I bought tickets for what I thought was a Rose Hill Drive concert a month ago or so, but what we attended last night was far from a normal show of theirs. I realized before going that it wasn’t going to be a normal show, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what it was. We arrived at the Boulder Theater about twenty minutes after the doors opened, grabbed our tickets and headed inside. The show was general admission but fully seated, so we found a couple of seats in the third row and patiently waited for etown to begin.

Accord to their website, “etown is an exciting weekly radio broadcast heard from coast to coast on NPR, public and commercial stations. Every etown show is taped in front of a live audience and features performances from many of today’s top musical artists as well as conversation and information about the world around us.” The show is not aired live, it is edited and then aired about a month afterward. I will have to find out when this episode will air.

Along with Rose Hill Drive, this show also featured Ruthie Foster, which I felt was a very interesting combination. Rose Hill Drive is a power trio of young musicians who play primarily rock music. I was not familiar with Ruthie before this show, and even though I later thought that she was really good, the combination of folk (her) and rock (Rose Hill Drive) was a little strange. The transition was made a little easier as Rose Hill Drive opened up the show by playing a couple of acoustic songs. I’ve never seen them play acoustic before and I really enjoyed it, especially the stripped down version of their song “Cool Cody.”

I think in total we saw Rose Hill Drive play about six or seven songs, which was a lot less than I was hoping for. I could have done without all of the interviews that host Nick Forster conducted, but I guess that is an essential part to the radio show. I don’t know if I will go back to see one of these performances taped live, but maybe the finished product is worth listening to on a weekly basis on the radio. I’m not sure since I’ve never heard an episode before. It wasn’t completely bad, just very different from a normal show.