On The Road: EPCOT

You know...any sane, well adjusted, responsible adult would come home from an exhausting week long trip to California, get some rest, and continue on with their life.  But, I’m apparently none of those things and I’m definitely not a casual fan.  So three days after landing back in Tampa, I once again woke up before the sun to drive somewhere...for Hanson.

Every year, Hanson plays at the EPCOT Food and Wine festival as part of their Eat to the Beat concert series.  They play for three days (three short concerts each day) and they give a beer seminar the morning of the last day.  I went last year and it’s hilarious looking back on that experience compared to the one I had this year.  I wish I could tell that KT about the absolutely insane three days that she was going to live in a year.  But I’m getting ahead of myself!  

I scooped Sarah up on my way out of town and we made our way to Orlando.  We wanted to get to the park at 9am to secure our spots at the American Gardens Theatre.  EPCOT is a unique experience from any other Hanson concert because you get to sit in the venue when you get there instead of lining up for hours on end BUT you also have to leave your hard earned front row spot as soon as the first short concert ends.  So anyway, Sarah and I quickly learned the the back part of the park doesn’t open until 11am (last year I didn’t get to the park til about 2pm so I had no idea about this little detail).  So...we waited.  At this point, I had lots of experience waiting. My entire life for a week was waiting!  Bring it on!  

When the back section of the park finally opened, a crowd had formed and  a hoard of full grown women were running towards the venue so, as a person who is very competitive but only about very niche things (I don’t care who wins at board games but if someone in my gym class gets heavier dumbbells than me, you better believe I’m switching mine out) I started running too.  I’m not proud, but I also play to win.  We secured our front row, Taylor side spots and hunkered down for the relatively short wait (11am-5:30pm??  That’s nothing!).  Also, we were at Disney World!!  So there was food to eat, drinks to have, bathrooms galore, and if we needed to stretch our legs we could go visit Germany (okay that was just me, I LOVE GERMANY).

By the end of the three day extravaganza, we had our system down to an exact science.  On that first day, we met up with two of our line friends from St. Pete (Robin and Meredith) and ended up spending the whole trip with them.  The second day, I was NOT kidding around, and Meredith and I sprinted to the venue in order to get the best seats in the house (shout out to Jamarcus for getting me in shape!).  We knew what we needed to do in order to get in line for each mini-concert, and find the best seats, and haul ass after each set was done.  But when we weren’t running around like crazy people, we were hanging out with other fans who were doing the same exact thing as us, and laughing so hard it hurt.  

The third day brought the morning of the Beer Seminar, and let me tell you, this might rank as the single most craziest thing I have ever done for this band.  Sarah and I woke up around 5:30am (at this point my body was really not having it so I was trying my best to rally that morning!  Surprisingly, I felt much better after my morning JOG lol) and went downstairs to get breakfast for our crew.  We ended up having a breakfast picnic on the concrete outside the entrance to EPCOT, which was great because we needed to fuel.  I felt like the stakes were so high, and...so did everyone.  It’s hard not to get swept up in it all.  Anyway, the seminar was held at the festival center and only the first 100 people to get in line were allowed in.  Even though someone tried to do the Hanson tradition of numbering the line before we got into the park, once the gates were open, it was every man for himself.  Trust me when I say that I wish this wasn’t what it was like in this fandom, seeing as we’re all in our mid-twenties to forties at this point, but hey, it keeps us young, right?  All four of us made it into line for the seminar after our nice, relaxing morning SPRINT.  The entire line was comprised of the people we had spent the whole three days with, but the insanity was worth it.  The seminar was awesome and we all got to have some individual time with the guys and get pictures with them.  Taylor remembered me from the California follow and was absolutely delighted to see me, which made me feel pretty cool, I’m not gonna lie.  He made sure I was going to be at the shows that night.  

Um...yeah, I was gonna be there.

The rest of the day was a delight, and I was once again reminded of why I love this band and the experiences they have brought me (or put me through, depending on how you want to look at it).  I was surrounded by people I met through this music, laughing so hard I was crying, spending the day at Disney World, coasting on the feeling of talking to the musicians that I admire the most.  So yeah, I had to run and get really hoarse and be exhausted and feel like it was a life or death situation when they opened the gates.  But...isn’t that what we’re all kind of wishing for?  A life that is exciting and risky and significant?  A life that brings you joy so big that you feel like you’re going to explode?  

