Everly Brothers Tribute

Jake and Mary: A selfie before the concert begins.

August 14, 2015

While I was at Walmart around 5:00 yesterday to pick up Jake from work, I got a phone call from my son-in-law Chris. It seems he was the seventh caller on a radio program that morning and won himself two free tickets to a concert by an Everly Brothers Tribute Band (calling themselves the Evenly Bros).

The problem was, Sarah had to work and Chris's mom, Brenda, was too tired after work to go. She's really an early-morning person. So Chris offered the tickets to me. 

Well, Mark worked from 3:00 to midnight and Dylan from 4:00 to 9:00 (and the tickets specified that you had to be at least 21 to attend anyway). Since the concert began at 8:00, that left only Jake and me. We decided to go for it. We called it a "Mother and Like-a-Son Date"!

The "Evenly Brothers" on stage in Hon-Dah with their band.

So we went to dinner at Panda Express before driving up to Chris and Sarah's place to pick up the tickets. After that we stopped by home so Jake could change out of his Walmart blues-and-khakis, and then we drove on to the Hon-Dah casino on the Fort Apache reservation, where the concert was held in one of the conference rooms (the same one where we often hold our high school's junior-senior prom).

It's too dark to see all the dancers on the floor in front of the stage.

We arrived more than half-an-hour before the concert began, but the place was filled with large round tables that were already packed. Jake and I wandered around awhile, being denied seating by folks saving seats for their friends, until someone helped us find two unoccupied chairs at a table near the wall.

Once we were seated and had taken the requisite selfies, I looked around at the crowd and realized that 99 percent of those sucking down beers and wine coolers (no smoking allowed, thank you) were gray-haired and/or balding retirees, mostly from the diamond-studded country club set. I noted with humor how odd it was to be surrounded by such a geriatric crowd, when it suddenly hit me with shocking force, "Oh. My. Gosh. I'm one of them!"

It's always so strange to realize that I'm as old as I am. In 17 days I'll be 61, but I still seem to see myself as a thirty-something. Maybe it's because I spend my days in high school, or because I have barely any silver in my still-thick hair, or because I still have all my own teeth, or because I still have a child at home when most people my age have teenage grandchildren. Or maybe it's just a natural resistance to acknowledgement of aging. Whatever, I don't like it!

Jake was game to go to this concert with me, but he admitted on the way to Hon-dah that he'd never heard of the Everly Brothers. Well, Jake is only 24, and the Everly Brothers' heyday was from 1958 to 1985. I remember my mom singing "Wake Up, Little Susie" to me when I was just four or five. 

Nonetheless, I assured Jake that he may not know their names, but he would know their music as soon as he heard it. Their songs are a part of American music culture, practically iconic. And I was right. As soon as the tribute singers started the first song, he looked at me with big eyes and said, "Oh, yes!" Soon he was singing along with the rest of us oldsters.

It turned out to be a really fun evening. The concert went from 8:00 to 9:20, and the band covered most of the Everly Brothers' most popular songs, including:

"Bye Bye Love," "All I Have to Do Is Dream," "Let It Be Me," "When Will I Be Loved," "Love Hurts," "('Til) I Kissed You," "Crying in the Rain," "Walk Right Back," "Love Is Strange," "Bird Dog," "On the Wings of a Nightingale,"  and my personal favorite: "Cathy's Clown." I was probably seven or eight when I fell in love with that song.

After the first couple of songs, the folks around us made their way to the central floor and began to dance like a bunch of teeny-boppers in front of the stage to every song, gyrating and waving their arms like they'd suddenly misplaced several decades. A few, in fact, were dressed like teens from the 1950s. I admired their abundant energy. They put me to shame!

A 16-second clip where you can see the geriatric crowd dancing like a bunch of youngsters!

I tried to get pictures of them dancing, but all I got were shadows, as can be seen in the above photos. But they came out pretty well in the short video clip above. Everyone had a great time, including Jake and me.

Thanks for thinking of us, Chris!