Back in Nashville - With Answers to Your Questions

I presume by now the obvious things have been passed around the internet, although I haven't had a chance to do much reading. However, there are a few things I wanted to share that might not be "out there" as much.

Before I do that, I have to tell you how AWESOME it was to get to meet Jona, Allison, and Tracey... and see Jen looking like she was going to deliver that baby any second. I waved at Bob & Renee across the arena. Did not meet up with Rachel, but I talked to her on the phone. I couldn't get to her section from where I was sitting.

Downtown KC we found to be very much lacking in good convenient places to eat. There's a place called Willies across the street from the Arena that seemed to be the hot spot - it was packed. We wound up at some fast food style Italian place at Walnut and 12th. Salad was good, no wait to get in. And funny enough, we wound up with the table flag for our order being 77.

We were surprised that there wasn't a big Garthapalooza taking over the downtown the way big events tend to do. Nothing on the outside of the Sprint Center except for the LED above the box office -- lots of sports banners and such, but nothing Garth. No real marquis for the building.

Doors to the arena are supposed to open at 6. They were about 20 minutes late last night, there was some opening night things to work out. Lines wrapped around the block are crazy... go up to the middle section of the Main Entrance and you'll get in much quicker. Honestly, with reserved seats, there's no need to get there at 6... mosey in around 6:45 and save yourself waiting in the cold. And it WAS cold!

The show itself started about 15 minutes late... Trisha performed just under 30 minutes... and then Garth went on right around 9. Of course, had to be done by 11, and he neatly finished up just a few minutes till. Main part of the show was an hour and a half. Will be interesting to see what that big long break in between their sets translates into in the movie theatres.

Everything he played in the main part of the show, not surprisingly, was from The Ultimate Hits. There were several songs he did NOT play, which leads me to believe he's going to change the setlist up every night. Or maybe he just ran out of time.

Trisha flew to Nashville last night after her performance, she had media obligations here in town this morning. So I'm hoping her not coming out to perform something with her hubby will not necessarily be the norm every night.

There were no special guests last night, but do understand... tonight's show is Media Night. Last night was the "knock the rust off' night, with tomorrow being the night most of the press is getting to come in and see the show. So I will be curious to hear how the show is different tonight.

We were very blessed to be well taken care of last night, and being allowed to do the on site reporting that Jon did was, I think, extra cool for the XM Nation. Hope some of you heard it. Garth summoned us backstage prior to the show, and we got to spend some time hanging out in his dressing room, just Jon, me, Mandy, and GB. The first thing he said was "how come YOU guys don't look nervous?" and then apologized that he wasn't going to remember anything we talked about because HE was so nervous. The downside to Leno getting cancelled was he had a lot of extra time that day to get more nervous, he told us. I told him the upside was that those of us who came across the country for Opening Night were really relieved that he was going to show up. ;-) That made him laugh.

One of the things I was able to tell him was the great reaction we'd gotten to our ShortCuts episode, and that we were getting hit by people wanting to know how they could see the new "We Shall Be Free" video. He said they're working on trying to find a home for it that will be as big as that song is. I told him that I just wanted to make sure he knew that the fans were asking for it.

I was very kindly sent home with a generous bag of merchandise -- and wound up wearing my hoodie home because I hadn't planned on room to pack this stuff. Will get a photo of it all later tonight so you can see some for yourself. A correction to an earlier post, it wasn't the 1 artist / decade / 1hundred million on the shirt... it was the 1 artist / 1 city / 9 times slogan (paraphrasing!). When we talked to him about the merch he seemed particularly tickled by the "Cat in the Hat" shirt.

One of the things we wondered going into the show was how well his voice - and his body - would hold up. If you remember the LA Forum show during the C2C specials, he was pretty winded pretty quick. There was none of that last night, his voice held perfectly throughout, and he sounded great. Physically, he's in amazing shape.

The crowd was completely nuts... and he took his time soaking it all in. Before the show even they were loud, the whole arena was doing the wave... they were chanting "We Want Garth" -- it was crazy. During the show it was just non stop thunderous applause after each song. My favorite line of the night was when he grinned and said, almost to himself, "You guys aren't going anywhere, are you?" And man, they were loud singers -- even on "More Than A Memory" they knew all the words. There were times the crowd was louder than he was.

I don't want to use the term "low key" to describe the show, but it was definitely a performance all about the music, not a bunch of flashy tricks, pyro, and videos. There's a Jumbotron screen in the arena that functioned as a closer view, but no video elements. Surprisingly, there weren't commercials for the album - in fact, I don't think Garth even mentioned that it was going to be in stores in a matter of hours. The biggest thing I observed was that he had a comfort level... comfortable on stage, definitely - but more so, comfortable in his own skin.

If you have other questions about the show, feel free to ask.