Florida
Georgia Line [FGL] // [5.9.2015]
Merriweather
Post Pavilion // Columbia, MD
Who brought the party? Damn, that was
Florida Georgia Line.
[Photo from Merriweather Post Pavilion]
When you live
and share bills with your concert partner, sometimes things slip your mind.
“You are buying the tickets for Toby, right?” & “You can snag those Eric
tickets, can’t you?” are among the common phrases in our household.
When the week
before the big FGL show, only miles from town, rolls around, this isn’t what
you would expect:
“Hey babe, where
are those FGL tickets?”
“What FGL
tickets? I didn’t buy them…”
“Ummm… Neither
did I”
That night when
we went to buy them, we realized it was sold out and apparently had been for
weeks.
We had already
convinced two of our other friends to buy tickets and join us for this show. We
had already made plans to meet up with another huge group of people for a
tailgate. What were we supposed to tell them?
Secondhand
tickets were sitting at and actually selling for triple if not quadruple face
value and this was just for lawn seats. Luckily, we knew several people in the
area who could keep an ear out for us. The day before and the day of the
concert, we secured two of the three lawn seats we needed. That third ticket
was going to be killer.
The concert
ticket gods were good to us that day. We were granted a GA PIT pass for just as
much as it would have been for a face value lawn ticket.
My tailgate
tribe and I decided that I would take the pit pass to jam out to the opener,
Frankie Ballard, but then somehow transfer the ticket to the person to whom it
was destined. We were successful. I rejoined my crew in the lawn and the
biggest FGL fan I know went to rock out with them in the PIT.
Frankie
Ballard [FB] //
Frankie cannot
disappoint. His energy filled that entire, sold out venue, and the fans could
tell. He had the whole pit rocking [which some openers cannot accomplish] and
had almost every fan in the lower pavilion on their feet, dancing, and singing
along.
Frankie
especially caught the attention of the pavilion when he jumped off the stage to
go and join them. This Sunshine &
Whiskey singer not only serenaded someone, but also asked for a sip of her
beer [she gladly agreed].
He played his
biggest hits: Young & Crazy, Sunshine & Whiskey, and Helluva Life as well as a party
favorite, Drinky Drink. This Michigan
native was born into rock & roll and won’t ever leave the stage without
honoring that, so Frankie and his crew jammed out to a classic before saying
goodbye to the crowd.
Thomas
Rhett [TR] //
This man is a
firecracker, a dynamite, and anything else that you can think of that involves
heat, flames, and smoke.
TR blew the
crowd away with some of his first singles like Something To Do With My Hands, Beer
with Jesus, and It Goes Like This.
Rhett also lit up the stage with his latest hit, Crash & Burn.
What I love
about Thomas Rhett is, that even though I was in the lawn at this point in this
show, his energy was able to reach every fan from the front row to the top of
the lawn!
[PC:
Heather Hettchen // @heather_hetch]
Recently, I have
been impressed with an artist’s choice of covers to play while onstage. TR’s
version of Uptown Funk sure brought
the party to an all time high. Because Thomas Rhett leans towards this funk
sound in his music anyway, this was more than an appropriate song for him to
cover.
FGL
//
Believe it or
not — this was my first time seeing Florida Georgia Line. That is not to say
that I have not been tracking their career, because believe me, I was jamming
out to their first EP long before Cruise
hit the radio waves, but for some reason, I hadn’t made it to one of their
shows.
[PC: Heather
Hettchen // @heather_hetch]
The boys did
exactly what I was expecting them to; they threw a party. FGL played everything
from their greatest hits, to fan favorites from the latest album, and covers
from everything from Dre to Garth.
They started
their show with Every Night and
walked off the stage for the first time, but not the last, after This is How We Roll.
When they came
back for their encore, I was not sure what to expect. The boys played Sundaze, Party People, and covered snippets from four different songs. The
cover montage crossed genres like rap, r&b, rock, and country.
FGL closed the
show with the song the jumpstarted their career; Cruise.
All I have left
to say to FGL is, dayum, baby, dayum,
you boys sure know how to throw and party.
What
I Wore //
For this show I
chose my black cut off jeans and my License to Boot [LTB] Whiskey Bent and Hellbound tank. Because after all, it is an FGL
show, I tied my Tribe Kelley Inhale Good
Vibes flannel around my waist. LTB’s fringe necklace completed my look along
with a few boho bangles and I was ready for the night.
