Backstage with G. Love

For those of you who think I get too long winded here is the cliff note version: the concert was great, he recognized me, we went backstage we talked for a little while and we went home.

Now for the more detailed events of the day in no particular order:

The concert was at this very small unusual venue. When we pulled up I thought it may be a roller rink. (We later came to find out that they are working out new music that is why they are playing these smaller venues.) But anyway it was hot, but Olive and I planted ourselves in the FRONT ROW as usual. We meet some other G. Love devotees from Detroit. And I was even recognized by another fan, yes I was mildly famous at the G. Love concert.

The other great thing was Steve the Travelin' Blues Man was there and we got a chance to say hi to him when he arrived. He recognized us too. He played a set before the show, which was awesome.

Then after Steve: G.Love and Special Sauce came out on stage. The coolest part of the night was when he looked right at me and then had that look like, hey I know you. So all night during the concert he made me feel special pointing, singing to me and grabbing my hand. He even played Holla! and came straight to me to sing along. Oh did I forget to mention that I got a hug and a kiss on the cheek during the song. All the other girls were so jealous. It was a great show, but it was a hot one!

After the show, we tracked down members of the crew to let them know that I was the winner. Most of them were like what? But then we finally found someone who knew kind of what we were talking about and pulled us to this backstage area, that was actually a small room the size of a large walk-in closet. Steve was sitting in there waiting to talk to G. Love. Then after a couple of minutes: G. Love came in. He was really cool. We talked about my video and how he liked the student participation. He made sure to ask me if I had seen his comment on my video. I even got him to do a little video giving my kids a shout out. Then he talked to Steve for a bit about playing in Grand Rapids tonight. We had a chance to chat with their new tour manager Brian the surfer from California. He had seen the video. He entertained us while G. Love was talking to Steve and got us something to drink. After G & Steve were done negotiating. We took some pictures and he was on his way. It wasn't too long, but it was nice.

We also chatted with Frank, the guy who sells all the G. Love merchandise at the shows. He actually recognized me from the video. So we chatted about the video and he gave me a bunch of stickers for my students.

After that met Houseman. We had a really intriguing conversation about the difference between Reggae and Rock Steady. Which I must admit I still don't have the exact dates of when Rock Steady music actually happened in Jamaica. (Olive just added that she now knows it started in mid-1963 and went until the late 60's) I just know, it was after ska and before reggae. He took some pictures with us too and then we were on our way back to Michigan.

It's a surprise that we arrived at this concert venue at all. Why? It all started with an accident on I-75 and detours for miles. We were sitting in the car saying at this rate we will never get to Toledo. Once we finally managed to get by all the traffic nonsense we headed towards Tiffin? Yes that's right Tiffin, Ohio. Why? Well because google told me to. I was in a hurry when I was leaving Attica and we were out of black toner so I couldn't print. So I quickly emailed Olive the directions from my google search of "Headliners Toledo" and the directions said to go to Tiffin. So we are thinking that Tiffin is clearly a suburb of Toledo. But then talking to Todd (our Ohio expert) he mentioned that there was a University in Tiffin, so we were like oh that makes sense. So when we drove through Toledo and started heading into miles of fields of soybeans and cornfields we were like ok, well there is a University there. Only to drive an hour southeast of Toledo to find out the address we had was for a beauty salon. The people at the local dairy queen looked at us as if we were insane! To be honest I kept asking myself why we didn't think we were going the wrong way sooner. The answer I have too much trust in google. I can't believe google let me down. But it turns out if we hadn't had our detour we would have gotten there really hours early and the place was not in the middle of downtown so there would have been nothing to do, except visit the adult bookstore down the street.

Tonight we head to Grand Rapids. I am excited, but I am a little sad, because I feel like my day in the sun is over. The contest after glow is gone and now I am back to being the regular anonymous super fan that I have been for the last 10 years.