with no disrespect to the &

last* night i attended my fifth tally hall concert.

...can you tell?

*by 'last night', i meant july 27th. as usual, i wrote this post back then and the pictures took a while. 

you now have THREE options (this is kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure post!!)

1. if you already know about tally hall, collect $200 (which you provide yourself) pass go (GO!), and skip to number 4. if not, go to number 2 or 3.

2. check out the first post i wrote about them which discusses our tally hall history in more detail. (2a. read that post, read jeff's post linked from that one, then come back here and skip to number 4.)

3. keep reading if you're too lazy decide not to click that. 

A. on sept 20, 2007, jeff and i went to a guster concert. he wanted to take me to a tmbg one, but i was < 21. so. guster it was, because he won free tickets. cool. i liked guster. however, the second opener was who peaked our interest. five dudes who dressed in slacks, white button-ups and skinny ties. jeff loved them right away. i was intrigued, started diggin their music, and was sold when one of the guys, rob, forgot the words right in the middle of a fast rap part and stopped singing, proclaimed he was kicking himself out of the band, and hopped off stage into the audience, with his head down in a mock-shame. omgoodness. love.

B. we've since been to five shows. after each, we have taken a photo with the band (it first started with me and jeff and alie and stephen, and rob). each time, we've added the people with whom we attended, as well as another band member. we call it, THE PICTURE. (creative, yes? why yes, it is. when you put it in all caps and say it like we do.)

4. let's catch up...
the third and fourth concerts were especially epic. (summed up: they performed at an elementary school in provo, due to cheryl's classroom, jeff's persuasion, and a dang cool principal). that day turned out to be an adventure. and i turned it into a blog saga (blaga?):

part I: lunch with the band

part II: the classroom

part III: the kiddie concert

part IV: the big kids' concert

part V: the after-party

5. so, yesterday.

we went to see them again. jeff and i are kind of the self-proclaimed tally hall pioneers of this town. so of course, he flew up from texas to see it with our friends. this is the only tour the band is doing for their new album, good & evil. we couldn't miss it. and it was fantastic. 

concert highlights: 

1. when we were in line and rob and andrew walked by in normal clothes (most don't recognize them out of their typical tally hall uniforms). they totally recognized us and greeted us. i felt pretty good about that. jeff and i chilled and photo'd outside before doors opened. 

2. i decided i really needed a ballpoint mustache for no apparent reason. soon i curated some for all my friends there, too. that's really why i'm an artist. 

we decided to "mustache"(now a verb) one of the opening acts, casey shea. we stood there with mustaches showing, and in the middle of his song, he laughed and said into the mic, "i need a picture of that!" 

so here it is, casey. here it is. 

3. casey shea turned out to be pretty awesome. super friendly with the audience, talented performer and all around nice guy. really genuine. 

4. the other band, speak, was really good. ...though they looked like they were 12 years old. and the bassist: harry potter in college?  

5. bora opened the show! he's pretty fantastic and i really enjoyed talking with him after the show.

6. we kept mustaching. of course.

7. tally hall: oh how i heart them. loved hearing the new songs and still being able to sing along.

8. jeff won a competition and got to go on stage and play a weird instrument thingy! when he was done, rob complimented him on his use of his personality while using the instrument. apparently lots of people don't put a lot of style into playing it. (read jeff's excellent account here!) 

9. loved the finale -- all three bands came and played on stage. the moment captured below was one of my favorites. 

10. oh, and me and casey were kind of twins. with the same hair and outfit (except that i sort of think his pants were more tight than mine).