All I know is when they started playing “Penny and Me” during the last concert of the night, I absolutely dissolved.  I know it was partly due to exhaustion, partly due to the overwhelming gratitude I felt, and partly due to the fact that now my autumn of Hanson was officially drawing to a close.  I cried so hard I almost choked, but that’s beside the point.  They always dedicate that song to the travellers in the audience, and I did my fair share of travelling this fall.  After Penny ended, they transitioned to “I Was Born” which made me weepy in a different way.  Taylor did an abridged version of his speech from tour, and I just stood there watching, tears in my eyes, soaking it all in.  

So, I guess I should probably wrap this up since I’m once again getting emotional.   This fall I did something I’d never done before, and I followed a band on tour.  It came with a lot of crazy and not so pretty experiences, but it also came with friends, memories, and definitely the best of times.  Hanson, I’ll love you til the end, forever and a day.  Thank you for everything.

Peace, Love, and MmmHops,

KT

The Glory of the Spring

It was only a matter of time before I sat down to write this post.  I know that in merely three days I’ll be jetting off to follow a band to the other side of the country and back again, and I know that the show has closed on Broadway twice now.  But even so, Spring Awakening continues to be “my favorite thing in this world, in this universe, in this lifetime” (a direct quote from me when I made my roommates watch a Spring Awakening bootleg with me on my Springaversary).  I’ve been involved in many fandoms over the course of my 27 years, and each of them have been special.  But nothing will ever touch this one.  Ever.  There will never be another Spring Awakening.

When I was 16 years old, I went to the dollar movie theatre with my mom and sister.  We were sitting waiting for the movie to start and music was playing over the sound system.  I heard a song with flowery lyrics, rich harmonies, and stunning imagery.  I had no idea what it was.  I made sure to remember some of the lyrics so that I could look it up later when I got home.  “The earth will wave with corn…” "the clouds begin to thunder, crickets wander murmuring..." “All shall know the wonder of purple summer.”  I don’t even remember what movie we saw, but I remember hearing that song like it was yesterday.  It made my whole body vibrate.  I went home and looked up the lyrics and it brought me to the official website for a show that was about to open on Broadway.  And so it began.  

It was only a matter of time before I had watched every video possible, bought the OBCR, scoured the internet for content, and doodled every lyric into my school notebooks.  In no time at all, I had found The Guilty Ones, a fan forum for the show.  For a while I just looked and read, thinking that I wasn’t the kind of person that posted in forums.  Well...I was very, VERY wrong about that.  I was definitely the kind of person that posted in forums.  I would run home every day from school, hop online, pull up TGO, and do my homework while refreshing the homepage and posting to my heart’s content.  I talked to my friends from the boards in AIM chats every night.  We planned meet ups.  We traded. We flailed.  We analyzed.  We argued.  We laughed.  

In June, I finally got to see the show live with my friend Sarah, who I had pulled right along with me into the dizzying world of Musical Theatre fandom.  That night still ranks as one of the best of my life.  I cried like a baby and nearly buzzed out of my skin with happiness.  I got pictures with the cast. I knew I would never be the same.  

After that humid June evening in New York City, Spring Awakening wasn’t just a thing I loved or even something I liked talking about to my internet friends.  It became my support system.  It was something I could always turn to; my safe space.  Whether that meant seeing the show and feeling like I was back home, or visiting my friends I had made through TGO, or writing fanfiction, or going backstage with Pops, or following the first national tour, or talking on AIM until the sun came up, or eventually directing the show myself  (which is still one of my very proudest moments). I’ve seen the show countless times and I’ve been in it a few times as well.  But sometimes it’s amazing to me that, although I love the show and can still probably recite the entire script if you really needed me to, it eventually wasn’t even about the musical itself.  My “internet friends” just became...my friends.  The bold, silly, talkative, girl I was on the forums just became who I am.  I didn’t need to be anything but that.   When the original production closed on Broadway, my friend called me from the audience and let me listen to the show on my home phone.  I cried my eyes out with Sarah in my living room, then called my TGO friends to make sure they were doing okay, then went to bed wondering if life would ever be the same again.  

And of course, life is never the same.  Every single day, the world is completely different.  Spring ends, and summer follows. I joined TGO in 2007, and it’s now 2017. So of course, everything is different.  But, those are still my truest and most loyal friends.  They are still the ones I confide in because when I was 16, they were the ones who listened.  They are the ones that let me be completely myself.  They are still the ones I go visit when I’m in New York, and we laugh as hard as we did when we were all behind our computer screens up way too late on a school night.  And listen, if there was a way I could follow Spring Awakening around the country right here right now in 2017, I absolutely would.  We found something really special in that little rock musical about teenagers growing up in provincial Germany, and I don’t think it can ever be recreated.  But I don’t think it needs to be.

"We did have some remarkable times."

Peace, Love, and Chrysanthemums,

KT