Rascal Flattin' All Night

Joe Don, Gary, Jay

So I went to the Rascal Flatts concert on Sunday at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts and let me start out by saying that it was AMAZING. I was actually blown away by the end of the concert and if I could love them anymore than I did before, then I absolutely do. See, Rascal Flatts is probably one of my favorite groups. I know every word to every song they sing and their concert was the concert that I was looking forward to more than any of the others I have been to.

The concert was opened by Chris Young, whose performance I actually missed. He played for twenty minutes and I actually spent that time in line waiting to buy a Rascal Flatts t-shirt. *Yes, it's worth every penny of the thirty dollars I paid for it* I wasn't too upset by missing Chris Young's performance though. While I enjoy his music, I'm not caught up with his recent stuff and besides, I was FAR to excited to see Rascal Flatts anyway.

By the time I got to my seat Kellie Pickler was about to perform. I love Kellie Pickler and she didn't disappoint, even despite the fact that she kept telling us she was under the weather. She opened with "Best Days of Your Life" and played six other songs including: "Rocks Instead of Rice" (a song dedicated to her ex, "wherever he may be"), "Things that Never Cross A Man's Mind", "Making me Fall in Love Again", "I Wonder", "Don't You Know You're Beautiful", and ending with "Red High Heels". She also sang "Jolene" and "Two Doors Down" by Dolly Parton, which were just amazing. It was actually incredible to hear her sing them if only for the reason that she sounded SO much like Dolly Parton. The selection of songs she chose for the concert was great and had Rascal Flatts not been up next, I actually probably would have wanted to hear more. However, Rascal Flatts WERE performing next so therefore, I could hardly wait any longer.

Rascal Flatts were introduced and I was in my glory. They opened with "Bob That Head" (from where the title of this post came) and went on to sing twenty-four other songs. Yes, I said twenty-four. Seeing as how this is their ten year anniversary they sang a few songs from every album they've ever come out with. They said they would fit as many songs as possible in the time they had, and they didn't disappoint. I don't even know how to explain this concert other than amazing. The backdrops on the stage would change depending on the song and were so vivid in detail that when I wasn't watching the Gary, Jay and Joe Don, my eyes were glued to the backgrounds. They varied depending on the song, sometimes showing rain pouring down, sun shining brightly, nature scenes from the country, or words that had to do with the songs they were singing.

In the middle of the concert it was just Gary, Joe Don, and Jay on stage, with Jay on the keyboard. They played songs such as "Take It To The Limit" by the Eagles, "God Bless The Broken Road", a bit of "Old Time Rock and Roll" by Bob Seger, and a little bit of gospel music that they sang when they first started off singing in the choir at church. Their voices, just the three of them and the piano, were absolutely incredible together. The range of Gary's voice blew me away and they never once went out of tune throughout the entire concert. Mostly during this part they joked around with the audience and each other.

Oh, and can I just say that they are three hilarious guys? When they got together on stage and cracked jokes and stuff they had all of us cracking up in our seats. Not that we were in our seats for long... There was no way you could sit down through that whole concert. There was way too much energy during the performances to even get the chance to relax.

I wish I could just talk about every single detail of the entire concert but it would take WAY too long. So I'll quickly talk about some of my favorite moments.

1. The part when just the three of them were on stage with the keyboard. They would keep repeating "Take it to the limit, take it to the limit, take it to the limit one more time..." over and over and had us all laughing hysterically when Gary would say "let's do it again!" and the audience would break out into the line once more.
2. During "Fast Cars and Freedom" Gary lifted a little girl onto the stage and walked her up and down a few times as she gave the audience high fives like a little rock star. After twirling her around a few times, she gave him the biggest hug and he helped her back down to her parents. Maybe I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, but it was SO cute and it helped that "Fast Cars and Freedom" happens to be one of my favorite songs by them.
3. During "These Days" and a few other songs they had the pouring rain in the background and every time it added something to the song that made it amazing.
4. Towards the end they began playing cover songs such as "Long Time" by Boston, "Carry On My Wayward Son" by Kansas, and "Free Ride" by Jefferson Airplane. At this point they had the audience going crazy and a little boy was taken on stage, probably no older than six, and he did the robot dance as Rascal Flatts performed. I'm actually pretty sure his t-shirt said "I am robot kid" on it, or so my friend said.
5. The entire concert.... Yes I know this isn't a highlight but I still can't get over how amazing the whole concert was. The only thing that would have made it better is if I had a closer seat to the stage.

I would have loved to have given a link for every song they sang but quite frankly, there were SO many.

Well, that's it for this post. Saturday night is the Toby Keith and Trace Adkins concert. While I'm extremely excited for this, I'm afraid there's no way it's ever going to live up to the Rascal Flatts concert, but I'll certainly still post about it after I go.

Well, until next time.