Best. Weekend. Ever.

I've been looking forward to this weekend for a while now. I just had to go to Record Store Day. I wouldn't dare pass up a chance to see one of my favorite bands, The Rocket Summer. And I always love seeing Buxton, also one of my favorite bands. Alas, for reasons I won't go into, it looked as though I wouldn't be able to go to any of these amazing events. But everything seemed to line up perfectly, all at the last second too, and I had one of the best weekends ever.
 
Saturday:
I was all geared up to skip sleeping on Friday night and head to my favorite record store, Cactus Music, around 3am the next morning. I became a little distraught when I saw on Facebook that there were already 7 people in line before 11pm on Friday. So I rushed through my night and arrived at the store around 1am. Fortunately, no one had shown up since I saw the photo and I secured the number 8 spot in line. Then came the waiting. Around 4am it started to get unbelievably cold, especially for springtime in Texas. For the first time in my life (that I can remember anyways) I wore 2 jackets. And even with those layers plus my long sleeve shirt, I was still no match for the cold. Around 6am I gave in and soaked up some heat in my van, as to not go insane from the cold. Around 7 or so, an old friend showed up and I had someone to talk to for a couple hours. Then, at 10am, the doors opened and the fun began. I didn't have enough money to get all the records I wanted, but I still managed to get the top 2 on my list.

I looked around the store for a bit and waited for my friend to get through the line. Finally, I felt like I was going to die of hunger so I signed up for some sweepstakes they were having, got my fiancee some coffee and left. After eating some lunch, the lack of sleep finally hit me. I crashed and hard. I woke up in time for dinner and much to my delight, was feeling up to going to Buxton's show at Discovery Green. We drove downtown and enjoyed our first Buxton show in quite some time.

We even got to talk to a few of the guys in the band, including my podcast's next musical guest, Sergio Trevino. (Look for Sergio's episode next weekend...April 27th or so)

Afterwards, we got home and Ana went out with her friends. I, once again, crashed hard. Midway through my second nap of the day, I received a phone call informing me that I had won tickets to see The Rocket Summer on Sunday. After fully waking up, I listened to the voicemail again to make sure I didn't just dream such a thing, as I often do. It was quite real and now I had tickets to see a show I had been looking forward to for months and had no way of paying for.
 
Sunday:
We arrived at House of Blues and first up was a band called Versecity. I couldn't decide if I liked them, as the sound wasn't set up too well for the band, but I did like their energy. Oh and, after years of wasting my childhood with those silly books, I finally found Waldo. He was pretty easy to spot.

Next up was a guy by the name of Joe Brooks. I wasn't really feeling it for the first half of his set but the second half was pretty good. He played some good songs, including some pretty decent covers of The Black Crowes, The Beatles, Young the Giant, and one I didn't recognize.

The Highlight of My Weekend:
Finally, The Rocket Summer. Now let me preface this by explaining my fandom and adoration for this guy. The first time I've ever even heard of TRS was at a show 2 1/2 months ago. He played an amazing solo set then and after buying (yes, I said buying) all of his albums (ok, so I downloaded one, get over it), I instantly became a huge fan of his music. I can't even tell you how many times I've listened to those albums over the past 10 weeks. So now I finally got to see him with his band AND I was able to bring my lovely best friend with me too. He started out solo but was soon joined by the band.
 

The show was alive and kickin' and then BAM! The backdrop falls to reveal the band's logo. And it only escalated from there.
 

Being a man of many instruments, or as I like to call him, "The Hands-Free One-Man Band", he pulled out instrument after instrument for our entertainment. This drum was pulled out just to riff for about a minute.
 

A song ended and while looking away, I didn't notice that the band had left the stage. A looping noise and a still-lit stage were seemingly all that remained. A couple minutes passed by and the confusion set in, for me at least. Then everyone cheered as Bryce walked back in and settled in a spot in the middle of the crowd about 6 feet away from Ana and me. His roadie set up a mic stand and he played 2 songs amongst the crowd, which had everyone cheering.
 

After Waldo and some other fans helped Bryce to crowd surf his way back to the stage, we were treated with quite a few more songs before seeing singers from the other 2 bands (and the sound engineer) join the band on stage for a song.
 

After a while, Bryce climbed off the stage and started singing with Waldo and a few other lucky fans in the middle of the crowd. (Sorry, my pictures of this moment didn't turn out so well.) And then came the end. Or so we thought. After a few minutes, Bryce came back alone and explained that we were nowhere near done and he had just gone to get a drink of water.
 

He began taking requests from the audience, and at one point, listened to his own music on a fan's phone in order to remember how to play an old song of his. After a few crowd requested songs, we had to go home. And he was still playing. This was the last show of his tour and I got the feeling that he wanted it to go on forever. I'm writing this over an hour after leaving and for all I know, he's still there. Probably not but it wouldn't surprise me if he was. The man puts on an incredible show and I can't wait to see him live again. I was a little disappointed that I didn't have time to talk to him after the show but I'm still going to try everything I can to get him to do a session for my podcast. When I met him months before, he was an amazingly nice guy and I was fortunate enough to let him know how much his music inspired me.
 
This weekend could've been like any other but it turned out to be one of the best I've ever had. And I made sure to write this story for you as soon as I could, so as to not lose the fire I'm feeling right now. Thank you Cactus Music for the tickets. Thank you Bryce Avary for once again inspiring me in a way that most other musicians can't. Thank you Ana for standing next to me during this amazing experience.

To see all of the photos I took this weekend, search for Noise Fix on Facebook. I'll be posting them soon...