Matchbox 20 was probably one of those bands I would never have seen in concert had it not been for Jess. When she found out they were coming she told me she wanted to go so we got tickets. I guess this was a rescheduled show from 2020 before Covid. We didn’t have our tickets then, we had bought them a few months before the show. We had really good seats on the 100 level. Since we had seats for this show, the day of we left town around 3:30. We figured there may be some extra traffic if it rained which it did and it did cause traffic to back up. After the drive up to Denver and getting something to eat we got to the venue about 6:30 just as doors were opening. We didn’t have a long wait getting through security. As soon as we got inside the venue, we headed to the merch booth. Jess wanted to get a couple of shirts. As we walked up to the booth the line went back pretty fair. I told Jess to get in line and I would go see if I could find another booth and perhaps, they would have a shorter line. I did find another booth on the other side of the arena and it in fact did have a shorter line. I called her to come and join me and I think we stood in that line for maybe 10 minutes. The other line we would have been there for at least 30-45 minutes. After getting our merch and grabbing a couple drinks we found our way to our seats.
Like I said, we had good seats with a good view. It wasn’t long that we were sitting there the first band came out, in fact the opening act was right on time which is rare. The opening act was Matt Nathanson, who I had never heard of before. When he walked out on stage, he said he was the Wallflowers and this was their one hit One Headlight, which is a band and song that I know. When he said that Jess and I looked at each other a little confused. For a minute I thought maybe this was the singer from the Wallflowers and he’s playing their music with a new band. That was not the case. I didn’t end up knowing any of his songs, but Jess knew a couple. Even though I didn’t know any of his music I will say he was very entertaining. The music was good, probably not something I would listen to again, but it wasn’t bad. Between his songs he was really engaging with the crowd. For his first couple songs almost everyone was sitting down. He was able to get the crowd fired up and got most of the arena to get out of their seats and stand for the rest of his set. Though he isn’t someone I probably would listen to again I wouldn’t mind seeing as an opening act again.
Matt Nathanson was the only opening act. Matchbox 20 came out, I think it was close to 9. The minute they started their first song I told Jess we could move over a section (closer to the stage) since there was a lot of empty seats in one of the rows. So we did move over. I think we stood there for a couple songs and I told Jess we could move again as I saw more open seats in the next section over. She was up for it, so we did. Instead of going over just another section we moved 2 sections over. We sat in a couple open seats then stood up for the show. The people behind us asked if we would sit down. Normally I would tell them no but since these weren’t our actual seats, we did for a minute then we moved again to the next section over but a couple rows up from where we were. At this point we had a really good view of the stage. You can see the difference in my pictures below. Before the show was over, we ended up staying in that section but we moved down several rows.
As far as Matchbox 20, they put on a good set. They played 23 songs, 3 of which I knew. I was a little surprised I knew as many as I did. The singer wasn’t as in engaging with the crowd like the guy from the first band but that was probably because they had such a long set list. All and all it was a good show. I remember looking at Jess a couple of times and seeing how much she was enjoying the show. Considering I drag her to a lot of bands she doesn’t always like I was happy to be there with her, watching her enjoy herself. I would go see these guys again, probably not on my own but if she wanted to see them again in the future, I’d be ok with that.
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