Chris!

I can not say enough good stuff about Chris Daughtry’s free concert in Greensboro Friday night.  C and I ended up going by ourselves.  It took an hour longer than the normal 1 hr 45 min. ride which did make for quite a long unplanned road trip but fun nevertheless.  I have never been to Greensboro and made it simply by Google maps which I was quite proud of.  Even found a parking space on the side of a downtown street where someone was pulling out of even though all of the parking decks had Lot Full signs on them.  There were droves of people walking towards their Main Street and there was no doubt we were in the right place. 

Once we got down there, we stood in line forever at Papa John’s even after they ran out of pizzas and were waiting for another delivery of personal pizzas.  The downtown was obviously not expecting the huge turnout and the vendors were few and far between.  I have to say Charlotte does a much better job of feeding the crowds.  Anyway, with pizza and drinks in hand, we made our way to the stage to put our stake in the crowd and didn’t plan to leave.  We scooted up as we could, but I’m telling you soon enough we were packed like sardines.  I couldn’t even move without my camera hitting against someone.  People were standing on nearby roofs and hanging out restaurant and business windows.  We were pretty far back but I could see the stage and Dad’s super-zoom lens got decent pictures.  The sound was great though, no problems hearing. 

 C got faint though before Chris came on and had to get out of the crowd.  The weather was a warm 75 and in a tight crowd, it felt more like 90.  I stayed put though and she called to let me know she was ok, she could still hear fine and was just going to watch the big (huge) screen.  I had stood in my spot for about 2 hours by the time Chris came on stage.  I was stuck in the middle and couldn’t tell how many but I knew from the traffic trying to go through and the sound, it was a lot.  They announced that although they had expected 7-8,000, the estimate was 23,000 people were in attendance.  Yikes. (I’m not sure if you can see it but I was standing to the rigth of the light pole that is to the right of the white tent).

Chris sang almost every song on his CD, 2 covers and then sang Home like 3 times.  He sang them beautifully and it sounded exactly like the CD, which I love because some people have completely different recording voices.  He came back twice to sing more because guess why??  He is using the footage from the concert for his next video for Home. Woot!  I am so excited.  The crowd was definitely pumped.  And I was in heaven!  It was so great.  He looked great, coming out in a black tank, looking as if he’d been working out quite a bit.  He had a beard, shaved from his chin down.  And lots of eye makeup, I presume for the video shoot.  Maybe he does that for all the concerts, probably but who knows.

C and I met up after he finally stopped after 2 encores (the second time asking our permission to sing again to get more shots for the video) and I bought two concert t-shirts.  One short-sleeve and one long-sleeve with a hood.  We then tried to get a glimpse of him going to his bus but the event staff shooed away anyone without backstage passes. 

I proudly made my way out of downtown and back to 85.  It only took us about 1.5 hr to get back home although I didn’t actually get home until about 1:30am.  I was so excited I wasn’t tired at all though.