because you only live one time.
needtobreathe, boston, 11.04.2016
when needtobreathe announced the tour de compadres 2016, i felt pretty okay with the fact that none of their dates really lined up with my schedule. i've seen them perform a dozen times; it's okay if i miss them this time around right? and then H suggested i fly to boston so we could go to that show together, because she's never seen them play and how fun would that be? "you only live one time," she kept telling me.
it made me laugh out loud that her entire argument to me was literally "YOLO," but the joke was on me because i ended up booking a flight. to fly into boston the morning of the show, and back out again the next afternoon.
that's how i ended up spending $150, the most i've ever spent, to see needtobreathe for one night in boston. (previously, the most i'd spent was $110 to see them open for taylor swift from the tenth row.) (and for the sake of comparison, i think i paid around $12 the very first time i saw them. which was a local show, including a front row spot and a free meet & greet in the parking lot after the show.)
my flight landed at 10:30am and our check-in at the hotel wasn't until 3pm, so we had a good chunk of time to hang out in the city, drinking peet's coffee and paying $395 to park.
i was pretty exhausted from the week and not sleeping well the night before (or on my early flight), but we had so much fun. after we settled on a place to park (read: after coming to terms with having to pay our life savings in order to park anywhere), we mostly just wandered around while chatting and window shopping and getting lost.
when we got to our hotel, we were stoked to have a neat view from our hotel room.
and by that i mean probably about half of the photos we took during our trip were of this view. we were just a little bit obsessed. until i closed to curtains so i could get in a quick nap before the show because, despite not having blogged about it yet (like the a+ blogger that i am), i am 27 now. which means i am in that in-between stage, where i am past the point where i stay up all night for fun, but not yet at the point where i stay up all night for kids.
welshly arms opened the show, but unfortunately we arrived while they were on stage and spent their entire set figuring out our seating arrangement, so i have no photos from their performance, nor can i offer any opinion on their music.
the short story is, they didn't sell enough tickets to keep the back section (where our seats were) open, so we got upgraded and ended up in "floor 2." aka, a LOT closer but for no extra dollars.
fortunately, i do have this photo of our "floor 2" wristbands, in honor of the days when my friends and i would go to shows in boston every other weekend and somehow always ended up taking a photo like this. i have no idea why, especially because we used to have X's instead of wristbands. apparently, we were under 21 and proud of it.
also, this selfie we took with the glowing "compadres" banner in the background, and what looks like our body guard photo bombing us to the left.
parachute played next, and then mat kearney. who i love love love. and who i forgot always comes out into the crowd, and who was about three people away from us. who, also, played "heartbeat" as the middle-aged man next to me explained to his friend, loud and in depth, about the music video for that song.
thank you, sir.
but then needtobreathe came out and everything stopped. not really, but i stopped noticing what anyone else was doing or saying around me. (with the exception of the guy who said "this song changed my life!" during the quiet part at the beginning of "difference maker.") i don't even really know what H was doing, or if she had any fun at all. it's almost like i forget that anyone other than the people on stage even exist.
top three favorite moments:
- when bear introduced the band and said this about seth: "he's got a smile that'll break your heart and he's so good looking, it pisses me off." because, TRUE. IT'S ALL TRUE.
- when bo sang "clear." because i love when he gets to sing by himself.
- when bear was playing the piano, by himself, during the encore and sang parts of "don't wait for daylight" and "we could run away." because i always, always want them to play old songs and they never do except HE DID.
and then it was over. and we went back to our hotel room with the good view and i ate leftovers from lunch, using wooden coffee stirrers as chopsticks (good thing i recently practiced).
we woke up, got ready (kind of), ate breakfast, said goodbye to our view of the charles river, and parted ways. her, driving back to connecticut, and me, flying back to nashville. because that's what life looks like now. we fly to see each other, and needtobreathe, even if it's only for 28 hours. because, why not? you only live one time.