House of Blues

July 21-22, 2015

A while back, we made the decision to attend Pat and Spyder’s show in Dallas. It was a “one-off” show for us, reachable by direct flights, and something we could do quickly – only taking us away from home overnight. When the time arrived, the weather was great and we had no delays with the airlines! That is so refreshing compared to our last jaunt to New York City and Boston, where we had four to seven hour delays in both directions, sat in long lines in traffic, etc.

I arrived about 10 minutes before Joe at around 1:15pm, found his gate nearby, and waited. It had only been a week since we flew home from Boston, so we continued on where we left off. No, actually I was very nice to him. He puts up with a lot of guff from me and has sympathy for my husband.

I had no checked bags – which is a freakin’ miracle for this chic, who is the toiletry/liquid queen!!! I did it though and loved bypassing the baggage claim area. Love Field airport looks like an indoor mall! It’s my favorite airport so far. If a Zombie apocalypse happened, this would be my destination. I’d have to wield a big weapon to ‘de-zombify’ the place, but it would be worth it. So let’s consider this destination as our official Fan Club spot if the above should happen, ;-)!

We went outside, and caught a cab easily (Yellow Cab Company). But OMG, the weather was like someone took the lid off a pot of a lobster cooking. Yes, that’s how it feels in Dallas – like an open simmering lobster pot! It was 102º and high humidity!

Our destination was Monica’s, recommended by a friend here who is a foodie and knows of great places to eat everywhere. Mexican is her theme, and I can roll with that. So we get there…and walk around the building to find the suite…and walk…and walk…in the 101º heat…and can’t find it. We duck into the Cedar Springs Tap House – before I melt (because witches DO melt) and discover that this IS Monica’s – if you had a time machine. The place closed in September. Apparently Monica lost her groove, and things kind of went South on her. We decided to eat and drink at the Tap House since it was so hot out and oh, we were starved. While we were waiting, I tried to shuffle some new cards I had – and flipped them all over the place. 52 card pickup anyone??

I called my friend (Jessica!) and told her of Monica’s demise -and her lack of taking down her website. Oh well – we tried and were told to try Gloria’s tomorrow for lunch. Thankfully Gloria (as we all know, what a great name right??) still has her groove on. That ended up being successful.

We had a couple of Corona’s. They didn’t seem to know you were supposed to put lime in them. I ordered grilled fish tacos. Joe decided on a buffalo chicken wrap. Food was good but the wrap fell apart (user error?), and it was jarred salsa – are you kidding?! I told a worker there, “How hard is it to whip up some fresh salsa!?” He agreed.

We called the YCC for a ride to the hotel. They said a driver would be there in 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, we went outside to wait – in the heat again. Ten turned into 15, then 20, then 30, then the YCC calling us to say another driver was going to get us, blah blah blah…. Then…me losing my mind outside in the heat, and starting to explode at the mouth (not a far trip sometimes!). So I called another cab company – Joe said “Star Cab! That’s who we keep seeing drive by with people in them!” So I did – they said 5 minutes. And ya know what? They were there in 5 minutes!

And so was the YCC. I told the YCC people where to go – not really – I was pretty nice (but direct) about it – it wasn’t the driver’s fault. The dispatcher must’ve been in the shitter or something for the last 45 minutes. So we stuck with Star Cab for the remainder of the trip.

We got to our hotel and checked in. There was some confusion on the rooms, but they got that figured out. Having a Mary Kay convention going on there didn’t help.

So we lounge around, Joe decides to buy a “35th+ Anniversary” shirt at the venue so keeps on his swanky t-shirt. I wash my stinky sandal feet, change my shirt, and off to the venue we go. We walk – it’s close – 2 blocks. We sweat like demons outside the venue to get tix and passes. The Will-Call window seemed to be at the focus of all the rays of the sun. Jimmy set us up well. Box seats…front row!!! No GA, thank goodness. The sardine days are over for us. We go in and have to walk thru the restaurant to the ‘venue’. Joe asks an employee – who looks like she’ll kick your ass waaaaay over there if you say the wrong thing… ‘where and when do we go for the MnG (there were no instructions from Jimmy)?’ She checks and points to the VIP line – wow, 8 of them tonight! But then realizes we are not VIP’s, just ‘sticker people’. That’s when Erin walks by, and Joe states “she knows us, she’s with the band…” And Erin says to the ass-kicker girl “I’ll take care of them.” The girl ‘gets it’ and listens. Erin calls Jimmy real quick, tells us to go have a drink at the bar and come to the sound board around 7:00. She says when you are in a ‘real city’ there are usually more VIP’s. The number is manageable, but she doesn’t like it to get to 10, as then it becomes too hard to juggle.

So we do just that. Two awesome Mojito’s later, and a few envious FB posts flying from our phones, we stroll back in at around 6:30/6:45. Ass-kicker employee chic sees us and lets us in to the ‘early entry’ line and shoos the regular ticket holders to another place to get in. The ‘line’ is just us and a few other VIP’s. We go down into the venue and start hanging around. I start talking with Dawn Davis about the show and introduced Joe as the Fan Club dude-master. She and her husband whip out their phones, get on Facebook and request membership, which we stand right next to them and approve. We are actively recruiting…….. are you?!? Super nice people.

At the appointed time, Jimmy materializes out of nowhere and asks “This it? Just the two of you??” and we follow him to the deep bellows of the HOB. We end up standing stage-right, and Jimmy tells us to wait a moment. Then he comes out and chats with us for a good solid 5 minutes or more.

