On Our Way To Crazy

My love for Waterdeep is well-documented on this site. I have seen them countless times, all over the country. We had their song in our wedding, my blog title came from another of their songs, etc etc, whatever and ever amen. You would think I would be out of words to say about them, right? How many more ways can I express my love for them? How many times can I write the same blog post?

At least one more, apparently. Because they played a full band show last weekend that BLEW MY MIND. Literally. It’s gone. It was that amazing.

They just keep getting cooler. A lot of the music I loved a decade ago hasn’t held up… I listen to it now and I just don’t see what I saw back then. Or, I go see those bands play their new music and just leave disappointed. Their place for me is in the past. But Waterdeep? Not only could I listen to the old records over and over, but their style and my taste have kept up with each other. I could have walked into that show or listened to the new records with no prior history and fell completely in love. (Sidenote: we brought a friend with us who knew nothing about them and she has not shut up about the awesome for four days.)

It was just a great, straight-up rock show. Loud and big, with massive guitar solos and weird percussion and tracked loops and yelling and a pink glittery guitar. It completely ruled.

They played a lot of new stuff, which I loved, but they also played a ton of old songs. It was like they looked at a list of my favorite Waterdeep tracks and just turned it into the set list. Take a look at this, music fans:

• Everyone’s Beautiful (!)
• I Know the Plans (!!)
• Both Of Us’ll Feel the Blast (Our wedding song! That I requested via twitter!)
• 18 Bullet Holes
• Almost Gone (!!!)
• Wicked Web
• Good Good End
• Sweet River Roll

And then, you guys. THEN. The band left the stage and they did one more as kind of an acoustic encore thing. They were kind of going back and forth about what to play, and I said to our table, “If they play Everybody’s Guilty I am going to have a heart attack right here in this club.” And what did they do? THEY PLAYED EVERYBODY’S GUILTY. Shut the front door.

It was an amazing, amazing show. I was beyond thrilled to be there.

And then it got even more awesome.

A guy we are friends with used to be Waterdeep’s manager a long time ago. He’s a guy Aaron knows through work, and he has been one of my favorite people ever since we met at an industry party and then sat at a table for two hours talking about them. He comes up to us after the show, takes my arm, and says, “Ready?” And drags me over to meet them. I was so excited and so afraid I would so thoroughly embarrass myself that I couldn’t show my face around town anymore.

So we walk up to Lori, he introduces us and we talk for a couple of minutes about the show and the songs they played. And then he told her about how I accidentally stalked them at an open house. She remembered me, thankfully, and even thanked me for saying something because they never get recognized and it makes her happy when people talk to them about their music. So that was good. But I was horrified.

We then met Don and talked to him for a while about the Khrusty Brothers and Remedy Drive. (He writes with them sometimes.) I tried so hard to be cool, y’all. I really did. I just don’t think I have it in me. But even without my complete and total lameness, it was a great night.