Last night was the first concert in the insane concert week I made for myself in which I attend 5 concerts in a span of 6 days with three of those days being full days at the Newport Folk Festival. It was also the first concert I have ever been to by myself. I really wanted to see Dawes and Shovels and Rope and couldn’t find anyone to go with me, so I figured why not go alone. I do plenty of other things by myself why should a concert be any different. It’s not like I spend a whole lot of time talking to my friends when we’re at concerts anyway. I’m really glad I went because it was a great show.

I was actually surprised by the age of the audience. It was definitely the oldest crowd I have ever seen at Rams Head Live. Usually the standing room only venues seem to draw a younger crowd at least in my experience, but the age of this audience was firmly my age or older many of them significantly older. It does give me hope since I’m at the age where I’m starting to feel like a creeper at some of these shows given how much older I am than the other people there. My saving grace being that I’m a woman. There were some twentysomethings in the crowd, but they were definitely outnumbered. I was in love with the parents and their two teenage sons standing right up against the stage in front of me. I couldn’t decide if the parents would have gotten the kids into the music or the other way around, but the fact that they were all there together rocking out made me really happy. I’m not sure why bands that were established in 2008 and 2009 would draw such an older crowd, but I’ll roll with it.

Shovels and Rope is an alt country band from Charleston, South Carolina entirely composed of husband and wife Michael Trent and Carey Ann Hearst. This was my first time seeing them live and they were great. They’ll be playing Newport Folk Fest later this week, but sadly I’ll probably have to set aside seeing them again in favor of seeing someone I haven’t seen before. Saturday is a traffic jam of great music. The concert started out with Carey Ann playing drums, tambourine and keyboard.

Then about halfway through they completely switched.

Despite my immense love of music I have zero musical talent so I am always impressed with people who play multiple musical instruments. At times it felt like one of the most pornographic concerts I’ve been to. Stay with me here. I can’t remember what song it was now, but they were singing into the same mic, looking into each other’s eyes, and looking like they were going to start making out at any moment. It was a very intimate experience.

Dawes was fantastic as well. They opened up with “From a Window Seat”, which was the first single off their new album. They played a good mix of music off the new album and their older hits. And of course “When My Time Comes” was fabulous with the crowd singing along as expected. In the final chorus the band stopped playing and Taylor flipped the mic out towards the crowd while we all sang it. I love those experiences at concerts. I was slightly worried that they weren’t going to play my favorite song, which is “If I Wanted Someone” when it didn’t make the main set, but it was the first song in their encore so that made me happy. They invited Shovels and Rope back out on stage for the final song. I always love when bands that tour together play together some during their sets. They finished up with a great cover of The Traveling Wilbury’s “The End of the Line”. It was a wonderful show and I’m very glad I went.