11. it was fun to chill after the show and also fun to have friends like mal and mariah, who hadn't previously been to a tally hall concert, share in the good times.

and here are the photo evidences to aforementioned points: 

and, of course, THE PICTURE. each concert we add another band member and it was joe's turn...if you look close, you can actually see him here. :) it was a 2-for-1; bora joined as well!

  sing while you hear it; don't deny it.

come together

{written july 2; as always, the photos and videos took longer}

remember the rooftop concert i told you about a couple months back? well last night's was fantastic as well.  they played the entirety of the beatles' abbey road album and it was just...freaking fantastic. the performers consisted of various local musicians that came together for this fantastic tribute. you can read more about the event and who performed here.

we had a good group show up as well! i had actually forgotten about it til the day of, but was super happy when i was able to attend.

i don't know these people; i just liked the compositions. :)

to be honest, the concert was more mellow than i'd have liked; everyone was sitting down and not standing, so it was less energy than i'd been expecting. but the quality was still phenomenal.

and i wished i had my awesome dslr camera there, but all i had was the point-n-shoot. but -- trevor christensen took amazing photos! we went to high school together and he's a great photographer, as well as super involved in these concerts.

i took a few videos; here's one with everyone singing, just to get an idea of the energy that arose in some of the songs: (but if you only watch one video in this post, PLEASE scroll down and watch the one at the end of this post!) 






the end was my favorite; they encored. however, i didn't take any photos or videos then because i ran up to the front and started dancing with everyone else :) we were right in front of the stage! it would have made for sweeeeet photos, but i was enjoying myself to worry too much about that. and that's how i like it, i think.

luckily trevor got some good ones; check it -- we were in a few of them!

you can spot mal because of her hot blonde pixie hair

see? second-ish row!

finale: epic fireworks not even affiliated with the show!

AND i just found this video! again, this one is my favorite; it totally captures the night and brings it back for me. oh, and my little group of friends is in it :) but you probably can't find us unless you know exactly where to look. nevertheless, seeing ourselves rock out is proof for me to remember how fun that night was.






[to watch the first half of the full highlight video, click here and for the second half, click here! they go through, like, ALL the songs. pretty rad]

as always, if you weren't, i wish you could have been there. if anyone has more pictures or reviews from this one, put it in a comment; i'd love to see!

other concert reviews from the concert:
cjane, enjoy it (before the concert: with set list)
cjane, enjoy it (concert recap)
daily herald 

i finally felt enthusiastic

JULY 27TH.

(!!!!!)

[and i hear it's the ONLY tour for this one...so you'd better brush up on the hall and mark your calendars]

rooftop concert? yes please.

{{editor's note: here at warm fuzzies, we pride ourselves on our thorough posts. but this time, we just kind of went... ...*meh*.  but.  there will be videos of the concert coming soon. two of them. maybe tomorrow. the author is...a pretty impatient person sometimes and just wanted to post this now cuz she wrote it, well, last week. so check back. :) }}

remember how i used to write concert reviews? yeah. me too...barely. i have LOTS of them stuffed away in my drafts folder. i'll simplify them and get 'em up...sometime.

this past friday i attended a fantastic concert. consider and finish this incomplete equation:

lovely spring evening + free + friends + ROOF of a PARKING GARAGE = ?!

yeah. [don't] be jealous. it was just as epic and awesome as it sounds. 

and the performers? paul jacobsen and the madison arm, and fictionist (i heard emily brown played as well but didn't get there in time for her). it was my first experience with both bands.


we walked in. saw this. joined some friends:

thanks, angela, for braving the side crowd to get these shots!

and gosh, i was excited.

i *really* enjoyed the unaffected sounds of paul jacobsen and the madison arm. they just seemed like cool guys and i could just totally groove to their stuff. loved the harmonies and chill vibes.

left: paul jacobsen + madison arm, right: fictionist 

the members of fictionist are all apparently from utah, and it was cool to see hometown boys perform when as they're getting big (they are in a competition to get on the cover of rolling stone and today is the LAST DAY to vote-- do it!). both bands were really generous and appreciative.

some of us

i decided halfway through that my soul needed this concert (because of the elements of the aforementioned equation). i wished everyone could have been there. then again, music doesn't affect everyone the same way. so... i really wished that (ready for a really convoluted sentence?!) -- everyone whom it impacts like it impacts me could have been there to appreciate and love the concert as much as i did. you can go ahead and re-read that if you need, cuz i'm not editing it.





i didn't have my camera (WHAT?! i know, right?!) but it was fun to play around with angela's new iphone to take a few photos and videos. that was good for my artistic well-being, too.

i'll skip my usual intense analysis of every song and just say...if you weren't there, then i wish you had been.