Then…just like that…Pat is ready for us. Jimmy lets us in, and…voila…we’re in her lair – and a lair it was. Total funked-out, bad lighting HOB dressing room with her washer in there. She had a few comments on that and the weather in Dallas in general. She also said “just you two?” Pat was tired-tired-tired, but came alive talking. And somewhere in there, we noticed Jimmy had left us alone with her. That’s almost unheard of. Pat asked us about The Big Interview (which I told her was playing right now as we were there with her, so we’d have to watch it later), and more. The best part was what Pat shared with us about Dan Rather – how sweet and soft spoken he is.

AND I finally got a Pat/Joe pic alone as one had not been done in too long!

We did not see Spyder. Erin had the 8 VIP’s with Spyder during the time we were with Pat. Then swapped to bring them to Pat. When Jimmy opened the door for us to leave, there was a group of people waiting. It was almost 7:30 at this time, which was listed as show time by the venue. Pat gave us about 20 minutes. While the VIPs were with Spyder, we got all of her time. I’m not sure how much time each of the VIP’s got, as the show finally started a few min after 8pm. Can you say we’re grateful? Yes we certainly are. There were goodbye hugs. Pat said, “Always great to see you both,” and we were on our way out.

As we walked back into the venue and up the stairs to our seats, I think I was floating. I’m pretty sure of that. Joe, did my feet touch the ground? (Barely – JC)

Seats – awesome! And comfortable! Swiveling chairs padded just the right amount and with lots of leg room. We ordered a couple of small plastic cups of wine 😉 The guy behind us ended up sitting next to me, as that seat was open. He’s a fan club member and saw Pat numerous times backstage when younger as he had some connections. I told him Joe and I were there from the fan club, and he said to me, “Okay, I thought you looked familiar.” Very nice guy. Curtis.

The show was FANTASTIC! Yes we’ve heard it all before but that didn’t matter. One Love, Go, and Strawberry Wine were the “inserts”.

The show was over at 10:00 – later than we expected, because it started late. We talked to Curtis for a bit, then went downstairs and saw Chris was talking with a group of people. We said “Hi” briefly – super quick, gave hugs and said we’ll see him in Denver next month – didn’t want to take up any of his time. Then we grabbed a cab to get to our dinner reservations, as we were running late. This gets funny…

During the show, the restaurant had called Joe to say that the kitchen closes at 10:00pm so… what they’d done was taken a dinner reservation when we couldn’t get dinner. Yeah…it’s been 8 hours since lunch…we’re hungry…and we can’t eat there. So we ask the cab driver, and he recommended another place. It was in fair walking distance, but at the time that was unknown. We drove there, he asked outside what time the kitchen closed, and the valet employee said 11:00…so we pay the fare, let the cab go, and go into the restaurant. It’s empty. The kitchen is already closed! So they recommend Mesomaya behind them. We go into Mesomaya and the kitchen is closed. They recommend Hooters – which is – back just across the street where we came from – by the venue! So we laugh, realizing we’d just taken a cab so we could walk back to where we were! Which is exactly what we did. It was still hot but not extreme – and we got some good exercise. I’ve never been to a Hooters before.

Hooters was perfect. Good food. I ordered a salad, and Joe said he’d go with the “buffalo chicken sandwich.” I looked at him and said, “Is this a theme?” He was confused. Then I reminded him what he ordered for lunch. “Oh yeah, I guess I did!” Ultimately he decided on a burger. The food was great. So were the 2 bottles of Corona (a theme, a theme!)

We then walked the 2 blocks back to the hotel. We were still on a ‘Pat high’ so decompressed by talking, looking over photos and trying to teach Joe how to shuffle a deck of cards properly. After that we retired to our rooms and got a full, solid 3-4 hrs of sleep.

We woke up early – me not as early, but I could not get back to sleep! Ate the free breakfast. We had 90 minutes to kill before we were heading out. I took a nap! We then packed up, stashed our bags in the hotel storage area and walked the 4 or 5 blocks to the Sixth Floor Museum. That was incredible. I learned so much. We were both pretty somber after that 90 minutes. There was a call to Star Cab – our favorite cab company now – a quick pickup, and they took us to Gloria’s (wish it was the real Gloria’s in Dracut – I hear her food is fantastic!!). The food was great! I teased Joe and asked if he was going to order a buffalo chicken burrito. At least he saw the humor in that. Then our Star Cab (favorite guys again!) picked us up, we grabbed our bags from the hotel, then off to Love Field airport. Again I love this airport/zombie apocalypse hang-out . Since I inhaled all my food from Gloria’s – and Joe wasn’t as voracious – he left room for a good treat from Paciugo Gelato – chocolate-chocolate-chip and cherry swirl.

Flights were on time, I took off about 20 minutes late, but made the time up in the air. Joe boarded right after me. We both had uneventful trips home, which is a godsend compared to our Boston trip two weeks’ previous.

Hmm, Joe, you never did get that 35^th anniversary t-shirt did you? Maybe at the next show???

I’ve met with Pat lots of times but never expect to. Each time I am so grateful that I am able to do something like this – and that she and Spyder are so gracious, yet again, when they don’t really have to be! I love being a part of running the fan club these days. I want to thank Joe Cross for the recruitment. Pat pretty much adores Joe – and there is always something special she does (ShoutOut). No one probably heard this but us, and yes this is Joe Cross she was referring to (she also looked his way).

There are so many cool fans I have met. I’d love to meet many many more! We’re all lucky and blessed to have artists that give a rip about their fans and truly enjoy what they do. You all picked well back in the 80’s – prior and beyond……….. See you all “out there”. Don’t be shy. Come say, “HI!” I encourage you all to meet up with other fans too, it’s lots of fun!

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If you’ve stuck with us this far, here are more photos & video taken on the trip!

One of my favorite Airports so far!

And a couple of videos: