Kenny Chesney (and friends)
Today me, Cin, Mo, and Matt, went to the Kenny Chesney concert at FedEx field in DC. This was much less of a concert and much more of an all-day music festival. The concert started at 4.30pm. We got there around 3.45pm and after driving through a mile or so of parking lots, we found a place to park. FedEx field has the largest set of parking lots I have ever seen. After a short walk, we headed up and found our seat ... the very top row of the stadium directly facing the stage. Right under my seat ran a concrete separation joint, indicating me and being directly in the center of the stadium, facing the stage. Being on the top row wasn't all that great as there were two fences separating me from falling off - granted you couldn't see through them very well (but you could!), but still not my first choice of seating.
The concert started right at 4.30p with Uncle Kracker (my favorite of all of the performers). He did a short (30 minutes) set which rocks - I do like my music alot. Then, after a 20 minute break, we had Pat Green - I only knew one song of his (Wave on Wave) but he was pretty good. He was on for about 30 minutes as well. Then came Gretchen Wilson, who was quite good. She did alot of new stuff and then did a one-song encore, I'm Here for the Party (she finished with the Redneck Woman song). Gretchen was on for about 45. minutes. Next up was Keith Urban. I'm not a big Keith Urban fan so I was a little unhappy that he stretched his set out to an hour and fifteen minutes (including a 15 minute cover of Tom Petty's Free Fallin'). I didn't realize how many of his songs I knew, but that makes sense as that all sound very similar to each other. After this set, Kenny Chesney finally came on (around 9.15p - almost five hours after the concert started!). He was pretty good and did one song each with Keith Urban, Gretchen Wilson, and Uncle Kracker. Then he brought out Sammy Hagar (you may remember him as being David Lee Roth's replacement as the lead singer of Van Halen - IMHO, he was the downfall of that band). They did three songs together and then around 11.00p, Chesney's set ended. He did two songs as an encore, the last of which is the She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy song which I really like.
We actually left our seats between the two encore songs and were walking down the escalators when Tractor ended. We got to our car and then spent a good 45 minutes or so in traffic (FedEx field parking and traffic sucks. They didn't plan this well. It is a VERY poorly designed parking lot and the folks that were "directing" traffic were quite inept). All that and I had almost no gas (gas light on the whole time) and we were sitting idling in traffic. So we finally got out, got gas, dropped Mo and Matt off, and then headed home, long since abandoning our plans to go out to dinner.
So, the concert was quite good. We paid alot for this - the $25 tickets we had were doubled in cost by Ticketmaster "service charges" and each ticket had a $8 parking fee on it - the parking at that place isn't worth $0.08, much less $32 (since there were four of us in the truck). We did easily get our money - one concert ended up with five acts and an unannounced guest (Sammy Haggar). The seats weren't great but they were not bad either - we had a great view of the stage and the entire stadium. We saw other friends of ours there, who ended up sitting one section over and a couple rows down. The music selection was good and very enjoyable (although the audio mixing and balancing was not very good). The parking and logistics sucked. Finally, I think I would have enjoyed Kenny Chesney's set more if it wasn't so late. I was not expecting a seven hour concert and I think having four opening acts was too much. While they were all good, it made the concert too long and at the end I was very tired and didn't enjoy it nearly as much as it they had left one of the openers out. But, the concert was good. We all had a good time and the extended playlists made the ticket price well worth it and led to a very relaxing experience.
The concert started right at 4.30p with Uncle Kracker (my favorite of all of the performers). He did a short (30 minutes) set which rocks - I do like my music alot. Then, after a 20 minute break, we had Pat Green - I only knew one song of his (Wave on Wave) but he was pretty good. He was on for about 30 minutes as well. Then came Gretchen Wilson, who was quite good. She did alot of new stuff and then did a one-song encore, I'm Here for the Party (she finished with the Redneck Woman song). Gretchen was on for about 45. minutes. Next up was Keith Urban. I'm not a big Keith Urban fan so I was a little unhappy that he stretched his set out to an hour and fifteen minutes (including a 15 minute cover of Tom Petty's Free Fallin'). I didn't realize how many of his songs I knew, but that makes sense as that all sound very similar to each other. After this set, Kenny Chesney finally came on (around 9.15p - almost five hours after the concert started!). He was pretty good and did one song each with Keith Urban, Gretchen Wilson, and Uncle Kracker. Then he brought out Sammy Hagar (you may remember him as being David Lee Roth's replacement as the lead singer of Van Halen - IMHO, he was the downfall of that band). They did three songs together and then around 11.00p, Chesney's set ended. He did two songs as an encore, the last of which is the She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy song which I really like.
We actually left our seats between the two encore songs and were walking down the escalators when Tractor ended. We got to our car and then spent a good 45 minutes or so in traffic (FedEx field parking and traffic sucks. They didn't plan this well. It is a VERY poorly designed parking lot and the folks that were "directing" traffic were quite inept). All that and I had almost no gas (gas light on the whole time) and we were sitting idling in traffic. So we finally got out, got gas, dropped Mo and Matt off, and then headed home, long since abandoning our plans to go out to dinner.
So, the concert was quite good. We paid alot for this - the $25 tickets we had were doubled in cost by Ticketmaster "service charges" and each ticket had a $8 parking fee on it - the parking at that place isn't worth $0.08, much less $32 (since there were four of us in the truck). We did easily get our money - one concert ended up with five acts and an unannounced guest (Sammy Haggar). The seats weren't great but they were not bad either - we had a great view of the stage and the entire stadium. We saw other friends of ours there, who ended up sitting one section over and a couple rows down. The music selection was good and very enjoyable (although the audio mixing and balancing was not very good). The parking and logistics sucked. Finally, I think I would have enjoyed Kenny Chesney's set more if it wasn't so late. I was not expecting a seven hour concert and I think having four opening acts was too much. While they were all good, it made the concert too long and at the end I was very tired and didn't enjoy it nearly as much as it they had left one of the openers out. But, the concert was good. We all had a good time and the extended playlists made the ticket price well worth it and led to a very relaxing experience.
posted by jeffsix at 1:25 PM
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