--

ps, in case you're wondering about the crowd vibe, and i'm sure you were, this was basically a hipster mecca. don't know what a hipster is? then READ THIS NOW. remember hannah? yeah. awesome.


other reviews/pictures/buzz of this concert:
kristina (i sat with her :)
c jayne
muse music cafe

tally hall, no one's better than you. {part V}

{{the rest of the concert + after party}}


[because i wrote all 5 tally hall concert posts around the same time, then added videos and pictures later, the entries were all in varying degrees of finished-ness. tragically, a few days after i posted #4, i read what i had for this one, #5, and it said a lot of the same stuff #4 did but so much better and was so much more organized. alas, it will not be published on this blog to prevent repetition. sorry, reader. maybe i will edit #4 one of these days....]

this is the final episode in this series. :)

the rest of rooney::
i spent the rest of the time between rocking out with jessie and brooke to rooney and talking with jeff and the other guys with tally hall. rooney was good; i knew more of their songs than i'd previously realized. i was glad that jessie is a die-hard rooney fan- this was her first concert and she got to see both them and tally hall. by the end of the night, though, tally hall was still my favorite.

the task::
it was great fun to talk with the guys after the concert, but we had to wait our turn. see, we knew we had a task, a feat worthy of the wait. so they visited with the rest of their crazy fans while we kept, well, taking pictures of ourselves and talking. we waited until the end when most everyone had gone, to continue our long-standing tradition: THE photo.


the history::

we've taken the same photo of ourselves ever since their first concert, each person in the same position, and adding a band member each time, starting out with rob. it was sort of endearing; andrew seemed pretty excited to be the added member this time.

maybe i will post the others some time.


the photo::

it was hard to get all the guys together this time. by the time we had one we'd lost another, and so on. the bouncers were getting pretty upset that people were still hanging around, and started yelling that we all needed to get out (probably so they could turn the venue into a bar again by a certain time). so, being the awesome people they are, tally hall came outside in the front of the venue with us. all except for joe, who was nowhere to be found. [joe seemed a lot more silent and introverted this time around, it seemed like rob had taken the lead. interesting how band dynamics change. ]

we assembled together and took it: THE picture. it seemed kind of huge this time--so many people! it was way fun, and then we took a few individual shots and let them get pictures with the only other group of fans who had stayed around that late. after receiving a possible reprimanding call on his phone, andrew politely told us they had to go. with quick hugs goodbye and lots of laughter, they disappeared back into the venue.

so until next time, tally hall, we'll miss you.

concluding in the end, i'd like to say no one's better than you.

tally hall, no one's better than you. {part IV}

{school is over and i'm back! please forgive my absence. i missed my blog, too.}

{{the big kids' concert}}

the original plan::
location: in the venue
concert time: 6:30pm
our departure time: as soon as jeff got off work (4-ish pm)
driver: jeff
the group: cheryl, blake, me, rocio, jeff, my friend jessie, and jeff's friend brooke

in actuality::
location: in the venue
concert time: 6:30pm
our departure time: 6:10pm
driver: brooke
the group: brooke, me my friend jessie...and later, jeff

