And this made 5

I got to see Ani again.

This is the 5th time I was fortunate enough to be able to make it to an Ani DiFranco concert. She's my absolute favorite artist. The Husband went over the top and gave me two tickets to her July 9th concert in Baltimore for Mother's Day. I invited my best friend, Robin to come along with me as she and I have been to most of our Ani shows together. It was only fitting that I asked her.

The exciting part to this concert was it was the first concert I was to with general admission. I had always been somewhere that you were assigned a seat and therefore never got that close to the front. I told Robin that this time we were going to the front and she was equally as pleased.

When we got to the venue we passed by the entrance doors and could hear Ani doing her sound check. A friendly couple ladies told us to peak through the door and we would be able to see her. Sure enough...

there she was (middle in the white shirt).

Now I didn't have my camera as they said no cameras so all these pictures are with my phone which they didn't seem to have a problem with since EVERYONE had their phones out taking pictures. The quality isn't there, but still. These are all without a zoom.

Very neat start to the evening. So we went off walking around Inner Harbor until we decided to eat dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. It was delicious. After dinner we headed back to stand in line - doors at 7 and show and 8. We were left in and promptly grabbed our places just slightly off to the right of center stage and only one body back from the front rail. SO EXCITING!

The opening act was The Guggenheim Grotto which was two Irish guys. One who sings and plays keyboard and the other that sings and does the guitar. Great music.

When Ani came out on stage I just couldn't believe how close we actually were. The sound wasn't awesome, because we were in front of the speakers, but that didn't matter to me at all. What was awesome was to be able to see the detail - to see her expressions. Amazing.

It was an amazing show.

Here's one of her newer songs that I just love...



I look forward to my next show. Robin and I have been talking about taking the boys to the next one. Hopefully I'll be able to line up a babysitter to make that happen.