surprise her for our anniversary.  The wife likes country music.  Me, it’s not my first choice unless I’m driving through Wyoming, Montana, or South Dakota.  I have about 50 country songs in my iTunes catalog, and when you take out Johnny Cash, that number dwindles to about 25.  Those 25 are in there mostly because of nostalgic reasons; they remind me of old friends I went to high school with and they listened to it, so I sort of like those songs.

I want to back up a bit.  I like country music, I just don’t like the “new country” music.  I can listen to Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, Conway Twitty, Waylon Jennings, or any “twangy” country with a slide guitar in it, all day.  Back in 1992-1996, country music began getting younger and this “new country” music started coming out.  The country music stations were even branding themselves as “the new country music station.”  It had more of a pop sound to it, and to me, it just sounded like they were trying too hard to cater to the younger crowd.  It doesn’t mean it was bad, in fact, a lot of it was very good, it just didn’t suit my fancy.  Because of that, I just didn’t get into it.  (A sidenote: In the not too distant past, one of my friends explained to me that Garth Brooks was never a part of Brooks and Dunn.  I thought I knew that, but if I was on “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire” and that was the million dollar question, I would have had to phone a friend just to be 100% sure.)  Anyway, country music continues to get more hip and blur the lines.  Some musicians who began their careers in country are now pop musicians.  If I go to a country show, I expect belt buckles, boots, cowboy hats, and American flags, not skinny jeans and tennis shoes.  Maybe that’s just me.

So now you have an idea of where my head was at buying Lady A tickets.  The two, most important reasons I purchased the tickets was that I knew the wife would love them and I was buying an experience for us, instead of a some stuff for her.  Needless to say, we had a blast.

We saw the show at an outdoor venue called “Fiddler’s Green.”  It was a perfect night to be outdoors.  We spread out our blanket in the GA section and took our seats on the grassy hill.  Brett Young was the opener and I really enjoyed his set.  He’s an up-and-comer in the country music scene and you could tell it was a thrill for him to share the stage with Lady A.  I liked his whole set and will probably purchase his CD.  I like to support new artists.

Kelsea Ballerini was the second act, and needless to say, we lost a little interest.  After her first song, the wife said, “She’s trying to be Carrie Underwood.  She’s actually like a cross between Brittney Spears and Carrie, except not as good.” So, we started to people watch.  We’d try to guess if people were on dates, or how hard people tried to put together their wardrobe for a country show.  We watched the people in front of us who had their new baby and a 4-year-old at the show and playfully said to each other, “I’m glad we got a sitter.”  We talked to the mom behind us who had brought her 8 and 10-year-old daughters to the show and how that was going to be us someday.  We just took time to be ourselves, spend time together, and celebrate our anniversary.  Keep in mind, Kelsea Ballerini was still on stage.  She did an acoustic version of “Closer” by The Chainsmokers (which further supported my theory of country music become more pop).  We started to get itchy to see Lady A, but the second set never seemed to end.  Just when we thought she was wrapping up, she’d introduce another song.  She was talented, but just wasn’t our cup of tea, I guess.

Finally, the lights went out and Lady A came on stage.  Everyone stood up.  The wife got excited.  Lady A is very talented.  They have great voices, one of the band members can play like 15 instruments, and they are very entertaining.  I knew exactly 4 of the songs they played, 5 if you count the cover of Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love,” but it was a great show.  Like true parents who had a sitter, we left a couple of songs early to beat the traffic because we had an early morning ahead of us.  The wife had a medial procedure scheduled for the next morning.

Lady A didn’t disappoint, and the wife and I shared a great experience together.  I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a night than with the woman I promised do this stuff with 9 years ago.  Happy Anniversary, honey!  I hope you enjoy Our Lady Peace as much as I enjoyed Lady A!