by Jeaux Smith, January / February 2008
The early part of 2008 called for me to look outside myself and appease the tastes of the two girls in my life. For Michelle, that meant going to see one of her favorite country crooners, George Strait; while for Marleigh that meant putting on the 3D glasses for her newly found favorite, Hannah Montana.
I saw George Strait way back in college when Tim McGraw was an opening act that nobody had heard of, so to revisit him again nearly 15 years later seemed to be harmless enough. We had great seats (courtesy of StubHub) to watch George perform his songs on a stage that was turned at a 45 degree angle and stuck center court of the Ford Center. He had a microphone and a camera at each opening to the crowd and sang 2 songs each as he rotated counter-clockwise around the square. This configuration let him get a lot of face time and handshaking opportunies with the fans up close, but also meant for half the show we were watching him on the high-def monitors above the stage. Lucky for us, he played both of our favorites while facing us opening with "The Fireman" for Michelle, and hitting "The Chair" around the middle of the show. George was backed by 10-12 musicians ranging from fiddle to steel guitar, with a few backup vocalists to accompany his songs. I shouldn't have been surprise that there were over half of the songs I didn't know, but was surprised by the ones he didn't play (Cross My Heart, Does Ft. Worth Ever Cross Your Mind, All My Exes Live in Texas). He finished off the regular set with his usual "This is where the cowboy rides away" only to come back on stage for a one-song jam session of "Folsom Prison Blues". It was a good show, and it was good to be in a city that you could tell still mattered to him, and had brought him years of fans that he did not want to let down.
Hannah Montana swept the nation by storm in 2007 with her TV show and overpriced concerts.
Disney, never one to let a golden opportunity pass, created a 3-D movie of her concert
that they played for one week in select movie theatres throughout the country. Marleigh first
saw the 9 foot poster when we were in Pittsburgh visiting my parents, and we knew right then
we were going to have to go. We bought tickets as early as we could, fearing they would sell
out as fast as the concert, but were disappointed that the shows were only in rural towns surrounding
the metro (until the week before the show). Since Marleigh had never been to Stillwater, and it seemed to be the closest location,
we decided to take her up to Mexican Joe's (an affilate of Eskimo Joe's) and make a night of the
movie. There were only a few dads at the movie theatre, as mostly moms got suckered into bringing
their excited girls ranging from 5 to 15 to see the teen phenom. Each were rewarded with the
"good" 3-D glasses (not the red/blue kind from when we were kids), and were entertained by
dancing, blond-wigged, screaming girls in the auditorium. The movie itself was short and was
entertaining, showing back-stage and rehearsal antics, along with a hillarious contest put on
by a radio station where dads had to race in high heels to get concert tickets to the show.
The most nauseasted part of the night was when the Jonas Brothers played a set in between
Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus. Even Marleigh at the time seemed to wrinkle her nose, although
she will now tell you they were good. The highlight of the evening was on departure when
we asked Marleigh if she liked the show, to which she promptly replied "Now I know all of
her moves!" She wasn't kidding either, Phillip, Michelle and I got to enjoy a Hannah Montana
half-time show at the Superbowl the following weekend where Marleigh brought the
Best of Both Worlds concert straight into our living room!