April 20th, 2008 - Duluth, MN

uh. sure.


no. i'm a sunny 16 or speed graphic girl myself.


now. the RTS Part 2 is a hilarious good time.

so this picks up where the last one left off. THIS has the non ben related part of our misaventure in it.

Then i checked my phone (while still in St. Peter), which was dying, cause I left both chargers in Tosa, and i voicemail from Jim. Guess he didn't think we were staying the next night. And his roommate was concerned. so. We drove back to Eau Claire, grabbed all our shit - by now this is 3AM. And drove to Duluth. Right then and there. Arrived around 6:30 AM after some exciting FOG (damnit) and a deer that wanted to jump in front of the car. Didn't hit it though. The gasp from Brooke helped alert me, I had just looked down to check my gas levels.

So we got to Duluth, and found a public parking lot for a beach on the lake (though, why would you go to the beach on Lake Superior?) and slept in the car. in the van, with my friend, we slept in parking lots, I don't mind, I don't mind (thanks Sufjan). When we awoke we snuck into one of the dorm buildings to shower. What a memory. What a great idea on Brooke's part, too. We got to park for free cause it was Sunday! Hooray. Parked right by the bus. AND f*ck it was cold in Duluth. That wind was KILLER. Luckily here we got to wait inside.

Where we sat for a very long time. And Jared walked by twice. They clearly HAD let him into a gym this time. ha. We found out that our will call tickets would be picked up at the same time as the let everyone else in at. BOGUS. Bo-f*cking-gus. When the BFFC only gave us the choice of will call. LAME LAME LAME. But, whatever, we came up with a master plan, the person with only one ticket on their will call (jo) would go first. And I had two orders of two. I knew that'd bound to be a hassle. But there was this girl who worked there who was really trying to be nice, and understanding. And couldn't do much for us. They had a no camera policy, so we didn't even bother. Though, with my sweat shirt on I could have easily snuck it in. Anyway.....

Paulie and Jenna, and Lynn (javajunkie) and husband joined us in line later. There were some douche bags behind us in line. But luckily for the show they went to the stage left side, instead of stage right...

 When they finally opened the door Jo got in right away, and booked it and got our spots. And they didn't even have both of my orders. But cause I had two confirmation numbers, and had previously talked to the girl they just let all four of us in. Good. We had the best seats all this section of the benventure. There were some odd things about this place though. the lights kept flashing, i mean, probably not noticeable to people other than tech people, but it drove me INSANE all show. it's like they kept rapidly re-firing to 100%. It was making me nauseous at moments. Once again a f*ckin gym. ALL THREE GIGS were gyms. I miss concert halls. They're so much better acoustically.

Anyway. So there we were. Ben Lee came out and played a longer set.
1. Into the Dark
2. Numb
3. What Would Jay-Z Do?
4. Gamble Everything for Love
5. Let Go/Give In/Give Up/Surrender
6. Is This How Love's Supposed to Feel? -- during which Ben got a couple out of the audience to slow dance on stage. They very much like each other. Or at least did last week. It was sweet, and nauseating at the same time. Then at the end of the song Mr. Lee came over and gave 'em a big ol' hug. It was cool.
7. Sex Without Love
8. American TV
9. Catch My Disease
10. We Are All In this Together

A fine showing from Mr. Lee. Kinda lame that the two shows he was at this tour that i was also at, there were no cameras.

Eventually Mr. Benjamin Folds came out.
1. Errant Dog
2. Gone (Similar to Trusted > Cooler from 06?!)
3. Jesusland (out of no where. And he didn't f*ck it up this time! Though, every time I hear Jesusland I think there should be this big pause in it before "Miles and Miles" cause of where the fall was in the studio and we rehearsed that so many times I still feel like we should stop, run around, and then go back to the song. )
-Then Ben told us this story about loading in a show in Wisconsin back in the day--
then he talked about where he ate
and then he wanted to take a picture of the audience, i doubt his camera has a wide enough angle to get where we were. based on where ben was on stage. then he hopped down into the audience (well the barrier in between) and took a picture with those kiddies over there. And he finally got back on stage.
4. There's Always Someone Cooler Than You
5. Hiroshima
6. Free Coffee (with shaker again)
7. Annie Waits
8. You to Thank
9. All U Can Eat
10. Still Fighting It
Then Ben told us it was Joe Costa's Birthday --(http://www.myspace.com/jcosta) who's ben's recording engineer. who i've talked to once about how he mics pianos. not lying. that too was at the studio. man. i had a good day that day.--
and we were instructed that we were gonna sing happy birthday to mr. costa.  we sang happy birthday to mr. costa. and then craig left stage. and then ben proceeded into
11. Rockin this Bitch for Craig (or Craig I Need You as I've called it)
12. Bastard
13. Landed
14. Pyser
15. Zak and Sara (by now, Brooke and I thought the solo set had long passed us by)
16. Narcolepsy - which someone yelled BITCHES AIN'T SHIT during the intro to the song- so Ben proceeded to add in lyrics about how it's not proper etiquette? to request a song when someone's already started the next song. but that he appreciated their knowledge of their broad repitoire. And that they wouldn't play it (i wooo'd) for another 20 minutes (i sighed)
17. Alice (f*ckin) Childress

