Chicago Road Trip: Eddie Vedder Concert

 

On our second night in Chicago, Oliver and I got to do one of the coolest things of the trip.

Way back when Daniel and I were first doing all the planning, we found out that Eddie Vedder (from Pearl Jam) was going to be doing a solo tour, and he was doing a concert in Chicago while we were there. Daniel and I are big Pearl Jam fans, and Oliver had recently decided they are his favorite band, so we thought it would be so neat if somehow we could go. We went back and forth trying to figure out how to make it work, but it didn’t seem possible – it was not something we could take all the kids to, and there was no way we could leave all the kids in the hotel room while we went. Finally Daniel suggested that I take Oliver for his birthday present this year (Daniel went to a Pearl Jam concert in Austin a few years ago, so he said he’d be happy to watch the rest of the kids so that Ollie and I could go).

We brought up the idea to Oliver, and he was ecstatic. The whole month before we left on our trip he listened to Eddie Vedder’s new solo album day and night so he would know all the songs.

Here we are in front of the Chicago Theater where Daniel dropped us off before taking the rest of the kids back to the hotel.

We were still a little early for the concert, so we walked around downtown a little bit and got some pizza to make up for our earlier attempt at dinner.

After our pizza we walked back to the theater. I took a picture of Oliver inside before we had to check our camera at the front (they were really strict about the “no cameras” rule).

It took us a while to find our seats because we were on the very highest balcony at the very, very back. We didn’t mind, though. We were just excited to be there. Then it got really crazy. (I was going to try to make this long story short, but I’m getting too excited again just remembering it, so I can tell it’s going to stay long.)

We were just sitting in our seats when a big guy came up to us and said he was one of Eddie Vedder’s security guards. I immediately got nervous, and started trying to figure out what we had done wrong. I thought maybe it was because my phone was in my lap, and he thought I was trying to be sneaky and take pictures with my phone (I wasn’t). Instead he said he had a favor to ask – he pulled out two front row tickets, and said he would give them to us if we would just trade him our tickets and promise not to take pictures. At first I didn’t believe him. I kept saying, “are you serious?” And he was! He gave us two very front row tickets, in the pit, right in front of the stage. We could not believe it! The whole thing was very exciting. As we were walking down to claim our new seats, we called Daniel and told him and he about died, too.

The concert was awesome. I thought it was going to mostly be his ukulele songs from his solo album, but he did a lot of Pearl Jam songs, too, which made it even better. And we were just standing right there in front of him. He was walking off stage at one point, and I lifted Oliver up and Eddie reached down and shook his hand. He was pretty thrilled about that. Everyone around us was gushing over Ollie, and telling him he should never wash his hand, etc. At that point I think he decided it was the best night of his life, and he didn’t even know how much better it was going to get.

At the end of the concert, Eddie came out for his second encore. He started singing “Hard Sun”, from the Into the Wild soundtrack. Then he had his security guard start pulling a few kids from the front row up onto the stage to sing with him. I didn’t know how many he would let up there, but I held up Ollie, just in case. The security guy walked over and pulled him up onto the stage. THEN, and this is extra crazy, he reached down and grabbed my hand and just swung me up, too. I was so surprised, because I was not expecting to be hauled up there like that. So there was this little group of us right up there on stage, singing along. I couldn’t believe we were up on stage at an Eddie Vedder concert – it didn’t even seem real. We couldn’t stop smiling.

After the song he shook all of our hands, gave us some of his guitar picks, and then we got to go backstage.

Afterward everyone kept coming up to Oliver and saying, “hey, you’re that kid who got to go up on stage!”, and giving him high-fives. He whispered to me, “Mom, I think I’m famous now!” Then a few awesome people came up to me and told me they had taken pictures for us while we were up there, and they got my email address so they could send them to us. I was super happy about that, because I have to admit, while we were up there singing, a tiny part of my mom brain was thinking – darn it, I wish I could take a picture of Oliver up here.

And now we have lots!

Oliver is the one in the red shirt. I’m in white, behind him. Eddie Vedder is on the right, and the guy in the hat on the left is Glen Hansard, who was touring with him.

They also sent us this video clip, which had been posted on YouTube.  We get on stage just before the one-minute mark:

Here we are on the subway, riding back to our hotel. Oliver was pretty tired (it was after midnight by this time), and he fell asleep on my lap.

We got back to our hotel and told Daniel about all our adventures. He was very happy for us, and didn’t even complain that his evening had been spent back at the hotel putting the younger kids to bed and then playing Angry Birds for two hours with Tristan.

I don’t think I slept much that night, even though I was so tired – I just kept replaying it over and over in my mind. 

It was an awesome, awesome experience.