A Shoebox of Photographs, with Sepiatone Lovin'

Beautiful, breezy night. Gorgeous Moon. Deep blue sky. In the company of good friends and family. USANA Ampitheater. Jack Johnson.

Perfection? Yes. Need I say more?

Probably not. But I will anyway.

Last night was a wonderful night, for those reasons, mostly. I had planned on going to this concert forever ago, and my friend had somehow coerced his family into making it their FHE. I thought I'd give it a try too, and asked my mom if she wanted to go to Jack Johnson for "FHE"...and she agreed! I really wasn't too surprised...but a bit shocked at her readiness nonetheless.

We took Katie Nay, and met Tricia Clifford and her friend (who's now a friend to all) Shaun Hartman there. Arriving 2 hours early, we got great seats for having lawn tickets. Before the concert, we visited all of Jack Johnson's environment-saving booths. This wasJack Johnson's Green World Tour, and I was impressed that this musician spent so much of his money and time to do things to improve the world around him. (To hear really awesome music a nd find more about his project, click here. It's really interesting, actually.) We each received little "passports" with areas to get stamps around the booths, for things such as:

*recycle something
*carpool (if you carpooled with 4 people to the concert)
*refill water bottle
*visit a non-profit organization
*donate to a non-profit organization (which would be matched by the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation)

After we got at least 3 stamps, we put the passports into a drawing that would produce the name of a lucky person and friend who would watch the concert from ON STAGE!!! Alas, we were not the lucky folk but I was actually glad that our little group didn't get split apart. Besides, I was able to spend good time on the grass doing useful things, like entertain our group by painting my toenails (I happened to randomly have polish in my bag....)


As for the concert...USANA Ampitheater is one of my favorite venues. It was packed at this concert...so fun. For the two hours of waiting, we filled the passports, bought amazing shirts (all organic, of course), and commenced utter narcissism as usual with Tricia's camera. The first two bands were good, but nothing compared to The Johnson himself.

When he came out, we couldn't contain ourselves. We stood up with everyone else and cheered, and with no further ado, he started to play. We ended up standing the entire concert.

I loved how the stage was set up...there were screens above where he was playing that would simultaneously show shots of him singing and playing, the other performers on stage, and peaceful scenes or psychedelic colors for mood. It. Was. Awesome.

I love that Jack Johnson is just a humble guy who just happens to be ridiculously talented and environmentally conscientious. His whole crew was super chill. I loved the keyboard player...during a song that didn't require his assistance, he just got up and started to dance! He had crazy awesome dance moves. Later, Jack asked the audience if we wanted to hear "The Devil Goes Down to Georgia." and took a diplomatic poll. Turns out that we were a unanimous YES...but he just shrugged and said, "Well, the only one who knows how to play that is so-and-so (one of the band members) so I guess he can do that for ya." With that, he sat down and played it, accordion and all. It. Was. Awesome.

During the concert there were some crazy kids behind us dancing, and their beer cups were precariously placed in the grass. I made small talk with some of them before the show, and lucky me...in the middle of the concert, I stepped back and noticed my foot was wet: I had stepped on a cup of beer. Guess those friends liked me so much that they decided to share their beverage of choice with me. It. Was. .......Quite disgusting, really, I'm not going to lie. There was also a strong scent pushing through the air; I wondered who'd brought incense to the concert. Heh...sometimes I realize how sheltered I have been. So, by the end of the concert, my foot had tasted beer and my hair and clothing smelled like Marijuana. Quite the experience.

During the concert, Jack had started a song, and some guy up front yelled a less-than-appropriate thing to Jack, and it was SO funny...Jack suddenly stopped singing and said, "Um...I'm not going to lie to you. I totally messed up that whole part of the song. I got distracted! [then, turning to the bass player] Did you hear what that guy said?! He said [I won't repeat it, in case any sensitive eyes are reading this]...anyway, thoughts started going through my head, and...okay. I'm just gonna start the song over and pretend like that never happened. M'aam, your husband has obviously had too much to drink." It was SO funny!!! Whoever said, "The show must go on"?! Apparently this didn't apply if you're Jack Johnson.
Katie took very careful notes and came up with a pretty accurate set list:

Hope
Flake
Taylor
Sittin' Waitin' Wishin'
Sleep Through the Static
Go On
Upside Down
False Hopes
Do You Remember
Bubble Toes
Wasting Time
Unknown Song with guests (? and Rogue Wave)
Constellations
Accordion Song
Wanna Lay You Down
Banana Pancakes
Same Girl
Staple It Together/Rodeo Clowns
If I Had Eyes
Good People

Encore:
All At Once
Time Like These
Home
Better Together

I liked the fact that even though he was releasing the new cd "Sleeping Through the Static", he still played a lot of songs that are old favorites so we could all sing along. I was surprised at how many songs I completely knew.
I love going to concerts to hear all the things that aren't included on the released albums, and there were many in this concert. On a few songs, Jack really jazzed it up, and on others, he combined songs, which made it sound even more amazing. Below is a photo of him playing with guys from the opening band, Rogue Wave.

My favorite songs in the concert, live, turned out to be:
Staple It Together
Constellations
All At Once
Better Together

I was incredibly happy with the encore. At this point, our friend Adam McBride joined the group, as his family left, so we had a happy crew of six. Jack played three of my absolute favorite songs, which are the last three mentioned above. It was just him on stage, with star-looking lights sparking behind him. During the whole concert, I was waiting patiently for "Better Together" and, alas, that was his last song. So there was the glorious picture: Six friends, swaying, on a blanked, beer-infested lawn, soaking in the last crooning sounds of Jack Johnson.

Glorious.

After the concert, there were feel-goods and warm fuzzies all over the place. We waited out the traffic by talking for a while, which was nice. The wind was fantastic, and the company superb. We took a couple more pictures to document the fabulousness of the night.
 

And really, what more could you ask for than a shoe box of photographs with some sepiatone lovin'?

Artsy

So...I originally wanted to put a lot of art on this blog...but I haven't yet. It's kind of an all-around random blog. So, surprise! Art stuff! Well, Photoshop/Illustrator stuff. I just whipped this up in the last half hour of work (when my co-workers were done with tasks and were playing Starcraft...I felt justified).

Jonathan Urie learned this from a tutorial this morning, and he taught me how, so I can't take credit for the discovery. I liked playing with it, though.

This is the original picture:

And this is the final project! A vector image, completed in Illustrator:

Apologize: So Epic

So i still have to blog about Mexico (It's coming along...it's just a HUGE post) but to sustain Matthew, I decided I needed to stick something up here. So I'll do this: it's embarrassing but way funny.

Well, the first part's suppose to be so serious that it's funny--that's just how Greg and Brandon's humor works. They love making music videos, and I was privileged to be in the last one made together before their missions. The rest of the actual music video, though, is pretty good...at least, I like it. Besides, it's documentation that I drove a crazy stick-shift truck...eh? eh?



It's interesting, though. What you do to your body really does affect your mind. For example, when we were putting the words on my face in the, well, words-on-my-face scene, I really did start to get depressed, even though I knew full well that it was just acting, and these guys were my friends. I couldn't wait to get the words off. It was an interesting experience.