Ricksmith

I and nine others always look forward to your reports! It was nice meeting you in Dallas, hope you have great holidays!

It was, in fact, the Jeff-on-steroids show, and even though his voice was scratchy (as you can hear on Ashes) it was among the best I've been to. Great show, great crowd, great venue, couldn't go wrong!

Damn, time flies! That was waaaay back when I was just a kid in his 50's!

Ha, you're so right! I've been out of town and grabbed our tix from the road so when I saw the price I just swallowed hard and went for it. Called my wife and were lamenting that we went for the local show instead of opting for a road trip to Cain's. If you've not been to Cain's you are in for a treat! We attended the show a few years back that ended up on the Ashes DVD and it was among my very favorite and most memorable shows.

Got 4 seats, 3rd row for Dallas/Irving! Super excited, and it's all great, except... over $1k?!?

It breaks my heart (without trying) but I won't be able to make it to SS this year and need to sell 2 tickets. Early bird pricing! Please message me if interested.

I would like to congratulate the Dallas bots! You shut me out of the presale on Wednesday and now you've pulled off the sweep. Not a single fucking ticket was available either through the presale or from Ticketmaster at the regular public sale... and I started trying at the very first second of the sale. Not even balcony seats. Looks like I'll be making some secondary market seller's Christmas a couple hundred bucks nicer this year. Assholes.

Well, that was fun. Started refreshing at 9:58, tix showed up right at 10, must have tried 50 times. Shut out.

I had the good fortune to take a last-min trip from Texas to NY for the show (got in at 4p Tuesday, flew back at 6am Wed) and it was, indeed, a barn burner. I'm not a huge ABB fan and mainly went to support a buddy of mine who has seen them over 100 times, but I must say that show was really special. Plus, I had never taken the NY subway at 2:30am before - that in itself was quite an experience...

Best wishes and much love to Sue, Jeff, the kids, and the rest of their family and inner circle as they confront this challenge together. Hope you take strength from all the love and support coming your way from the vast reaches of the internets!

UNT's Winspear Performance Hall (the Armadillo) would be a formal, no-alcohol venue, which can put a damper on the festivities, but on the upside it is a beautiful facility with awesome acoustics.... Not to mention a short walk from my office. And I absolutely share your love of Denton. A non-Dentonite recently mentioned to me that he heard Denton is trying to be a smaller Austin... I think Austin is trying to be a bigger Denton.

There were several tapers at this show, and the sound was near perfect where they were set up, should be a couple of excellent recordings out there... Has anything shown up anywhere yet?

So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to attend the Behavior Change for a Sustainable World conference in Columbus, OH this weekend. A few days later I figured I'd check out the entertainment calendar for Columbus. I'm perusing the schedule for Saturday, 8/4, and... WILCO! Can't believe I hadn't noticed this before as I hit VC 4-5 times a week and check the tour page often. Got 4 GA tickets, so 3 lucky conference attendees will accompany me to the last show on this leg of the tour this Saturday!

I work at UNT and poked my head into the auditorium yesterday to check it out -- looks like they're working on the stage and setting up the PA system to bring it up to rock-concert standards. It's amazing; offices, classrooms... and Wilco. I still can't believe they're going to take that stage tomorrow.

Final song of the weekend: Levon Helm Band plays "I Shall Be Released" with Jeff Tweedy on vocals.