One random weekday in late June, I got a phone call from my Mom. She was just calling to check in, and before we hung up, she said, "I got an e-mail from SiriusXM today, they're having an e-mail contest to win tickets to some John Mayer event. I can't enter before 5, so I'm going to leave work a little late because I'm going to enter you to win." She knows I'm a biiiiiiig Johnny Mayer fan, so my reply was, "Oh! OK, that sounds great, thanks so much!" The event details were fuzzy, but it involved John Mayer, so it didn't really matter. I figured I had a snowball's chance in hell of actually being selected, but you can't win if you don't enter, so why not? She was willing to take the minute to send in the e-mail, so I was all in.
By 5:02 p.m., I had a forwarded confirmation e-mail from my Mama Dukes. I was in. I won a pair of tickets to the John Mayer Born and Raised Final Dress Rehearsal, a private event in Philadelphia kicking off the Born and Raised tour beginning this summer, taking place on July 2nd, time and location TBD.
Sometimes my Mom is nothing short of awesome.
A few days before the event, as promised, SiriusXM sent the info about the time and location. The concert was going to air on the SiriusXM station The Spectrum at 8 p.m., so I figured they would hold the concert earlier that day in case they needed to do any editing before the broadcast. Again, I was wrong (sensing a theme?). It was taking place at 8. The location would be The Liacouras Center at Temple University. This is where Temple's basketball team plays their games, so I thought at worst we'd have nosebleed seats here, in their 10,200-person arena:
(Source: http://www.liacourascenter.
At best, I thought we'd be in the Esther Boyer Theater that seats 1,000 to 5,000 people. Based on this info, it didn't look like it would be an intimate event, but rather a "practice" concert of sorts before Mayer kicked off his tour. But you know what? I didn't care. I was going to see one of my fave musicians, for free, for the first time in almost 3 years, at a special, secret concert with my boyfriend (also a big Mayer fan). Slice it however you want, this was a win.
Finally, July 2nd arrived! Yay! After a half day at work for each of us, the bf and I jumped in his Jeep and made the journey out to Philly. (Side note: Even though NYC will always be "the city" to me, I really enjoy Philadelphia...but not their sports teams. I have standards.) We decided that since the guest list for this event was going to be so huge, there was no use in trying to be the first people in line. It would be a stadium show, so any seat would be good. Who wants to wait in line for 4+ hours? Not this chick. So our plan was to grab food in Old City and just make our way over to Temple when we were set.
One delicious early dinner later, we drove on over to the Liacouras Center and parked in the adjoining parking deck (SiriusXM came through with another sweet hook-up: free parking!). As we were walking from the garage into the actual venue, I couldn't help but notice that the garage was not even close to being full. Wouldn't it at least be starting to fill up at this point if this was a huge concert? True, people had about another hour and a half before the doors opened, but still...maybe this wouldn't be some massive event...yet again, no use getting hopes up.
We entered the lobby to pick up our passes at the Will Call window and, again, took note of the number of people already on-line waiting for the doors to open. Suddenly, we were faced with a best-case-scenario situation: This would not be a large show in the least. There was somewhere around 200 people on-line at that point, if I had to venture a guess. Cue super-excited internal squeals of happiness.
We headed right to Will Call and picked up these sweet passes:
We picked the brain of the woman working at the window. She informed us the show would last about an hour and a half, and there would be no seating arrangements, everyone would be standing on the floor. Which meant that they will be able to comfortably fit all the attendees on the floor without any cause for concern. More elated internal squeals occurred right about here. This gig was getting sweeter by the minute.
After an hour or so wait (during which I frantically texted my parents how great this evening just might be) and a few quick announcements, they opened the doors to the concourse, and we entered the stadium. We had to walk down one flight of stairs, and this was our view (pardon the blurriness, I was trying to keep the line a-movin' while taking a picture and also, y'know, not fall):
As you can see, the stage was set up across the court from us without much pomp, just sitting there basically within arm's reach. And this, dear friends, is when I really started to freak. Without any pushing or racing (the crowd was quite mellow - more on that later), we walked up to the stage, placing ourselves directly behind the mic stand, six people from the front barricade. Six. SIX. That was going to be the distance between me and John freakin' Mayer. Six people deep from the stage. Holy hell, I needed a drink.
I didn't zoom at all for this pic.
(Personal photo)
We fortunately made friends with a pair of very sweet girls from Maryland that eased their way right behind us, and each pair took turns guarding the spots of the other during pre-concert beer runs (again, SiriusXM was amazing, and had a bunch of concession stands open for us) or bathroom trips. During one of these trips, the bf and I spotted the set list posted by the soundboard in the back: We would get 13 songs. My eyes and camera conspired against me so I wasn't able to get a good enough shot to make out the titles, but oh well. I'd surely love every song.
(Source: http://johnmayer.com/)
We (somewhat) patiently waited for the show to begin. And then, before we knew it, it was 8 o'clock. Lights down. The crowd cheered. Along with his band, out walked the man of the hour. And shit. Got. Real.
(All photos personal)
I won't bore you with the minuscule details (too late?), but this was probably the best concert experience I've ever had. I would say it took John the opening song to fully warm up. Once he got into his groove, it was game time in a serious way. As per usual, he was shredding like a monster, and he seemed to really enjoy the songs he chose for his set. We got some standard Mayer banter between a few songs (honestly one of my favorite parts of any of his shows), and it was overall just stellar.
The best part? I, honest to goodness, and as verified by our Maryland friends, made eye contact with this man. More than once. As I was singing along, hands thrown in the air like a crazy person, groovin' like nothing else mattered, every so often John Mayer would glance over, and I'd sing along to his songs while looking him dead in the eyes. I thought I was imagining it, but after the concert was over, without any provocation, both my bf and the MD ladies brought up that this did indeed occur. Remember how I mentioned the mellowness of the crowd? Looked like that worked in my favor. Everyone in attendance was a contest winner, meaning they weren't necessarily a super-fan. They wanted a chance to experience a unique, enjoyable event, and it just to happened to be one that featured John Mayer. That also meant that not many people were as overly excited with every song as yours truly, nor did they basically shout every lyric. The folks at johnmayer.com posted this picture from the event. Notice the sole person with her arm in the air, head thrown back in excitement?:
Two guesses who that is. (Hint: It's me.)
(Source: http://johnmayer.com/)
Makes me pretty easy to spot, no? After seeing this (and laughing at myself for about 3 minutes straight), you cannot convince me that the moments I shared singing John's words right on back to him were in my head. It happened. We rocked out together. Ugh, amazing.
As promised, the sonic bliss ended at just about 9:30, an hour and a half after it began. I almost caught a guitar pick (!!), but one of the ladies behind me spotted it on the floor before I was able to. Like I said though, they were incredibly sweet and also big Mayer fans, so I couldn't really be too jealous.
The drive home from Philly was nothing but one giant rave about the once-in-a-lifetime concert. I'm still in disbelief that we got to be in the audience for something like that. Mr. Mayer's Born and Raised tour swings around our area in a couple of weeks, and I'm already counting down the days I'll get to see that man play live again. Sure, it wont be from 20 feet from the stage, but I'm betting I'll still be singing my heart out, hands raised to the sky.
Well, hand. Have to hold my beer somehow!
