Wednesday night I went with my friend Chinwe to see The Punch Brothers with Abigail Washburn and Béla Fleck at Wolf Trap. For a change it wasn’t me who was trying to find someone to go to a concert with me. Chinwe actually asked me if I was interested in going with her. As you know Wolf Trap is my favorite venue and I do like the artists so I didn’t hesitate to say yes. We got lawn seats, which I love at Wolf Trap because you can bring in whatever food and drink you want and have a picnic, which we did. Even though it took close to two hours to get there with rush hour traffic (it only takes half that time to get home) we were still there about an hour before the show started so we had plenty of time to sit out and enjoy the beautiful weather and some food before the show started.

Abigail Washburn and Béla Fleck were the opening act. If you are not familiar with them they are a banjo duo. I didn’t actually realize until the concert when they were talking about it that they are married. They were really fun. The music was wonderful, but they also had a lot of really amusing stage banter. A lot of it felt fairly rehearsed and would probably be the same thing I’d hear if I saw them again, but it was funny so I don’t mind. My friend Erin rightly pointed out to me that when we were in middle school we thought Béla Fleck and the Flecktones were the most ridiculous music. Oh how little we knew back then.

The Punch Brothers have been at the Newport Folk Festival every year I’ve been there (although they won’t be there this year), but for whatever reason I had never seen them. I guess there was always someone on another stage I wanted to see slightly more. So it was good to finally get a chance to see them live. They are incredible musicians and their harmonies were fantastic.

The whole thing was a great concert and I’m really glad Chinwe asked if I wanted to go.