Learning to fly

For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of fear, loathing and dread about attending a concert on Friday evening, and I’ve been to plenty. During an intermission before Chris Stapleton, the man all 12,500 of us at Wells Fargo Arena had come to see, took the stage, Kellie caught me gazing off into the rafters and asked me what I was thinking about. I couldn’t lie.
           
“I’m wondering how a shooter could get in here,” I replied.
           
Sure, security had given us the full pat down on the way in, and sure, we’re actually living in one of the safest periods in human history. But that fact is no consolation to the families of the 59 people who lost their lives while trying to enjoy themselves at a country music festival in Las Vegas five days prior, and it becomes harder to take solace when gruesome images of the carnage are splattered across every television screen and front page in America.
           
Stapleton himself didn’t take long to address the elephant in the room, dedicating his song “Broken Halos” to the victims of the massacre and thanking all of us for being there. His remarks weren’t a grandiose attempt at going viral or a sweeping political proclamation, but they cut right to the heart of the matter.
           
“When you show up to things like this, you let evil know that it won’t win,” he said.
           
The last seven days comprised one of those trademark “bad weeks” that we seem so used to by now, and the death of American music legend Tom Petty just hours after the Vegas tragedy hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d grown up on his music, I’d listened to it through all of my other weird phases and I’d played it in all three of my bands. Petty had always been an old reliable: he wasn’t going to reinvent the wheel, but anytime one of his songs came on, you weren’t going to turn the dial.
           
Country music has always held Petty and his Americana-tinged rock n’ roll in high regard—he’s mentioned in at least two recent hits, and his “Wildflowers” album shares more than a slight resemblance to the genre. Stapleton and Petty had even toured together, and in perhaps the most heartbreaking moment of the night, the headliner recalled their final interaction with each other after a show over the summer.
           
“I hope we get to do this a lot more often,” Petty told Stapleton. 
 
Read the full story in this week's Grundy Register. Subscribe by calling (319) 824-6958 or clicking here.