Celtic Woman at Red Rocks

So this past Wednesday I flew to Denver to see Celtic Woman perform their Isle of Hope show at Red Rocks Amphitheater. I absolutely loved their Salt Lake show back in May, and wanted to see it again, but a little closer. In Salt Lake, my friend Phyl and I were quite a way back and couldn’t see the performers very well, so I wanted to see it again, but with a better view.

I actually managed to get a ticket for the front row for the Red Rocks show, and pretty close to the middle too. My seat was so close… there was absolutely nobody between me and the girls as they sang; they were literally as close as 15 feet at times, and never more than 25 feet away. What a way to see a concert!!!

My view of the stage. Just the rope and railing between me and them.

I had relatively little difficulty getting out to Denver. I arrived at the Salt Lake airport with plenty of time to make my flight. The flight ended up being delayed by about 20 minutes, but I had planned some extra time into my schedule so I could still make the show on time even if I were delayed somewhere along the way. But we made up some extra time in the air and I was able to get my rental car pretty quickly. I went straight to my hotel to check in, but I didn’t even bother to go up to my room before I headed back out to the car to head up to Morrison where Red Rocks Amphitheater is actually located. The show was scheduled to start at 8:00, with the gates opening at 6:30. I heard that parking at Red Rocks was a real problem, so I arrived at 6:00 to make sure I had a place to park.

Red Rocks is a gorgeous venue. I hadn’t ever been, so it was a pleasant experience taking in the view for the first time. And it is huge! I had no idea. I had seen pictures, but pictures just don’t do its size justice. It has to be at least 100 yards deep, and at its narrowest point 40 yards wide. The rows of seats are spaced about 3.5 feet apart, so even while you are seated there is plenty of room for people to walk in front of or behind you. No crowded knees there.

I had a lot of time to kill, but when I sat down the gentleman in the seat next to me had already arrived. We talked for a bit. He was from southern Colorado and had driven up to see the show. Two years ago he did the same thing but they had canceled the show due to rain, so he missed out on that one, and was looking forward to seeing the girls live for the first time. Since I had already seen it I knew both he and his wife would thoroughly enjoy it.

The show started about 15 minutes late. The girls looked and sounded great. They are amazingly talented. Being on the front row, there were many times that I was able to hear their voices over the PA system, and I can vouch for the fact that the show is live… at least the vast majority of it. There were a few numbers (mostly the large group ensembles) where I still wondered if there were some vocal parts that were prerecorded. But even if they did do that, it certainly wouldn’t be because of a lack of talent… it would have to be for a technical reason, like not being able to have that many microphones turned on at the same time without feedback or something similar. If they did use prerecorded audio for any of the vocals (and I think there were a couple of songs where they might have) it was because they didn’t have a choice.

If you haven’t ever been on the front row of a big concert, there just isn’t any way to adequately describe what the experience is like. Because there is nobody between you and the performers, you forget that the show is for a bazillion other people too… you just don’t see them as the show is going on. From the front row, not only can you very clearly see the performers, but they see you, and they react to you. When you smile or wave, they do the same back to you. I caught each one of the girls looking in at me more than once. That is something you just don’t get when you sit farther back. During one particularly powerful, well-performed, and favorite songs, I teared up a little and the girl singing saw that. The experience is great, and I highly recommend it for any shows that I don’t go to. (I don’t want you taking my seat.)

The other interesting thing about being in the front was something I didn’t think about. Most of the time the first few rows are where the most serious groupies and wealthiest patrons will sit. I wasn’t really prepared to hear people all around me talking about their experiences going to many of the shows along the tour (one guy to my right had been to at least a dozen in this tour alone), and their experiences meeting and socializing with the girls. Another guy to my left had been to so many meet-and-greets with the girls that he had long ago lost count of just how many. He had actually flown to Ireland for the taping of one of their DVDs too. Aside from the very boastful nature of his discussion, it was interesting to hear some of the things that he had learned about the girls as he had interacted with them over the last few years. The sort of things that don’t get posted on any web sites, either official or fan.

I was also among the youngest in the front few rows. Each of the front rows at Red Rocks holds about 80-90 people, and in the first three rows there were probably less than a dozen people my age or younger. In some ways it almost felt like I was in the geriatric section, as the average age was at well above 50.

Of the songs that the girls performed, their classics are definitely among my favorites. While some of their new songs are great (“Fields of Gold” and “Isle of Hope” come to mind), I feel pretty “meh” about some of the others. “True Colors” was okay, while “You’ll Be In My Heart” felt very out of place and… well, just awkward. Their all-new “O, America” song is intended to tug at the heartstrings of any patriotic American, but the song itself has some pretty bland lyrics. The whole song is chocked full of cliché phrases repeated over and over, with just the order of the wording switched around a bit: “America, I’ll be true to thee… True to thee, I will be.” Bleh. I appreciate what they were trying to do, but the writing of the song felt amateurish. Fortunately even on the awkward songs the girls sang them beautifully, so it wasn’t like I was bored.

Of the 27 songs on the set list, my favorites of the evening were “The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun” (their opener), “Fields of Gold,” “Orinoco Flow,” “The Blessing,” “Mo Ghile Mear,” “At the Ceili,” (that one is a lot of fun) “Sing Out,” and “You Raise Me Up.” They did “Spanish Lady” for one of their encores in Salt Lake, and that is a really fun one too, but they didn’t do it in Denver (more on that in a second).

