The concert actually started a few months ago. See, I use a place called VetTix – they give away tickets to concerts around the country to … you guessed it … veterans. For their more prestige concerts, they do a lottery system; you enter accumulated tokens for a chance to win. Billy Strings popped up and while I’m not overly familiar, my oldest, Kerouac is, so I gave him a call, mind you the concert is in Oakland, Kerouac lives in Minnesota.
“Hey bud, would you be interested in coming to California to see Billy Strings,” I asked after we’d chit-chatted for a minute.
“Heck yeah – I’d need to figure out the travel, time off and all that, but heck yeah.”
“Well, it’s a lottery, so if I win, I’ll let you know, but let’s plan on it,” I said as I entered some of my tokens and read the drawing would be about six weeks later.
Fast forward to September 12 – around six p.m. I check my email and sure enough, I’d won two tickets! Hell Yes!
We’d already made flight arrangements figuring if we didn’t win the tickets it would just be an adventurous weekend!
Never let it be said this is a boring family. Home from the Dome Fire just long enough to wash a load of clothes, K, the twins and I woke up Friday morning, packed into Shaka -- our Nissan Xterra -- and set course about 100 miles west toward Oakland with a side quest in the other direction to Sacramento to drop off the dog for the weekend and pick up some Iris bulbs we’d ordered from a local farm.
The timing on this was going to be tight, get to Oakland, drop K and the boys at the rented house, back over to SFO to grab Kerouac, flight arriving at 5:35 p.m., across the bridge to the Oakland Arena in time for the show.
Airports are always a mess and today was no exception, circling through the arrival lanes I finally spot Kerouac in his blue flannel, slide into the pick up lane, jump out just long enough to give him a massive hug, in the car and away we go.
“How the hell are you?!” I blurt out as drivers on the 101 North do their best to kill us both.
“Not too bad at all,” he responds eyes widening as someone screams into the shoulder to pass us. “Crazy drivers,” he somewhat nonchalantly mutters.
We catch up for a minute as we make our way and I tell him he absolutely has to call the boys. My twins are eight and they absolutely worship their big brother – his phone is dead so I ring up K on mine and hand the phone to Kerouac. They chit chat for a while, excited little voices on the other end telling him what they see at the house and how excited they are to see him. We say goodbye and make our way into bridge traffic grind.
“We’re cutting it close, but we’ll make it,” I say to him.
We both are doing the mental math, gates open at seven, no way the band’s starting until at least 8 – we’ll be fine but let’s be honest, the slight manic of this all is adding something delicious to the mix!
The Oakland Arena is madness.
“Holy shit!” I say to him as we make our way through the assorted vendors hawking tie-dye and bongs, hot dogs and beer.
“I had no idea we were coming to a festival,” I exclaim trying to speak loud enough for him to hear me, but not so loud as to offend anyone – I’m not one to yuck someone’s yum but my guess is there was enough galaxy gas going around that anyone who heard me would have just laughed it off. This was my first clue that things were not what I had thought.
Think Oakland and you think punk, hip-hop and maybe a bit of the sixties hippie movement still hanging on. What I didn’t expect to find was this odd assortment of hippies, cowboys and preppies all milling, sucking on balloons on their way to the security checkpoint. There’s no doubt in my mind Strings bedevils the traditionalists in the bluegrass community, if he were dead, I’d imagine ole Ricky Skaggs would be turning in his grave listening to a Billy Strings concert. Rock, bluegrass, jamgrass, whatever it is you want to call Billy Strings it is apparently exactly what Oakland was looking for on a Friday night as it felt like the whole damn city was packed into narrow rows of tents, half of them fingers in the air looking for a Miracle ticket.
“Sure as hell didn’t look like this when I saw him in Atlanta,” a bemused Kerouac leans in to whisper in my ear.
Beers in hand, concert merch securely under our arms we make our way to our seats – not bad seats at all, thank you VetTix! The countdown begins as someone booms across the area – 15 minutes fam! We talk for a while, snap a photo together and engage with the fella sitting behind us.
10 minutes fam!
The crowd lets out an excited whoop and Kerry (that’s our shortened name for him) and I continue catching up. It’s been more than a year since we’ve seen each other, so we’re doing our best to compress a year into ten minutes. Don’t get me wrong we talk all the time – trading music, swapping life events and doling out advice on occasion.
Five minutes!
Now everyone is locked in and holy shit this is not what I was expecting. For concerts, the arena holds just over 19,000 people and it sure looks to me like every available nook and cranny has a soul tucked within it.
“Damn, really didn’t know Oakland would show up this hard, ” I say to Kerry.
