The Black Crowes: Live at Pine Knob

2 hours ago

I've been wanting to see the Black Crowes live for quite a while now. A few years ago they had a tour where they were playing their Shake Your Moneymaker album in its entirety, but for some reason I didn't bother getting tickets. We probably had something else scheduled that day already. When I saw tickets go on sale for their tour this summer, I knew I couldn't pass it up again.

Leading up to the concert, we were starting to get a bit worried that it might get cancelled. This was the time that the wildfire smoke from Canada was strolling across most of the northern US. In the photo above and below, you should be able to see a lot farther than you can. What looks like fog is actually wildfire smoke and everywhere you went all you smelled as campfire.

Our event was slated to happen at an outdoor amphitheater called Pine Knob. Thursday night John Mellencamp was supposed to play there, but they cancelled that show due to the air quality index from the wildfire smoke. On Friday, Hank Williams Jr. was supposed to play, but they postponed that show until another date, once again due to the wildfire smoke.

As I said, that had us nervous that our show on Saturday night would even take place. Thankfully, the smoke cleared out earlier that morning and by the evening they had yet to call off the show, so we started the hour and a half drive down to the venue.

As I get older, I have started to realize I am just not made for lawn seats anymore. I ponied up the extra money and got us a spot under the canopy with actual seats that you could sit in. A short time ago @tarazkp wrote a post about a concert he attended and some of the observations he made there. I'd like to do a bit of the same for this post.

It's safe to say that @mrsbozz and I have been to a lot of concerts over the years. Between the two of us the number has to be somewhere in the hundreds for sure. I have all the tickets floating around somewhere and if I ever felt ambitious enough, I could probably count them, but for now you will just have to trust me. We've seen ticket prices skyrocket over the years, and we have seen the general behavior of the crowd deteriorate into I don't even know what you would call it.

For example, it was surprising the number of people (mostly younger folks) who would just walk down an aisle and sit in seats they saw open. Then, when someone would come and say "hey, those are our seats", they would just apologize and move on to other seats. It's almost like a game to them where they try to see how close they can get to the stage.

What ever happened to buying seats and sitting in the seats you paid for?

Occasionally, you will see people from the lawn trying to get into the seated section, but the security folks and ushers usually do a pretty good job of squashing that.

I can understand when it is general admission and you are on the floor or something like that. It's always a bit of a game trying to see how close you can get to the stage, but when there are assigned seats, either pony up the money for the better seats, or sit where your tickets were bought for!

The opening band was Southall and they were pretty good. Probably not the greatest I have ever heard, but pretty good. I wrote a post about them a few Tuesdays ago when I was covering Oklahoma.

The second band of the night was a little band called Whiskey Myers. They actually aren't that little of a band anymore. Over the past decade or so, they have gotten pretty big and have even been featured on the hit TV show Yellowstone. This was actually a bit of a co-headlining tour between them and The Black Crowes dubbed the "Southern Hospitality Tour".

I actually think a lot of the people the show were specifically there to see Whiskey Myers more than they were there to see The Black Crowes.

One of the other things I've noticed over the years is just how much people drink at concerts. It's no secret that drinks aren't cheap at venues like this. I just don't see the draw of drinking so much that you have to pee every five minutes and you get blacked out so bad you don't even remember the show. Why spend all that money for the tickets? It would seem people have much more disposable income than we would be led to believe. Either that or they just don't mind living in debt.

Probably the latter.

So yeah, Whiskey Myers was phenomenal and if you haven't heard them before you should really check them out.

Eventually, the Black Crowes came out and they were absolutely amazing. It was everything I hoped it would be honestly. Being able to hear so many of their hits live was too cool. Plus although lead singer Chris Robinson is getting up there in years, he still moved around the stage a lot and sounded pretty spot on. There were some spots where his voice wasn't quite as good as it used to be, but you would be struggling to find them.

Unfortunately, we ended up leaving a little early, and this was mainly due to our third observation. In the past at shows like this, smoking was generally prohibited and smoking weed was definitely a good way to get kicked out. However, since cannabis has become legal in Michigan and one of the major named sponsors of Pine Knob is a cannabis company, due to that fact, it's more of an anything goes mentality.

Between people vaping and smoking joints, it was a pretty rank stench across the complex. It honestly felt like we were the only two people not smoking. @mrsbozz kept talking about how stupid people looked sucking on their "USB drives". She also said at one point she would rather deal with the wildfire smoke than the weed smoke.

So I made the decision to leave when the encore started. We got to hear most of "She Talks To Angels" as we were walking out, but we did miss "Twice As Hard", which was kind of a bummer, but we still had a great time and got to see an awesome show.

Needless to say, with the rising cost of tickets an the general unruliness at concerts these days, I think my wife and I are going to start being a lot more selective about the shows we attend. At the very least we will probably be avoiding the outdoor style amphitheaters like Pine Knob.