My favorite musical group, The Longest Johns, was on tour in the USA. They are a UK based group that performs sea shanties and other folk music. Like many people, I heard “The Wellerman” shanty during COVID times and got interested in this music. Next thing I know, I have a Pandora station focused around this group. I don’t go to many concerts, but when I heard they were coming to the US, I wanted to see them.
The closest location I could find was in Chicago, five hours away from St. Louis. I did the logical thing and took two days off work to ensure I could see them play live. Corvin is a huge fan as well and decided to join me. Not to be left out, Danelle and Sonora decided to tag along.
The week before the concert, Danelle let me know she has a work trip and can’t make the concert. Now Sonora doesn’t want to go without mom. I have 2 extra tickets. Corvin reached out to his network of friends and ended up with one friend that was able to go with us.
The day of the concert came and we picked up Ethan at his house and took off for an overnight concert trip to Chicago. The drive was straight forward and we had pleasant conversation. As we were arriving into Chicago, it was approaching dinner time. Our agenda was food, checking into the hotel and getting to the concert.
After a decent stop for pizza, we quickly checked into our room and drove to the area of town for the concert. We eventually found parking. Somewhat to my surprise, as its a big town, we saw other people dressed to go to the concert. We followed them to the venue where we queued up in line to get inside.
Did I mention that the part of town was very urban with cool art?
Once inside the venue, we found seats up top to enjoy the concert
Corvin and Ethan both took some video, but I wanted to just be in the moment during the whole concert. Okay and I was switching in and out my ear plugs as my ears are a bit sensitive. I used to have concert ear plugs, but I couldn’t find them. I knew my ears would be ringing worse than normal after the concert, so I picked and choose my favorite songs to decide how much abuse I would allow them.
I’ve not the words to express how much the music meant to me other than to say I would happily travel several hours to hear them play again. After the concert, Ethan and Corvin went to the merchandise line to get something to remember the concert by. When we got to the merch table, there wasn’t much left. Corvin wanted a shirt and a 4XL was the smallest size they had.
Then we went over and met the 3 band members, the guys lined up and I took a photo of them.
We walked back to the car with non-stop banter about the concert. It didn’t take long at the hotel before we were all asleep.
Morning came quickly and I went to breakfast quietly while I wanted for Corvin and Ethan to wake up. Eventually they woke up and we checked out of the room. On the way home, I wanted to make a return trip to Matthiessen State Park for a hike. As we pulled up to the park, Ethan didn’t seem too excited to be there and expressed a need to be home at a certain time. It didn’t take much time before the boys started having lots of fun.
Once we hiked down into the river, the boys forgot about deadlines and went into exploring mode!
I spent about half the hike trying to keep my feet dry before giving up and just stepping in the water. It made it more enjoyable as I could go many additional places enjoying the views. Eventually things got difficult and Ethan stepped mid thigh deep in some very smelly mud. Then he had to get wet trying to clean up. We had lots of laughs.
Eventually back at the car, Ethan put on a change of clothes to keep the car clean and not smell as bad. Then we drove back home to St. Louis, a perfect get away with great music!
Hogan Haake