Cleveland and Julie March 31st, 2007

Well as most of you know I nearly went crazy trying to find someone to go with me to this concert. Everybody had some piece of drama going on in their world until I got to Trina. You see I don’t know Trina very well and she just wasn’t very excited about spending all day with a bunch of Taylormaniacs. Well, okay…..maybe she just wasn’t keyed up on spending the day with me…but anyway……she said, “Well I just really didn’t like Taylor that much…. I wanted Chris to win.” My heart sank; I wanted someone to join me that shared in my love for the gray haired soul man and all that he represented. Well, I had exhausted all possible opportunities and thought hmmm…..maybe just maybe she would “get into it”. Yup you got it….she did.

We left town about an hour later then I wanted us to (mostly my fault), got stuck in some messed up detour, got THE RUNAROUND from my Map Quest directions and ended up in Cleveland around 330. Trina was my IPOD lady….I’ve nearly ran off the road several times trying to change song. I had no Chris **snarf** on my IPOD but she was happy to find Elliott. She played some Taylor too….

So Cleveland….sheesh….the House of Blues was on a street that was closed for construction! It was like running around in THE MAZE. We drove around, found a parking garage, a bunch of happy people and we knew we had landed at THE RIGHT PLACE.

We walked around, took some pictures outside and then we grabbed a bite in the club so we could get in the “pass the line” line. We heard Taylor doing the sound check as we went down the hall …he sounded so good! Well this line had nearly 80 people in it already and we heard they were getting ready to close the “pass the line” line. So we had our yummies boxed up and we raced to the line, sat down on the concrete floor and had a picnic. They allowed us into the music hall a little sooner then planned and the place went wild.

This room was very small….a very cool place. It had a balcony and seemed as though it should have been an opera house years ago. We hurried over to a table and landed just one bar stool. You would think that they could have afforded a few dozen more stools. We shared this one coveted stool until a sweet lady approached us offering to “buy” it for her dear mom. **Velina from Texas….you’re the best and we had a blast with you and mom last night!** The story was touching…we gladly relinquished the stool and subsequently were quite thankful that our little tushies both fit on the little pub table. After having a couple LI ice teas we started swaying to music of Michael Warren, (Taylor’s opener…..you just might want to check him out….great acoustic stuff, guitar and bongos!) We found the pub table did NOT want to be swayed with and we tried to sit still.

Later on I noticed that Velina was holding the table steady in attempts to avert potential tumbling girls during the show! The seated table top dancing started once again with a little giggle from Velina. She was great!

I buddied up with a tall waitress who promised that we were GONNA MOVE to get me to the stage to give Taylor the stuff I had for him. If you haven’t heard what stuff…. just let me know and I’ll fill you in about that stuff. Well, she returned well into Taylor’s show and she that SHE couldn’t even move through the crowd. People weren’t even reordering drinks once he bounded on the stage. Talk about high impact aerobics. Every time I turned around to my friend her smile became a little bigger. She was being Tayorized and she didn’t even know it! When she witnessed her first Taylor-go-round she was very smiley.

I spoke with a member of security who told us that Taylor was doing a signing after the show and to just hang out for awhile. I’ll admit that I got my hopes up….but he didn’t know what he was talking about. Anyhoo….onto the show…..

This man is truly amazing! Beautiful and sweaty! Mmmmm He did most, if not all the songs off the album along with some of his older songs. HEAVEN KNOWS I was ready to thud when he threw in a little Naked in the Jungle along with Get it On…Mmmmmm, oh yeah! It’s just amazing how every performance of every song is just a little different. I really enjoy that about him.

I don’t think the pictures turned out well at all, I still need to check into that. I met Penny and that was fun….she was just as silly as I knew she would be. There’s just a certain camaraderie with us, isn’t there? That appeared to help Trina understand “the family”…the closeness of us.

It was over way to fast….just a mere hour and twenty minutes. Yeah, I was bummed at the short amount of time, I was bummed that I couldn’t get to the stage, I was bummed that my pictures didn’t turn out well. But on the upside I did splurge on an autographed “In Your Time” and I now have “Under the Radar” also.

We heard a sweet younger girl talk of how she nearly ran into Taylor in the hallway….she appeared somewhat shell shocked…so precious!

When we were getting ready to go Trina, bless her soul, heard a fella that was selling Taylor’s stuff say something about traveling with Taylor. I went back to him and asked if he could get my envelope to him….yeah I smiled sweetly and told him that it would mean a lot to Taylor and that I would really appreciate his help. He glanced at the white envelope and assured me that he would. I touched his arm and offered my thanks. Will it actually get to Taylor? Will I ever find out? Probably not but I’m a hopeful type girl. And that’s THE DEAL!

Hugs, Happiness and Harmony!

Julie