Steve Winwood & Tom Petty concert

Tuesday evening Mike and I drove down to lovely Selma, Texas just north of San Antonio. Selma has one attraction (well, one attraction that we would drive out of our way to see)- the Verizon Amphitheater. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were playing a concert there and a colleague at work couldn't use his tickets, so I bought them. We saw Tom Petty a few years ago as the Sunday night headliner at ACL Fest. Unfortunately, we only caught a few songs that time because a huge thunderstorm rolled in and stopped the concert so we left. Turned out we should have stayed because he started playing again after the storm passed. There's a late-afternoon-stormy-weather pattern going on here (ever since Steffi returned home...hmm funny, that) and we were concerned the same thing would happen at this show. Fortunately the storms went around the amphitheater and we just had clouds and a beautiful sunset. Here is the view to the west from our seats.


We forgot our bug spray, but lucky for us the clever folks at the Verizon Amphitheater have a BUG SPRAY tent! Never seen one of these before... You just stand in line until it is your turn and then they spray you. Amazing and it is free!

Steve Winwood opened for Tom. He was great. Mike can name all of his songs. I pretty much recognized the tunes and the songs from the eighties that he played. It was good music to just listen to.

Steve played from 7:00 until about 8:10. Tom Petty came on at exactly 8:40 and the set lit up with lights of many colors and video screens focused on each of the band members. The concert was great - end to end greatest hits. I think there was one "bathroom song" in the middle (aka a song you don't mind missing if you need to leave your seat).

Here is a close up of Tom

This is not Tom, but a bandmember who we thought looked like John Mackey. I thought this was a terrific shot.This is the base player featured on the video screen at the top. He was excellent.
We were surrounded by various members of the trailor trash tribe. This woman pretty much stood on her seat with her too-short shorts and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and danced the whole night, blocking the view of the people behind her. Nowadays we hold up cell phones to show our appreciation for the band and desire for an encore. However, at this concert almost everyone in the audience had real lighters! It was honestly like stepping back 20 years in time. This is a blurry photo, but you get the idea
Tom and the Heartbreakers played until about 10:05 and then we coaxed them back out - with our lighters, screams, whistles and seat thumping - for 2 encore songs. The final one....you guessed it - American Girl.
We expected that getting out of the parking lot would be a nightmare, but our tickets came with VIP parking and we literally drove right out and found ourselves on I-35 within 10 minutes. Got home just before midnight...ummmm, yawn...just a little tired today.

Oh, and I sold two more books, for $83, while I slept. I may get hooked on ebay.