Brett Eldredge - 3/5/15

Brett Eldredge..…WOW!  He has it all going for him - the looks, the voice, the stage presence.  Man can he put on a show!

I had seen him do an Unplugged concert thanks to K95.5FM along with Josh Turner, Jerrod Neimann, Easton Corbin and Dustin Lynch back in December and really liked him the most out of the 5.  So when they announced his show at Cain’s Ballroom I set my sights on going….and meeting him.

I know that our country radio stations like to do meet and greets with the artists that play Cain’s.  That is how I met Parmalee in January.  So, naturally, I kept my eyes and ears out for contests.  Unfortunately when they did the first round of meet and greet contests I was still ineligible because of my Parmalee win.  I saw Sunny Leigh from 98.5 KVOO at a women’s expo and asked if she was going to do more meet and greets.  She said they would during the week of the show.  OK!  I’m on it!

A little wrench got thrown into my plan to see him.  Jenny McCarthy’s Dirty, Sexy, Funny show was coming to Tulsa at The Joint in the Hard Rock Casino the same night.  Oh man!  I wanted to see them both.  Well, I decided to try to win tickets for Jenny and if I did then I guess I was meant to go see her and I would skip Brett.  And guess what?  I won tickets for Jenny’s show from 103.3 The Eagle.  So, there’s my answer.  Right?  Well, not exactly. 

The week of the show came and I talked with my BFF Renee about trying to win for Brett.  We were still undecided.  I mean, we already had tickets for a show that night.  But I really wanted to see Brett’s show!  Ok, I’ll try to win.  The morning of the show I called in to KVOO and played “Showbiz Smack Down” with Sunny Leigh for the meet and greet tickets.  I’m pretty good at pop culture but I’ll admit that this time I beat her because her co-host, Rowdy, had tweeted out several stories that morning and 2 of them he asked about in the game.  Thanks Rowdy!

I was pretty excited!  I really like Jenny McCarthy and especially her husband Donnie Wahlberg from NKOTB but this time she got trumped by Brett Eldredge.  Unfortunately I couldn’t transfer my tickets so I didn’t even get to give them away for someone else to go.

Later that night Renee and I headed to Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ next door to Cain’s Ballroom for the Pre-Voo party where they had a local singer Jesse Joice and his band play for us while we had dinner and waited for Brett.  I found out he is from my hometown of Bixby, OK.  Go Spartans!  They did a great job.

Brett came out and Rowdy and Sunny interviewed him a little bit.  Then we all lined up for our pictures.  We said hi and he said he liked my hair color.  I’m officially never changing it!  LOL  We got our picture and got in line to get to the stage as soon as they opened the door.  Cain’s is standing room only so you fight for your spot and we were determined to get front row!

We got our spot in the front row!  However, I was standing right in front of a speaker.  I think my ears are still ringing.  But it was totally worth it!  We made friends with those around us so we could help each other throughout the night if need be.  Gotta have allies to help hold your spot if you need to go get a drink or use the restroom!  Renee became the official beer runner for our little group which made it nice.  We only had to hold one spot while she was gone.

Ryan Kinder opened the show.  He killed it!  He sounded a little like Matchbox 20 to me.  He was really good on the guitar.  Where we were standing it was hard to hear the words over the instruments.  That same thing happened with the opening act the last time we were at Cain’s too.  His piano player was in front of us.  He was really animated and a lot of fun to watch.

The place was sold out so when Brett came on stage the crowd erupted!  I have been to a few concerts at Cain’s and this was by far the loudest crowd I have heard there.  He came out and owned that stage from the very first song. 

He did all his radio songs including my favorite “Beat of the Music”.  At one point early in the show he dropped a panel in front of the piano to reveal bottles of whiskey then poured himself a drink and sang a little bit of  “Fly Me to the Moon” as he raised his glass to toast the audience.  During “Mean to Me” he found a girl in the front row to sing to and even brought 2 little boys on stage and gave them guitars to play while he sang a song.  It was adorable.

He covered Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” and John Mayer’s “Gravity”.  His encore was a long medley of songs including Brooks and Dunn’s “Red Dirt Road”, Garth Brooks’ “Callin’ Baton Rouge”, The Police’s “Roxanne” and John Mayer’s “Your Body is a Wonderland”.  He has a lot of range and could really sing any genre of music.

After he finished his last song his band continued to play and he came up to the crowd and started signing all kinds of things - shirts, hats, boots, tickets – you put it up there and he was going to sign it.  He was also grabbing phones and getting selfies.  He seems to be a pro at that.  Case in point…the selfie he took with my phone.  I also was able to get my ticket signed.  Being in the front row definitely had its disadvantages at this point.  We were getting pushed up against the stage quite hard.  At one point we just had to stick our booties out and push back so we  cut in half by the stage.

All in all, I’m really glad we made the decision to go see him in concert!  We had the best time!  Sorry, Jenny.  I think he is going to be really big and I plan to see him every time he comes back to Tulsa!