Lisa Kelly is my favorite of the group. She has an amazingly wide range with a beautiful tone to her voice. I definitely really like all of the girls, but Lisa consistently delivers my favorite performances, and this show was no exception. She had solos for her standard songs (“The Blessing,” “The Voice,” to name a couple), plus “Fields of Gold” was added for this tour. Hopefully they’ll add “Send Me a Song” to the set list of a future show. That would make me very happy. I also discovered while researching the tour that her youngest sister Helen is also a part of the ensemble as a choir member, and is just as beautiful and talented (it’s really too much talent for one family). She definitely caught my eye as part of the supporting cast this time.

Seeing the same show twice was an interesting experience. The first time through everything was new, even though I knew most of the songs. But it all kind of ran together in my mind as a result. The second time I knew what to expect, and it made it a lot easier to remember the show overall. If you had asked me after the first time which songs they had done and in what order, I could have only given you a blank stare. But if you were to ask me after the second show, I’d have a pretty good shot at being able to name most of the songs, in the right order, and who sang them. I was also better able to watch for and take in the smaller nuances I missed the first time around. At the same time, it all felt very familiar… the new songs weren’t so strange this time, and felt much more familiar and comfortable. I couldn’t go so far as to say that I think everyone should see every show they can multiple times, but it is a very different experience the second time, even while being familiar at the same time.

I wish I could say the Red Rocks show was without any glitches, but I can’t, because there were a few. I think that the sound engineers, for both the Front-of-House (what the audience hears) and monitors (what the performers hear) must not have been the regulars. (I suspect the regulars are back in Ireland getting ready for the DVD that is being shot later this month.) There were several times during the show that the mics for instruments or performers weren’t turned on when they should have been. On numerous occasions I could hear the instruments directly with no sound coming out of the PA at all, which meant that anyone farther back heard basically nothing for those bits of the show. It seems like the monitor engineer wasn’t quite doing his job quite right either, as there were many times throughout the show that the girls would pull out their earpieces, an almost sure sign that they aren’t hearing what they need to hear.

There were a few issues with the lighting too… One of the projectors projecting video on the rocks behind the set was badly misaimed and inverting the image. It was a little distracting. There were also several missed lighting cues in the show, where the spotlights would come on at the wrong time, or be pointed at the wrong performer. Many of the moving lights were also misaimed, and missed their targets, especially in the first half of the show until they were re-aimed during the intermission. I was really sensing an inexperienced crew. This was the 96th show on this tour, and any technician active for the whole tour wouldn’t be making those kinds of mistakes.

Even with those mistakes, though, all of the performers took it in stride and it didn’t phase them in the least. True professionals.

The weather was mostly cooperative for most of the evening. About two hours into the show we started to get a little rain. Most everybody was prepared for it, though. I brought along a poncho, which I put on after the rain started to really come down. Chloe (one of the vocalists, and the selected spokesperson for the group), joked that they had brought their Irish weather with them. That got a good laugh. Chloe also said (just as she did in Salt Lake) that this show by far had the best audience yet. I’d beg to differ on that, though…

Most everybody was coping with the rain pretty well, but I think it did dampen people’s spirits some (pun intended). The energy of the audience was definitely a lot lower than it was in Salt Lake, especially after, but even before, the rain started. Where at the Salt Lake show there were probably 6-8 standing ovations for various songs throughout the evening, at Red Rocks there were just two… one just before the intermission, and one at the end. And at the conclusion of the normal set list, and the girls thanking everyone for coming, everybody just got up and left. Apparently the audience didn’t want the encores, and we didn’t get them. So we had an extra few songs at Salt Lake that we didn’t get in Denver. That was disappointing, as the songs they had selected for their encores are some of their more fun ones.

I had heard that traffic getting out of Red Rocks is a nightmare, so I was really expecting it to take forever to get back to my hotel. That turned out to not be the case at all. It took about 10 minutes to get from the venue back to the highway, so I was back to my hotel about 35 minutes after the show got out. (Much better than the 90 minutes it took to get home from Stadium of Fire fireworks last night.)

Getting my rental car returned and back to the airport had a few hassles… When I asked my GPS software to find me a gas station near the rental car return it took me to the airport parking lot instead. Which meant that I had to bite the bullet and pay their outrageous $7/gallon rate to make it to the airport on time.

The Denver airport is a bit of a labyrinth. You walk in at ground level, go upstairs to check in, back to ground level to go through security, then downstairs to catch a train to your concourse. And it isn’t very well labeled, so if you’re new to the airport you feel kind of dumb trying to figure out where you’re supposed to go. And then my flight coming back to Utah was actually delayed by about a half hour, which meant that my poor sister Suzanne had to wait for me that much longer after her flight to Salt Lake to meet up to head back to Orem (she had already been there two hours). I’m not a big fan of the hassles of flying.

But as far as the show itself goes, I don’t want any of this to sound like it was bad , because it certainly was not by any stretch of the imagination. It was still amazing. It just wasn’t as amazing as the show I saw in Salt Lake. I’m still very glad that I went… you can’t trade the experience of seeing a concert (especially one by people so talented, and so well produced) in the front row for anything. It’s certain to be one of those things I remember for the rest of my life. The only thing better would be to do it again, and actually be able to meet the girls in person.