Birthday trip, Friday evening

It was after 5 pm now, and we had an 8 pm show. Now my problem is that I remember what we did between the 2, but can't remember the order.

Somewhere in here, we went to Panera and split a sandwich. Bacon Turkey Bravo, hold the tomato (did that for Dan), on Asiago Focaccia bread. Yum.

And we also went back to the hotel, swam for a bit and sat in the hot tub. Went outside on the deck and dried off.

Went up to the room, I took a quick shower, changed my shirt (a little late now), and we set off for the Pierce Arrow show. For years, we've stayed at a hotel just a few steps away from the show and I've always talked about going. Now we're going to see it and staying miles away.

The first thing I noticed about Pierce Arrow was how nice the theater is. It's very professionally done, and very impressive. Throughout the theater, there is a circle theme, and it carries over onto the stage once the curtains open. It's subtle, but it's those little details that impress me. The seats were nice and wide and boy, is the stage close to the front row. We were sitting in the center of the second row and I often felt like I was looking up to see the singers. I can't imagine how it would have felt to be in the front row. Probably like you were right up there performing with them. I should add here that their website is pretty slick, too. I find that usually the quality of the website correlates to how much I'm going to enjoy the show, and it definitely rang true.

Pierce Arrow is a male vocal group, founded by one of the members, Dan Britton. I think it may have started as a quartet (trying desperately to remember my Branson history here...) but it's now six members. They do a variety of music, from bluegrass to country, to gospel and patriotic. I loved it every time they came on stage. One of the reasons we went to see the show is because we became fans of Tim Storms a few years ago. Tim holds the World Record for the lowest note produced by a human (a record which Dan Britton held previously). He's just fun to hear sing and his many awards prove that I'm not the only one who feels that way. Loved hearing him sing during the Statler Brothers/Oak Ridge Boys medley. It was just perfect for his voice.

And although I'm not a huge fan of gospel music, Casey Ellison's lead vocals on "I Can Only Imagine" gave me chills. Such a gorgeous song, and he sang it very well.

In addition to the men, there are two female singers, Kim Boyce and Desta McAuliffe. They are very good singers, with Desta doing some Carrie Underwood songs and Kim doing some older songs.

One of the gems of this show is the comedian, Jarrett Dougherty. Simply the funniest live comedian we've seen in a long time. His timing is perfect, his jokes very wholesome, and you just can't help but laugh. He really made me wish we had our kids there because I know they would have loved him.

The pacing of this show is a little odd, but I think it's because there's so much talent up there. So much to fit in one show that in fact, they do 2 shows, one at 3 pm and one at 8 pm. When we originally scheduled this show, I suggested that we might want to see both shows, but Dan thought that was overkill. Then during the show, he turned to me and said he was sorry we had tickets to another show on Saturday afternoon, because he would have loved to see the Pierce Arrow afternoon show. Oh well, there's always another trip. Pierce Arrow does offer a really good deal on ticket prices if you see both shows, so if you're going to see one, you may want to leave room to come back. I know you'll enjoy it!