Say Goodbye...

...to my sanity. Yes, it's true. I have become a roadie. After the concert on Sunday night, I realized why people spend summers traveling to go to DMB shows. During that show, I turned to my friend and I said, "There is no other place in the world that I would rather be right now than here. Unless of course it was 30 rows closer." It was the truth.

As we were walking the mile from the parking lot as quickly as possible, we heard Don't Drink the Water coming from the Pavilion. At that moment, we decided we needed to run the rest of the way. We ran to Will Call, we ran through the gates (smuggling the camera in the pocket of my purse covered in tampons worked), we ran around the pavilion towards our section, and we ran to our seats. We made it there as Hunger was ending and the intro to *SAY WHAT?* Say Goodbye was beginning. This song had not been played in almost 2 years, and has been quite rare for about 4 years now. The crowd went nuts. We went nuts. It was unbelievable. Had we missed this song, I think I would still be crying today. Our seats were right next to the tech booth and obviously, center stage. It was awesome. It was like we were chillin' with the lighting and sound guys. As soon as we got there, I spotted the set list taped to the equipment next to Fenton.

(click to enlarge)


On this piece of equipment, the guy would touch the screen to pick the song that was being played next, and those controls were automated to slide up and down on their own according to the song.



I know it was cheating, but I could not help myself leaning over looking to see what song was going to be next. And I'm not going to lie, one of the first things I looked at was the encore. When I saw Watchtower at the bottom, I about crapped my pants. I was so excited. The show went on and I was in heaven. I took a ton of pictures, which happened to turn out better on the actual print than the cd, but you can get the general idea from these (remember to just click on them to enlarge):

Lights on Carter during the Say Goodbye intro


Awesome lighting (Fenton rocks!)


The Firedancer in blue


Jammin' with Robert Randolph (amazing!) during Bayou


Watchtower!


The boys wave goodbye


During the show, sitting in the tech booth was the producer of the Stand Up album, Mark Batson. He was groovin' when the band was playing, especially during the insane Bayou performance. As soon as they finished Watchtower, I turned to see if I could ask Mark to get a picture, but he had disappeared. I also decided that I wanted a picture of that setlist so I asked the nice tech guy if I could take a picture, and he said yes. I then asked if I could just have it, and he looked at me like I was crazy and said no. So I just took a picture. You'll notice that it says Dirt Hill before Watchtower, but they switched it up for American Baby. I was bummed, I hadn't heard Old Dirt Hill yet.



One more thing. For all of you who think that I am insane, I ask you to watch this video. There was a guy who snuck his kick butt camera in and captured a video of Say Goodbye and Watchtower. I am going to post the Watchtower video here, and when you watch it, imagine being there. How could you not get excited during this amazing song/show/lighting extravaganza?