I'm a HUGE fan of Josh Groban, as is the rest of my family. Even Dad liked him a great deal.
So, when he came to Salt Lake City this year on his Harmony tour, Christine and I decided to take Corie out to see him.
This was Corie's first concert with him, and the second for Christine and me. Our previous concert was sometime in 2004 or 2005; I can't remember the exact year anymore but it was definitely around the time of his "Awake" album.
It's a good thing we've been saving our money, because I can assure you those tickets were NOT cheap and we bought good seats months ahead of time. I made sure to give my work plenty of notice, too.
Since we had to have dinner either very, very early or very, very late, we opted for "early" and we had our dinner at Chick-fil-A at Farmington Station, with Mom and our brothers tagging along. I usually get Spicy Chicken Deluxe (my favorite) in a large combo with a Cherry Coke, and given how hot-as-blazes it is these days, I also got a peach smoothie. I was tempted to get chocolate but I like peach, too. It's got a bit more nutritional value anyway.
Then we girls went on our merry way to the UTA Frontrunner. I've taken the Frontrunner a couple of times but most of my experience with UTA has involved the bus, when I was a college student at Weber State University. So, this is where we had to have Christine navigate for us.
We hit a couple of snags with the UTA Trax when we got to the city, but fortunately we started out with enough time (my idea) to get to the Vivint Arena with roughly 20 minutes to spare. I learned from my college days to allow myself lots of time, so I can relax more and stress less.
When the concert itself began, the opening act dragged on forever. The first act, Eleri Ward, was quite nice; I liked her enough to want to save her name and look her up on social media later. But then a jazz band (Preservation Hall Jazz Band) came on and while they weren't bad per se, they dragged on for almost an hour and jazz isn't my most favorite music.
There was one song where literally all they sang was, "Keep your head up high," at least 30 times in a row. I half-joked to Christine, "Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that lyric."
We were starting to wonder if we were gonna hear Josh Groban at all that evening. It was at least 8:10 by the time the jazz band finally stopped, and then we had to wait another ten minutes or so.
But when Josh Groban himself finally arrived on stage, everything was on the right track.
My phone doesn't take the best pictures, especially in the dark, and I didn't want to annoy anyone else in the crowd with my "flash." So, I kept my phone to myself throughout the show...though I couldn't resist pulling it out and turning on the flashlight to participate in the "candle wave" that people made with their phones during "You Raise Me Up."
Josh Groban has the voice of an angel, and last night, his singing was absolute dynamite. Of course, I had to sing along (to the English words I actually knew) and I cheered loudly enough to make myself a little hoarse. (Imagine how much fun I had at work today, being a cashier, and we were positively packed.)
He's very funny, too, quite sarcastic, and his looks sure don't hurt. I'm not used to seeing him with a full beard but I thought it looked pretty good on him.
His show ended much too soon, even though it was well past 10:00 by then, and it was both a relief and a disappointment to get up from my seat for good.
Naturally, we had to see if there were any souvenirs. We were lucky to nab a couple of goodies before they were completely cleaned out. As irony would have it, I got a T-shirt with the logo of that jazz band I didn't like so much; it was the only shirt left in my size. But I did manage to get my hands on a copy of the new Harmony album; I told the sales clerk when Corie asked for a CD, "Make that two CDs, please."
Then Mom was nice enough to drive us home so we wouldn't have to take the train again or wander about the city in the dark. I remember Dad saying Salt Lake City could get pretty "shady" at nighttime.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate this outing 9 and a half. Time and money very, VERY well-spent.
Thanks so much, Josh Groban! Keep singing!