explanation:: jeff was going to take me and jessie and rocio. rocio decided to do something else that night instead. okay, cool. still left me and jeff and jessie, all was good. but---[brace yourself for the run-on sentence]-- i couldn't reach jeff and he was supposed to drive us and my mom's van doesn't go past 40 mph cuz it's broken and jessie and i needed to get to the concert and i still couldn't reach jeff and it was getting late and i called cheryl and she'd already left with blake and i started to panic and i made cute hair flowers (irrelevant) and i told jessie i'd just come pick her up in the van so we'd be in one location and i did and we went to jeff's and he wasn't there and it was getting later and i called rocio and she said she wasn't going so she called brooke whom i didn't know and brooke was late coming anyway but she had a car so she met me and jessie at jeff's and the three of us girls got into brooke's car and brooke turned out to be awesome and we went to wendy's cuz we were starving and it was good and i got a jr frosty (irrelevant) and we raced as fast as we could up to salt lake and the three of us girls had compatible horoscopes and decided we'd be good friends and now we are and we drove and drove and finally got to in the venue and brooke was really good at finding it without a google map and we parked in some shady parking lot and brooke put on her new shoes with red laces and then we ran in the freezing cold -- ran-- to the place it was at and almost went in the wrong door so we backtracked and got to the right door and the bouncer let us in.

whew.

[note the shoelaces]

still couldn't reach jeff. until we got there. apparently, his shoot (he was working on a commercial in the middle of absolutely nowhere) went super long and was crazy and he hadn't gotten reception. sad. day. here's his side of the story.

when we got there::
we walked inside, and a really loud band was finishing their last song. i really didn't care for it, and neither did the other two girls. tally hall started to set up as soon as that song was over, and we were ecstatic to realize we got there in perfect time for tally hall.

jeff texted, saying he was still an hour away and wondered if it was still worth it to come. i said that of course it was; jeff was one of the pioneers of tally hall in utah! we had to take THE picture, dangit! so he said he was on his way.

we found allie and her husband. allie was there the very first time we met tally hall in this very venue. that was a happy. cheryl was nowhere to be found, though, and we found that she had a family emergency and had to race to that. that was sad. bless her heart.

the concert part::so, tally hall started their concert, even without jeff or cheryl. they started out with a slower song, which i thought was gutsy. usually bands start out with fast rowdy songs to get the audience into it. props for them for taking a double gamble: the song was slow, and it was a new song. but i loved it. it's called 'never meant to know' and it's the one that i had filmed backstage at the kid concert.

since i already blogged that one, here's another called "turn the lights off":



and here's how they laid the songs down:

Never Meant To Know
Welcome To Tally Hall
A Lady
Sacred Beast
Good Day
Turn The Lights Off
Cannibal
Spring & A Storm
You & Me
The Whole World & You

i sang along enthusiastically to all the songs i knew. maybe more enthusiastically than normal? [nah, probably the same. but i tried, and it was crazy] because a) the audience was pretty lame and didn't dance or anything and b) i had to sing for jeff and cheryl's sake. they deserved to be there.

right after they finished, i turned around and saw jeff. tragically, he'd just barely arrived.

the rest of the concert::
jeff was visibly disappointed he missed the concert, and more so, was shaking all over. he'd had an exhausting day and the mixture of freezing cold + middle of nowhere with no reception + full day's work in previously stated conditions + running to the concert + just barely missing it = one sad jeff. brooke and i felt so bad. we all wandered over to the swag table, where my new friend mike (the tour manager) was manning the merchandise. [check out mike's awesome hat.]

sad has a way of turning to happy, though, in the company of good friends and good music, and...tally hall. and tally hall's guest book.

they had a book on the table, open for anyone to sign it, so jeff and i took on the responsibility of pasting in each "the picture" from the previous concerts, along with a memory from each one. we wrote 3 entries, one on the inside of the front cover, one on the back, and one in the middle, with a dotted outline of the picture we were sure to get later that night.

