tyrsibs | Entries tagged with louden swain

My husband and I were first-timers. Sure, we'd attended some sci-fi conventions. Regional events, mostly, where we sat in on discussion panels, picked up new dice sets, gamed a bit. In fact, my first entry on this blog was about taking our kids to a hometown con. We thought we knew how this was going to go. But even with our geek status well established in our own minds, and even though I've been watching SPN con footage online ever since I dove headfirst into this fandom, I don't think we had any clue how massive this con was going to be.

We were Friday people (Dick likes us best, he told us so, sorry Saturday people and you Sunday slackers). The previous night we had gone to karaoke, where I sang myself hoarse even though I couldn't hear anything coming out of my mouth while my husband snapped mostly blurry photos and sometimes shot me a grin. He did sing along to "Unforgettable", though, which coincidentally was our wedding dance song all those years ago. After that, I wasn't sure we could do another 1:30 AM "stumble in and fall onto our hotel bed" routine, but we were determined to cram as much of the weekend in as we could. Our resolve was strengthened by Rob, Richard, Mark Sheppard, and all of the Creation people asking the Saturday audience, "So, are you coming to the concert tonight?" Everyone was telling us we shouldn't miss it, it was gonna be great. "We have a couple of surprises for you, you need to be there."

Of course, we started wondering if maybe Jensen or Jared might show up. No one I talked to voiced this idea--I certainly wasn't going to say anything, either. We're a superstitious bunch, I guess, and didn't want to jinx anything. While standing in line for Theo Devaney's autograph, we overheard one of the Creation staff telling another fan that she didn't think Jensen would be there. "He sang last week in Minneapolis, right? He doesn't like to do two in a row, doesn't want it to become an expected thing." And we thought, "ah well."

The concert was a lot of fun, and I was happy to hear Louden Swain's original songs for the first time. Matt Cohen was a wild man running through the crowd, Gil McKinney hit those high notes, and we fell a bit in love with the band. About halfway through Richard came out and did a very twangy Eagles song, which he followed up by harmonizing on "Seven Bridges Road" with the band.

After the country songs Mark S. slipped onstage and took his place behind the 2nd drum kit. Chris the Creation photographer joined the band and was handed a guitar, while the bassist took over one bank of keyboards. One of the Creation organizers came out to play another set of keyboards. Rob and Rich moved to the side of the stage, and then

Of course, This Happened.

Here are some of our shots from Jensen's full-on Rock Star performance:

My husband was especially proud to have caught this moment:

I did not freak out. I did not collapse in tears like a Beatles fan, or scream "Oh my God." But I was absolutely carried along on the audience's wave of exhilaration. Check out Mark's face in that second shot. That's pretty much how I was feeling, too.

This was still not the most powerful moment of the night. After all of this, and after several more great songs including Rob and Gil performing a duet of "Carry On" and Louden Swain's very beautiful and emotional "She Waits", we had one more song.

All of the cast members at the concert came out and lined up at mics behind Rob, and he took the Joe Cockerish lead on "With a little help from my friends." Towards the end, during the back up line of the three notes, Rob got us singing, too. Just that piece--"oooh-ooh-oh".

The band stopped playing, and it was just acapella back-up as Rob kept going up front. I started to feel like part of a massive choir. One by one the castmembers and band filed off, waving at us, but we kept up our three notes for Rob (I saw Jensen look out at the audience and put his fingers to his temples, then spread them out and away. "Mind blown."). And Rob gave us everything back--when he sang, "I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for my friends," I lost my tiny reserve of emotion. We would have kept singing those notes for him as long as he wanted us.