Fave pg related memory?

pinegrove
#1

at this point in my timeline, i have so many wonderful pinegrove-travel related memories that I am SO grateful for, but I don’t think anything tops the roadtrip i went on with my best friend in 2017.

i had just turned 21, discovered pg just a few months prior, and had tried so hard to get my bestie into pinegrove. we went to a music festival together, and i don’t know when exactly it had clicked for her, but the following morning after a wild fest night she came up to me and said “I GET IT.” she had listened to old friends for hours that night.

after that, i had someone to share my pg feelings with, and we just hyped and hyped it up. non-stop pg radio jam sessions in my car. so obviously, when pg announced their next tour, we had to see them as many times as possible. i mean, duh. at this point in my life, I was in art school and very, very broke. I drove a beat up minivan with a futon and a plastic shelving unit in the back AND WE WERE GOING.

i impulsively spent my whole paycheck buying 6 tickets for us: 2 for detroit, 2 for cincinnati , and 2 for columbus. and we just winged it. we drove seven hours to see them in a packed lil venue in detroit. for most of the show, we were in the back dancing and dancing and dancing. no one was really dancing around us, but, oh well. during new friends we sprinted to the front and found others who were groovin just like us, and we had a blast. :slight_smile:

we spent the night in my van at an undisclosed parking lot, and moved and grooved our way to cincinnati the next day.

the newport/cincy show was magical. i think my top 2 fave pg shows have been at that venue, 3 hours away from me. both times i’ve been there, i’ve been with magical friends. some old and some new. but honestly, the best part of the 2017 show was after it had ended. meg (the fren) and i had felt something magical that night, and as soon as we got into my van “Guz” we turned cardinal on and just began BELTING the songs. yeah, we had just heard them live and belted in the venue too, but the magic just kept flowing , and we kept channeling.

(the comforting, exciting, welcoming, envigorating magic of pg is just something else. so glad we have this warm community that blossomed from that magic)

we had a brief respite in athens, ohio before continuing on to columbus.

i remember falling in love with their openers that last night. i remember dancing to their new song “darkness.” (there is video evidence of that on youtube LMaoooo) i remember meg falling in love with that song. i remember talking to the band members after the show and feeling that magic from them.

i remember going home both reveling in and missing that pg feeling.

that tour wasn’t my first or my last time seeing pg, but it was so special. whenever meg and i listened to old friends, we told each other that we loved each other. we still do that. we still travel and take roadtrips to see pinegrove. it’s become tradition, and through that tradition we have met some wonderful, kind, and amazing friends. forever grateful for all the new friends and connections i have made through this music.

AnYway, i love this band, i love this music. i would LoVE LOVE to hear some of y’alls magical/nostalgic/fun/wild /favorite pinegrove memories too <&

3 Likes
#2

this was so lovely to read!

1 Like
#3

Possibly like a lot of people, it was my first time seeing them. However, I feel like the circumstances were much different than my usual attendance of a show. I’m the type of person to grab tickets as soon as they become available and wait anywhere from 1 to several months to see the show. I first heard about Pinegrove when one of my friends posted their AudioTree Live session on their Facebook page and I luckily gave them a look. They blew me away and I have since watched that same video dozens of times. Anyway, I listened to them a good bit but felt like ESF was kind of lacking in terms of quality, which I felt was just a result of them being a young/growing band. In the beginning of October 2017, I had a work trip planned in Santa Monica, CA. At the very beginning of my trip, Tom Petty died and kind of shocked the world. I too was a big fan of his and grew up listening to his music along with a lot of classic rock bands. Later on that same week, I was looking for things to do that weekend and Pinegrove happened to be playing in West Hollywood at the Troubadour. This is a classic venue where Tom Petty frequented and The Boss himself had played at, so as a person from New Jersey who loves Bruce Springsteen, it seemed like a no-brainer to try to attend the show. I found a ticket online and made the purchase two days before the show. Saturday I went to DisneyLand, but that’s off topic (Love Disney). I arrived at the show early, and being the introvert I am, stood near the back until the opener came on stage and then made my way forward to get a good view for the remainder of the show. The room was much wider than it was long, but just felt important. Pinegrove came on to a crowd that I didn’t feel was packed solid, but were very much so alive. Much like the AudioTree session, they were so much better live than anything I had heard on an album. The energy in the songs kept increasing and got to the point where I was disappointed when the song ended. Cadmium and Recycling are just way too short in my mind after seeing them played live. At this point in time, Pinegrove was putting together their next album, and didn’t even have names for songs yet so Evan said the song they were playing next had been going by “The Tom Petty Song”. That had been before his death that occured just a week before the show, so it was pretty crazy to hear it then and there for the first time. You all know the song now as Darkness, but that was when the song was introduced to me, and that moment and everything about that concert was my favorite pg memory.

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#4

i love that <3