cont'd

SOLO:
18. Fred Jones Part 2. -- Which as previously discussed has a PERFECT spot to request a song in. And Brooke and I exploit that shit. we talk thru FJ2 about what we're gonna yell for. We discussed Best Imitation and Cigarette. We tossed around the idea of yelling for "Part 1" or "Cigarette" and I decided we'd go the smarter route and call it by it's name. So we did. And ben got this look on his face like he was ready for the challenge. It's only been since 06 since you played that song! haha. not that I keep track (mhuuumm, i'm full of shit), but I like to request things I know he's played recently-ish, so they're in his brain. Somewhere. So he tells us he might f*ck it up. And proceeds to tell the entire audience the back story of the song, and that 'someone' had just requested it. Two someones, but that's okay ben, we always knew you were bad at math.
19. Cigarette -- which included one of the best live events i have witnessed. brooke had to help ben play the song. he got to the point right before "he couldn't sleep at night" and clearly didn't know what to do next. and brooke says, very matter of fact like, "eflat" and he proceeds through the rest of the song and then he also tells us that the first time ben heard about john mayer was that he was selling bootlegs of bf5 on line, and his manager went after him. first person to do so. ben could be making up loads of shit, but, we do know mayer is a ben fan (AS ONE SHOULD BE!)
20. The Luckiest. Which he "soiled his song" cause of what he'd been talking about all music talk that was like.... huh?!
BAND BACK:
21. Lullabye
22. Losing Lisa
23. Bitches Ain't Shit
24. Underground -- which, Brooke, Jo, Rachel and I were some of the very few you yelled the WHO THE f*ck ARE YOU? which resulted in the finger from Mr. Reynolds. I think I like it better that way.
25. Rockin the Suburbs (somewhere around here Sared gave Jam a look and said "wow"... we definitely had energizer bunny ben. thank you, beeejesus flist, i missed you! i remember the days of 26-28 songs being normal. damn ben and his aging and needing to pee! )
26. Kate
27. Not the Same
- and then we escaped to go try to catch ben cause they'd done underground, and that's all the sibs + jo were really hoping for that could have been in the encore. and we figured encore'd be OAD, and it was + Effington. Which they'd all seen.

Turns out we didn't need to run and find Ben. Jared and Sam appeared. Introduced my sisters to the guys. Found out that Jared REVERSE stalks me. Knows about my life more than I thought I'd even told the burbs. WTF dude? You're not reading this right now are you? Probably are. Bastard. That's right. I said it.

Asked Sam if his boss'd be coming out, and he said yeah, should be. AND he did appear.

And then I embarrassed myself. (per usual) He came out. And I attacked. I believe my quote was "it's been way too f*cking long mr. folds!" and HUGGG. OF DEATH. I was so happy to see him not just on stage, and not running away! Damnit. Last show I'd met him at was Normal = #12. THIS WAS 22! 10 f*ckin shows. TEN. And nothin. Got a family Christmas photo with Ben. I think he got a kick out of that. And got my Whatever vinyl autographed! and Apologized for thinking he was mad in Nashville, which he laughed. Maybe he didn't put together that that was me? And he also asked me if he should get me a retirement gift, when I told him I was retiring from following him around the country.


then he left. we got back in the van for hours of driving back home. and it sucked. but it was worth every second of it. and now melissa (my sister) understands a bit more my insanity about mr. folds.

FINISHED.
oh i miss that man. it's almost NC time already. YAY! and Boo!

And check out what someone (i bet you can guess who) wrote on the trailer's dirt. that we discovered while waiting for them to come out, in our little huddle to keep warm.

You have a gift for recaps. Eeeeeexcellent. 

thanks.

Glad you added the rest. Very Cool story and enjoyable to read.

EXCEPT for the fact we slept in a car and showered on campus without soap and shampoo.

Yeah but what's college without experiences such as this...makes it fun to look back on when it's over!

EXCEPT for the fact we slept in a car and showered on campus without soap and shampoo.

*this comment is on behalf of alex, as he is not awake*
WHO'S THE SMELLY ONE NOW?!

i still got in the shower though!


more than he can say.

Dang, I wish I would have been one of the lucky people to meet Ben in Duluth. He didnt have much time though, and was quickly escorted into a van. Got about 2 feet from him though. I guess that counts as something. I did meet Jared though (which is also my name, btw), and he commented on my Weird Al t-shirt, which was real cool.