concert wrap & review 2023 🫶🏼🕺🏼🪩 (part one!)

Hi friends! It's been quite a while, and to wrap up the whirlwind that was 2023 i thought there was nothing more fitting than to post a wrap up of all the concerts i have seen this year. Although it's been over a year since my last post, I feel as though I can promise much more frequent updates in the new year. (I owe it to you and to me.) To begin, I had quite the spring semester. From seeing Taylor Swift at Nissan Stadium to watching my friends play little house shows outside of Nashville, it was full of fun shows that I wouldn't have missed any of it for the world. 

My first show of the year was April 20, I got the opportunity to see Flipturn and Mt. Joy play in Asheville, North Carolina. This was one of the more fun trips of the semester. I woke up early the day of the show, and my friend Chloe and I loaded our cars to make the trek from our dorms in Murfreesboro to Asheville. Skipping all of our classes and getting in line for pit early that afternoon. Making lots of friends in line, and even finding someone wearing the same outfit that I had on, I quickly found that this fanbase is one of the kindest out there. Flipturn played a wonderful set, so energetic and so much fun. The crowd was a blast and just as excited for them as they were for the headliners! You could feel the excitement in the room when Mt. Joy came out, playing two sets that included Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan covers. The show was stopped multiple times due to medical emergencies in the crowd, but the band handled it perfectly, ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the fans above anything else. Chloe and I had planned to drive back home the night of the show, but instead I found myself asleep on an air mattress on the floor of a hotel room, thankful I wasn't making the four hour drive back to the boro at midnight. While this was my first Mt. joy show, it was one of my most memorable concert experiences and it definitely won't be my last as I plan on seeing them on their next tour. 

My school has a spring concert every year that students are granted free admission to, and it was just my luck that in April of 2023, the person performing the spring concert was none other than Phoebe Bridgers, one of my most favorite artists. My friends and i got in line first thing the day tickets went on sale, all we had to do was show student ID to get our tickets. Once we had our tickets, we had to wait until the day before the show to get floor passes, we knew we wanted to be in the pit, as we wouldn't get a chance to see phoebe like this again. We all got our floor passes, and the concert was on the very last day of class.

My roommate, AnnaLee, and I finished all of our classes by noon, got ready and got in line by 1:00 to wait for the doors to open. We were the second friend group in line and knew for certain that we would get barricade. Our other friends joined us as they finished classes and the line got longer as the time neared for doors to open at 7:00 pm. While waiting in line, we got to see phoebe arrive and could hear her sound check Kyoto from outside the center. When the doors opened, we were front and center on the barricade for Phoebe, an experience I will never forget. She played a perfect set and dedicated her encore to Julien Baker, since my school is Juliens alma mater (which might be my biggest flex because !!!!)

A week later, I had moved out of my dorm and was on my way to Franklin Tennessee to spend the night at my girl Avas house, because we were going to see Taylor Swift! Obviously a lot of the things that I say are biased, because this is strictly my opinion, but I really think we got the best of the Nashville shows. On May 5, Ava, her family and I got to see Phoebe (again!) opening for Taylor. Boygenius got brought on stage during the opening set, taylor brought our phoebe to play nothing new for the first time ever! We witnessed the announcement of speak now (Taylors Version) and I was so happy with the surprise song choices of the night. Overall this was such a magical night and I have literally never experienced a show anything like it. 

Kicking off my summer with The Eras Tour, it was only two weeks until my next show, Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks! Tickets to this show had been a christmas gift from my grandmother, so she and i got to experience this wonderful night together! This was my second time seeing Stevie, but that didn't make me any less ecstatic to be going this time. Billy Joel was a dream come true. His band was fantastic and everyone in the stadium was just so happy to be seeing him play. now that I've gone on so much, I'm just going to have to write a part two for the second half of my year, see ya soon!

xoxo,

kerstie 💝