Non-country fans, or any man that may be reading this blogpost needs to know that Hunter Hayes is huge in the country music scene right now. He is insanely talented, and now I know that he is an extremely humble and thankful artist. There was something that Natalie and I hadn't really caught in the ticket information. You could say that we didn't read the "fine print". The thing that we didn't realize until the tickets were printed up was that the concert doors opened at 5 a.m. Yes, you are reading that right! The actual concert was expected to start around 7 a.m. We had no idea that we would have to get up in the middle of the night (technically morning) to see Hunter perform in his concert. There were three special things about this concert:
1. This was Hunter's attempt to break the Guinness World Record for most amount of live concerts in 24 hours. The previous record was held by the Flaming Lips for a total of 8 shows in 24 hours. Each concert had to be at least 15 minutes and at least 30 miles away from each other.
2. This concert series donated to Child Hunger Ends Here. This organization donates meals and money to help prevent child hunger in America. This organization allows brands of food, cleaning products, and health products to have a code on the packaging. By entering this code on their website, the organization will donate meals to children across the nation. Most of the proceeds from the concert were given to this organization. In addition, Hunter's new album, Storyline has a code inside that will allow the organization to donate 10 meals to hungry children.
3. Natalie and I went to his last show, which was in Philadelphia. This show wasn't necessary to break the world record, in fact, it was an additional show that Hunter decided to add on. Officially, the record was broken in Asbury Park, during his 9th show.
I have been to plenty of concerts before, and this was by far the craziest. It was even crazier than going to Times Square at 4:00am to see the Jonas Brothers perform on the Today Show in 2009. Here is a brief timeline of what went down during that night/morning:
12:00am-Natalie and I finally go to bed
3:19am-Natalie and I wake up to get ready
4:02am-We leave to drive 40 minutes into Philly
4:45am-We stand in line outside of the venue that had been about a block and a half long and wrapped around buildings
6:15am-The first opener, Charlie Worsham, started his set
7:00am-The second opener, The Railers, started their set
8:15am-Hunter finally arrived in Philadelphia and started his set!
9:30am-Natalie and I met Hunter
9:50am-We left and went to breakfast
I still can't believe that all of it happened. It was just so wild and lively! There were definitely times where we were frustrated and tired, but we pulled through. We discussed our foot and back pains (from standing for almost 3 hours straight), our hunger, and the extremely hot temperature of the venue. In the end, it was all so worth it. Because of all of that, I have no voice left. I also have no regrets (except for paying $29.00 for parking). We ended up finding where Hunter was coming out of the venue, and where his tour bus was. We hurried over to where there were about 4 or 5 girls standing there behind a barricade. Within 10 minutes or so, there were about 12 of us. The security then didn't allow anyone else to come back where we were. We stood and waiting, completely expecting just a wave and a "hello" from him as he went on to his bus. Naturally, understanding that he had been up for more than 24 hours on this race, we weren't expecting much. He came out, and immediately came over to all of us. He signed whatever we had, talked to us, hugged us, and took pictures with us. For every single person in the line, he thanked them for being there, and for helping fight child hunger. He was one of the most genuine and nice artists that I've ever met. He is a four-time Grammy nominating artist who had a no. 1 selling album the first day it came out. Something that I noticed during the concert, was he was so, so grateful for everyone coming. He ended up playing about 7 or 8 songs (twice as much as his other shows), and released confetti bombs at the end of the show.
Overall, it was one of the craziest experiences of my life. It helped restore faith into modern-day music. Hunter is a Christian, and remains a positive figure in the music scene. So, was it worth it? Was it worth the early hours, and little-to-no sleep? Was it worth the raspy to non-existent voice pattern that I've experienced over the last two days? Absolutely. I wish I could re-live it. I wish that I could have bought more tickets for the sole purpose of raising money for the cause. Hunter, hats off to you kid-you broke the record. You might have also broke some girl's hearts in the process.
In His forever & always,
