Lonestar Concert at the Little Creek Casino in Shelton, WA

Lonestar Concert at Little Creek Casino
Originally uploaded by RVWithTito

We drove the RVs down to Shelton for the Lonestar concert at the Little Creek Casino. We saw the Doobie Brothers here last year and it's a good venue for live music. Arriving early, we had a nice lunch and then hung around the casino until showtime. I left a small contribution in a slot machine for the tribe before returning to the RV for some downtime before showtime. I did have a chance to walk down to the event center early enough to hear the band doing a sound check. The Lonestar semi-truck pictured on the right was backed up to the side of the event center at the time. My review of the Lonestar concert, however, would be mixed.

First let me say that the band was very good and the overall performance was entertaining. The instruments and vocals were very tight. The only criticism I have is that it just did not feel like I was watching Lonestar. Let me qualify that by saying that I had never seen Lonestar live before. But it was as if former lead singer, Richie McDonald, took the band's signature sound with him when he left the group in 2007.  Lonestar's new lead singer, Cody Collins, is an awesome vocalist. I'll give him that. However his voice, vocal style, appearance and stage presence highly resemble that of Keith Urban. It was as if a Keith Urban impersonator were singing all of your favorite Lonestar songs. Regardless, the die hard Lonestar fans no doubt loved the show. For me, the highlights were watching drummer Keech Rainwater play and the encore medly of classic rock snippets which included a tight rendition of the vocal intro to the Kansas song "Carry On My Wayward Son". 

The young ladies in the audience seemed to be totally into Cody, as you would expect with his youthful good looks, smooth vocals, long hair and torn up blue jeans. In fact, the two girls seated in front of us, spent the majority of the show trying, unsuccessfully, to capture the perfect photo if him with their digital cameras. Failing to capture a decent photo, they would repeatedly raise their digital cameras directly into my line of site, wait for the autofocus, and "Flash" another poorly exposed photo of something loosely resembling a stage and band. I doubt they even payed much attention to the actual performance itself. For them, it seemed like showing the perfect photo to friends, thus proving they were there, was more important than actually watching and listening to the show. 

We all enjoy live music in our own way I guess. Some scream, some yell, some dance around, and some just take tons of pictures to put on their MySpace. I prefer to listen and take it all in. Having been in a band before, I know how difficult it is to bring several musical components together perfectly and form a cohesive pleasing sound. I tend to listen for all of the musical components and hear how well they work together. You can tell when a band is really clicking with each other musically and when they are not. Lonestar played very well together and had a good sound. The performance seemed to lack a certain something for me that I can't quite put my finger on. Oh well....

Overall, it was very fun evening and I look forward to attending more live concerts there at the Little Creek. Their parking lot was very RV friendly and has a designated RV parking area. We spent the night and returned home in the morning. 

-Tito