Orel Family

A couple weeks ago, Palace Entertainment did a quickie 2-day half-price sale on tickets to a bunch of concerts here this summer. So I picked up a couple shows. Tonight’s was the “B.B. King Blues Festival,” with B. B. King, Al Green and Etta James, and $10 a ticket for the lawn, parking included. Can’t beat that. The time was listed as 7pm, and with multiple artists on the bill, I figured they’d start on time. But I really wanted to see Al Green. We missed him the last time he was through. Of course, I wanted to see B.B. King and Etta James, too, but figured we could afford to miss some of Etta’s set if it meant avoiding Pine Knob traffic, and we just saw B.B. a few months ago and figured it’d be pretty similar. We aimed for a 7:30 arrival; unfortunately, it seems like everybody else did, too – we ended up in a mile long backup. By the time we got out of the car, we could clearly hear “Let’s Stay Together” coming from the speakers. Damn! Got to the entry, and found out why:...

Today's little experiement. Went out to www.travbuddy.com because I saw a link to it from another blog and thought it'd be cool. A few minutes later, my own map of where I've been (no separate entry for Hell, Michigan ). So, here goes, my own map: note -- travbuddy ceased operations in April, 2018. 

Last night we saw Bob Dylan at Freedom Hill Amphitheater over in Sterling Heights. The show was hot, though maybe not quite as much as the Palace show last November . Bob's been touring with he same band for several years now, and they were pretty tight throughout. Freedom Hill is about in a county park about 20 miles due east from our house. Surface streets all the way, and we managed to catch every red light. We wanted to see Jimmy Vaughan open, but by the time we got there he was almost done, we got to hear about the last 10 seconds of his final song. After a couple minutes, I went over to the souvenir stand; Dylan always does venue-specific posters now, and I'm a sucker for 'em. I got to the front of the line, and behind the table was... Jimmy Vaughan. So now I have a signed poster. Vaughan was standing with a tall bald guy in an ancient Bob Seger t-shirt, some folks seemed to recognize him, too. Dylan opened with Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 while Jimmy...