we also took another cool picture:
and i liked rooney, too, so here's a well-known song of theirs. forgive the shaking; i was aware of it...i just couldn't help but dance to this one:




i really enjoyed just hanging out with my friends and the tally hall guys in the back by the table, though. andrew came out in normal clothes and smiled when he saw me. it was fun to see him since we'd been interacting all day, then almost as old friends after an 'official' concert (note that i'm not a psycho fan who imposes herself on strangers and celebrities. i know we aren't old friends. it was just sort of a cool feeling :D)

we all talked. words. i honestly can't remember what we talked about (this is the part that i didn't finish in december when i wrote this...it's now april)...which is tragic. i remember some stuff. contacts and dry eyes (as shown in picture above). mittens and their awesomeness (his were homemade). his impressions on the school concert. oh! he said that was one of the most interesting performances they'd given, and we asked what was the weirdest. i think he said it was earlier in their career and there was some sort of snow storm, so only a few (like, 3) people showed up to the concert and they performed for just them? something like that. all i can say is i wish we had a snowstorm concert.
the next and final installment of this tally hall series will come soon (no, really. i promise it'll be soon this time).

tally hall, no one's better than you. {part III}

{{the kiddie concert}}

keyboard, guitars, bass, drums...all on stage. a small one. behind a blue heavy curtain.
half curious, half amused adults lining the venue. teachers.
the venue: a school cafeteria.
one huge audience.
all under 5 feet tall.
oh boy. (!)

the concert was about to start. kids filed in, carrying their own chairs (i forgot we used to do that) and, of course, their tally hall signs. they were beyond excited. i was just as excited.


an entrance::
while the principle introduced cheryl, who introduced the band, the band snuck up on stage with fabulous fake mustaches on their faces and disappeared behind the curtain. what a fantastic sight. a few moments later, the curtain opened. the kids. went. nuts.

the concert::
i'll let pictures and movies tell this part. it was, after all, a concert.

fyi, the videos are super loud and noisy because my, can those young'ns wail....

rob [yellow tie] kind of headed up the group in interaction with the students, though the rest of the guys chimed in as well. i could tell that there was a mutual wonder between band and audience alike; neither had experienced this before. at the end of the first song [good day], there was a bit of silence, and i started clapping, [i'm sure some of the teachers did, too] then it was a ripple effect and the place was soon filled with tons of applause and yells.



at one point, they tried to get all the students to sing on one note....




other concert highlights::

-rob asked the most random and obscure questions to the audience, and it was perfect. questions like, "do you guys like sports?" and so on. it kept the kids amused and involved.

-the kids...loved dancing.

-comments like this: "of all the elementary schools we've ever visited, you are the most unique...?" can anyone else figure out what he says here? i remember he made some comment about how the kids liked dancing...anyway, brownie points (maybe even a brownie) to the person who can decode this:




-i enjoyed being backstage-ish. mike was cool and let me chill back there. we also talked cameras a bit. it was cool to see sam do his job. so i took a video of one of their new songs from back there. the video doesn't do it justice because i was just on one side of the stage (and it's a cheap camera). i have so many "normal" tally hall videos that i wanted to capture all the stuff you usually don't see. take a gander.


-the swaying of hands (i think one of the teachers promoted that) and the applause. the kids were told by a teacher before the concert that it's not polite to whistle, though. :)

-they ended with this song:



it was an elementary school. how perfect is that? they even had kids come up and give suggestions (that's the part that the camera drops (literally), so i could take photos of it. so beyond awesome.)

have you ever seen miss skinner, eating some dinner?

-and then they topped it off with this:
(rob's epic and very rebellious jump off of school folding chair. there were no smashing of guitars, however.)

...

the after party::

after the concert, the guys came back out and cheryl presented them with school shirts, as they are now honorary elementary schoolers. :)

as such, they took a class photo

or two

and hi-fives were had all around

and posters & clothing got signed (the latter with parental permission...for the most part)

and cheryl and the principle were given awfully cool stuff by the band

and things were happy.

next up: the night concert. there will be a lot less squealing from those videos.