Dierks Bentley Concert

Our Thursday started early, getting ready to go by hooking up the red trailer to the truck, taking showers, drying hair, and loading Missy in the truck. The first stop we made was to eat at Mancino's in Glasgow, then to Lowes to buy some pressure treated lumber for the shed I'm building. After about an hour of sorting the wood, loading it on the cart, paying and then loading the wood in the red trailer, we left Lowes and pulled in to the gas station and filled up with gas. We left Glasgow and went to Smith's Grove and then over to Pauline and Brent's house. We went inside and played with the dogs a few minutes, then loaded Brent's lawn mower and riding mower in the trailer. We left Missy there and headed into Bowling Green about 3:30 PM. I wanted to buy a cordless drill/driver at Sam's Club, so we stopped there and shopped for a while. We checked out and loaded the stuff in the truck, then headed to WKU and the weather had turned foul. The rain was coming down hard, then it would lighten up, then rain hard again. I found Coach Powell's house with a little help from Linda and we were lucky that Joey, Coach Powell's wife, was backing out of the drive as we pulled up. Linda asked if it would be OK for us to park the truck there while we went to the concert. She said yes, so we parked as she left. We walked in the rain towards Diddle Arena and Joey pulled beside us and we talked a few minutes to Coach and Joey, then continued to the arena. There were lines to buy tickets and also lines to enter the building. They were too long to wait in, so we walked on around the arena and found a much shorter line. As we were about to enter the line, Stacey met one of the mascots for a radio station that was sponsoring part of the concert. We got in line and was able to move under the entrance and get out of the rain, whew, that was a major benefit.
 
The time was about 5:20 PM, ONLY one hour and forty minutes till the doors open. Really, the time went fairly quick as there were kids around making jokes and cutting up. We noticed we weren't the oldest people in line, but close to it! Finally, the doors opened and we rushed inside to find that there were NO CHAIRS on the main floor, so we picked some seats in the raised area that were centered on the stage.
   
This is when we realized we were 'of a different generation'. We didn't have a cell phone to call our friends and say, "Where are you sitting, I'm sitting right back here!" Almost everyone around us was doing that very thing, it was funny to Linda and me, almost like a cell phone was a status symbol that was a required piece of their 'outfit'. It seemed like they would have been lost without that 'cell phone security blanket' to play with when they had nothing else to do. Similiar to a pacifier given to an infant. Whatever, it's just an observations of two non-cell phone users. Oh well, the show started about 7:40 PM with the Randy Rogers Band playing the first set and they were pretty good. Their set lasted around 50 minutes, then about a 15 minute intermission while the equipment was changed.
 
Next up was Miranda Lambert, and she was quite a bit better. The crowd knew several of her songs and she had them singing along and dancing at the rear of the arena. She played a little under an hour and ended her performance with her hit, "Kerosene", and the crowd loved it.
 
So there was another short intermission, then the main show began a few minutes before 10 PM. The crowd was extremely loud when Dierks Bentley took the stage and he responded to their enthusiasm. I will say he was a superior performer that had the crowd involved better than most performers we have seen. Dierks interacted with the crowd and brought them to a frenzy several times by changing a few lines in songs. Once he seemed to fall down and let the girls grab him, I believe it was all planned, but it had an effect of generating excitement through the crowd. Later, Dierks began a song and there were five or six bras thrown on the stage toward him. He reacted by picking those up and gesturing towards the direction from where they had been thrown. He managed to dance with a girl in the crowd without leaving the stage and he generally put on a great show.
   
Dierks finished his set with "What was I Thinkin'?" while a dozen or more 'little white tank tops' were thrown on the stage. After about 3 minutes he returned for an encore. He played four more songs, then brought out Randy Rogers and Miranda Lambert to all join in a finale.

The concert ended at 11:30 PM and we walked to the truck and drove to P&B's house, hooked up the trailer, talked to Brent a minute or two and left for Burkesville. We made it home, driving through the rain and fog, a few minutes before 2 AM.