Yesterday, I traveled 2 hours to Ridgefield, Washington to watch Maroon 5 perform at the Sleep Country Amphitheater. I knew I had to see this show – it was happening 2 days after my 30th birthday, it’s Maroon 5’s biggest tour ever, and it had a great lineup. In true Oregonian fashion, I drove through a storm and picked up a poncho at Dollar Tree since my tickets were on the lawn!

The first act was Rozzi Crane, who is signed to 222 records and did a song on the “Hunger Games” soundtrack with Maroon 5 last year. She did a great set – she’s a very talented vocalist and I enjoyed her songs. I wanted to get her CD after the show, since you can’t buy it online yet and she was going to be signing copies, but there was such a crush at the merch stalls that I couldn’t even see the front. I waited a few minutes but decided it would be wise to leave because I didn’t want to be walking a long way in the dark by myself (More on that in a minute).

Rozzi came back out during Maroon 5’s set to duet with Adam on “Wake Up Call” and “Moves Like Jagger”. I was surprised that they didn’t play “Come Away to The Water”, but it made total sense to have her on “Jagger” and I thought it was fun and different hearing her do some of the verses in “Wake Up Call”.

Sadly, the battery on my phone died, so I didn’t get any photos of Kelly Clarkson or Maroon 5, but I did manage to snap a pic of me huddling on the lawn in my Maroon 5 hoodie and necklace. Normally, I like to glam up for concerts, but since I was quite literally sitting in a rainstorm watching the show, I was a little limited in what I could wear!

Kelly Clarkson was the next act up, and she was great! I’ve always enjoyed her songs, and she had a great setlist of all her big hits. I don’t follow “American Idol” so I didn’t really know what her personality was like, but she is so cute and funny on stage. She kept cracking jokes during her show and her enthusiasm is contagious. At one point, she flubbed a line in “Behind These Hazel Eyes” and joked, “Ooops, I totally messed that up! At least you know I’m not lip-synching!”. It was a really fun set, and she is of course a fantastic vocalist.

All of this led up to the culmination of the night with Maroon 5’s show. This is the 4th time I’ve seen them live, and the biggest show they’ve ever done. In fact, this whole concert had the biggest production values of any show I’ve personally gone to – there were maybe 6 big screens showing the concert and pre-recorded footage/effects, tons of lights and lazers, and even a virtual appearance from Wiz Khalifa, rapping on the big screen during his portion of “PayPhone”. It was all pretty impressive – my favorite part of the whole show was during “Lucky Strike” when they threw a bunch of inflatable beach balls into the audience that changed colors under the lights. It was a joyful moment to be standing there singing and dancing in my rain poncho and batting these beach balls around!

Of course, Maroon 5 are epic live performers, so the show was flawless as ever. During the intermission, there was a nice lady sitting next to me who invited me to sit on her tarp (Thanks!), and she had never seen the band live before and wasn’t sure if her nosebleed seats in the lawn section would be worth it. I assured her that she would have a fabulous time because Maroon 5 are amazing live. So a few songs into the show, she turned to me and said, “They ARE really good!!”

It was great hearing material from Overexposed live in person for the first time. The first time I saw Maroon 5 back in 2004, they had time to play Songs About Jane in its entirety, plus cover songs – now they have so many albums out that they can’t even scratch the surface of all their work! It’s interesting to see the vibe and expanded fanbase from The Voice. All the acts had a bit of a hard time getting the crowd involved, maybe because the weather put a damper (literally) on it for a lot them. When Adam led the crowd in singing “She Will Be Loved” (A concert tradition), he split the audience up into Group A in the covered section and Group B for the lawn section, or “Grass people” as he called us. Naturally, he gave us grass people the verse, “I don’t mind spending every day out on your corner in the pouring rain,” since we were quite literally standing in the pouring rain as we sang!

After the show, I decided to bid a hasty retreat back to the street to meet Jai, since my phone died and I didn’t want to get stuck walking a long way alone in the dark. Because the parking situation at this venue is a bit of a nightmare, we decided to just have Jai drop me off nearby and meet me there, and I am so glad we did. There were 6,000 cars in the parking lot and they estimated that it wouldn’t be cleared until after 2 AM – some people got out quickly, others ended up sitting in the parking lot for an hour waiting to leave. The show started at 7 PM, and the person I was sitting next to at the show told me they had left for the concert at 3:30 PM, and they lived in Portland, which is only 20 minutes away from Ridgefield – to put that in perspective, I also left at 3:30 PM, and I was coming from Seaside! So with Jai dropping me off, I bypassed all the crazy standstill traffic. I’m not sure why it was like this, because we saw Nine Inch Nails at this same venue in 2006 and had no problem – it must have just been the volume of people, because there were literally double the amount of people as there were at NIN (Maybe more) and just trying to walk through the grounds was challenging.

This was another memorable adventure, like the first Maroon 5 concert when I took a bus to Puyallup to see them. Great times, amazing shows, and fun way to ring in my 30th year!