“Me either,” he says. “But then I really don’t know what I was expecting.”
The stadium goes dark and the band begins, Ker lets out an excited yelp as the band launches into “In the Clear.”
“Oh shit, I love this song,” he exclaims as his whole body starts pulsating to the rhythm.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about Billy Strings. He’s one of those bands Kerry has been trying to get me to listen to for years I just never had. What’s all the fuss and suddenly I see it.
Kerry is in the zone, the band is in the zone, the whole fucking arena is in the zone and now I’m in the zone. Whole. Lee. Shit.
Without a pause the five players on the stage morph “In the Clear” to “Turmoil and Tinfoil” and thus begins a 20-minute jam session flowing from the purest bluegrass tradition to heavy metal ducking in and out of psychedlic. Billy sings a few lines and each band member takes a few minutes to show off their wildly impressive skills behind their instrument of choice.
With five studio albums to his credit, Strings has more than enough material to entertain a crowd and boy-howdy does he. Old favorites (I can judge this by Kerry singing along) with tracks from his new album So Much for Goodbyes thrown in – the crowd below already seems to know every single word to every single song off the new album.
And on they go for a solid hour and a half – blistering being the word coming back to my mind time and time again.
“God damn that dude can play his guitar,” a nearly breathless Kerry says to me over the din after another insanely impressive five minute guitar segue.
“Folks, we’re going to take a little break and be right back,” Strings tells the crowd. It’s been more than an hour and let’s be honest a lot of bands would have thrown in the towel by now, but this mother fucker is just getting started.
Kerry and I take turns hitting the head while grabbing some refills on the way back. We use the interlude to catch up some more. The lights go down and the band starts again, the mood has come down some with Strings running through some of his slower material – makes sense let’s ease this crowd back into things. “Live to Tell” begins, Kerry leans over to tell me this is his favorite song on the new album so far.
“Damn, that was absolutely everything I had hoped for,” Kerouac says as the song winds down. Another hour or so, the energy slightly throttled down, it’s like the band all did a rail before the first set and hit some of Oakland’s dankest green for the second. The energy is still undeniably there, it’s just down a notch which doesn’t seem to bother the swaying throng of bodies below us.
A few minutes before 11 hits my phone lights up – K is texting me.
“Hey, any sense of a ETA? I’ve got two feral monkeys here doing their best to stay awake until you two get home.”
I truly have no idea how much longer this is going to go on – could be ten minutes could be another two hours.
“They just started the second set – I have no idea maybe another hour?” I text back.
I look over to Kerry while I show him the messages.
“Want to bail after this song? They really want to see you,” I say as the band below us just keeps going.
“Absolutely,” he says to me, “let’s go see those monkeys!”
“We’ll finish this song and then head out,” I say, we agree, I text K and we settle back in.
This was apparently a mistake, ten minutes later and there’s no indication the song is anywhere near concluding so we decide to go ahead and duck out.
The drive through Oakland is uneventful, I pull up to the Airbnb, drop Kerry off and pull back out to find street parking – I’m not optimistic, it’s a Friday night in Oakland.
After a quick prayer to the fairy gods I circle the block. Parking secured, I start walking toward the rental and hear K call me in the distance.
“Where’s Ker?!” she asks.
Slightly confused, “Um, in the house?” I respond.
“What house did you drop him off at then, we watched you pass us!” A slight panic starting to creep up inside me, I turn up the street to see Kerry walking down the hill.
“What the fuck, Dad?! Wrong house!” he laughs as he saunters down. “Think I ‘bout scared that poor old lady to death when she finally opened the door,” he says.
The monkeys swarm Kerry in hugs, words exploding from their mouths. K breaks through to give him a warm hug.
We wander into the house, two adults punch drunk on music, two eight year olds just plain punch drunk and a very tired Mama ready to put everyone to bed.
Never let it be said this family is boring.
A word about VetTix, they’re freakin aweome! -Veteran Tickets Foundation’s Tickets for Troops Program is dedicated to giving back to those who gave us so much. We team up with major sports teams, leagues, promoters, organizations, venues and every day event ticket holders to provide free tickets to currently serving and veterans of all branches of the US military.
Veteran Tickets Foundation is proud to announce that to date 41,465,714 event tickets have been donated to Vet Tix in all 50 states and Washington, DC to support our Military, Veterans, and their families. Below is the breakdown of these donated event tickets.
Strings has been and is an awesome musician... Jesse Welles is phenomenal on the philosophical psychosocial level as well as a fine musician. if you're not aware, i'm posting to fix that :-)