Photo-A-Day #2150

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by Ellis Paul’s management if I’d like to sponsor a contest to promote his upcoming show at the Homegrown Coffee House in Needham, MA. Well, tonight was the show and Allison and I attended. There we met with the winner of my contest, Sarah, and her guest. Sarah has been a fan of Ellis Paul for a long time and like us has pretty much everything that Ellis has produced over the years. She was very excited to win tickets. I took some photos while at the show, here is my set.

We left Eva in the care of my parents as we headed up to Needham. Eva was thrilled to be able to spend time with them. They took her to House of Fortune for dinner and Eva loved it. She ate like a little bottomless pit though. Eva, always a little one with funny comments gave us these. Eva has been working really hard at potty training and when my mom took her to the bathroom the door to the stall squeaked loudly, she jumped. When washing her hands the electric hand dryer was really loud and she jumped. Finally she said. “These are aggravating me with their nonsense sounds!”. She cracks me up.

Allison and I went and had our own dinner at Jake n Joe’s a new sports bar. This place is overloaded with TV screens displaying all sorts of sports and sports related shows. The walls are covered in memorabilia and that even extends to the bathrooms. Although the sports photos in the bathrooms are more for eye candy than momentous moments. Allison confirmed that it was the same in the women’s one. The food was pretty standard bar food and I had a great Black and Blue Burger. Allison had, Chicken under a Brick. The name and preparation was different but it was good and tasty.

We continued on to the concert. Because I ran the contest I received passes to attend the concert. We were actually on the VIP list. I’ve never been on a VIP list before either. Very cool. We got to our seats in the church. The nice thing about seeing concerts in Unitarian Churches is that the seats are often comfy. The place was really filled up too.

Up first was Flynn. We’ve seen Flynn before and he is a wonderful singer/songwriter. Flynn played about 5 songs and there was some backstage banter with Ellis too. We enjoyed Flynn and hope that he puts out another new album as well.

Ellis came on and he played many of the songs that we love like 3000 miles, Jukebox on my Grave and Maria’s Beautiful Mess. He ended the show with Home and that is one of his most beautiful songs. Allison turned to me and said that we should have chosen that as the wedding song so we could hear it in concert. We hardly ever hear him play Words. We do ask as often as we can.

The Homegrown Coffee House is famous for their carrot cake so Allison got a slice of that. I went with oatmeal cookies, they were great. We had that during intermission. During intermission Sarah caught up with us and told me that Ellis had tweeted to me. His tweet was “Ben are you here?” I went over and chatted with Ellis for a little bit and he thanked me for blogging about the show. I told him that Allison and I have probably seen him over 20 times and that is probably why I was asked to do some blogging because I bet that if you search for Ellis Paul you’ll find at least one of my posts.

After the concert Allison and I caught up with Sarah and her friend and then got some photos taken with Ellis. Ellis also signed a copy of his latest CD, The Day after Everything Changed, for Sarah. We had a great night and were happy to see another awesome show by Ellis. He’s an amazing storyteller and songwriter. Can’t wait to see him again.

Allison and I with Ellis Paul

Contest Winner Sarah and Ellis Paul and Me

Contest Winner Sarah and Ellis Paul

Sarah shows off her new Ellis Paul signed CD