Take A Trip To The Decatur Celebration

Decatur Illinois

August 6, 2006

Saturday, August 5, 2006 Chris picked me up from Chicago's Midway airport and we headed out for Decatur, Illinois. Our plan was to take our time driving down to Decatur, check into our motel room, walk over to a restaurant nearby for supper and spend the evening visiting. Poor Chris. I wasn't much company that evening. At 8:30 when she went to take a shower, I literally crashed. I knew nothing until about 4:30 am! The next morning we went packed up, loaded the car and headed downtown for the Decatur Celebration. We paid our money to park the car and headed out to find the stage were Seals and Seals would be doing two shows later in the afternoon. Upon finding the location of the stage, the first thing we noted was that there was nowhere to sit. Chris talked to a Celebration worker and found out that we were supposed to bring in our own chairs! We were disgusted that the website for the Celebration never said anything whatsoever about needing our own chairs! Back at the parking lot, we convinced the attendant to refund our money since there was no guarantee that, when we returned from buying chairs, there would be an empty parking space for us. We then headed to Target and bought the chairs, drove back to the parking lot, paid our parking fee and hoofed it back to the stage. We set our chairs up right in front of the stage and went across the street to Central Park to sit in the shade and keep tabs on the chairs since we planned to be there from soundchecks to the final show. It was very, very hot and we couldn't believe that there wasn't even a canopy over the stage to shade the guys. Chris and I were blessed that there was an ice water stand in the park. We both seemed to go through a couple of gallons of water. We figure the temperature was around 100 degrees. The shows were so wonderful. Hearing the England Dan/John Ford Coley and Seals and Croft music was great, but to add the Dan Seals country music and the songs Jimmy and Dan have written together to the mix raised the bar so much higher. Watching Dan and Jimmy interact is so heartwarming. The love and respect they have for each other just shines through so strong. It's great to see. Each show was about an hour long but the were jammed packed with musical treats. Joining Jimmy and Dan on stage were Jimmy's sons, Joshua and Sutherland, Joshua on bass guitar and Sutherland on lead guitar. John Porter McMeans was up there playing guitar and keyboards and doing back-up vocals. There was also a drummer and keyboard player, to whom I need to apologize because I cannot remember their names. Altogether it was an extremely memorable day of entertainment. For the second show, there was also a young lady signing from the corner of the stage for all the hearing impaired people in the audience. We drove back to Naperville, Illinois, after the show and Chris drove me to O'Hare airport the next morning to catch my flight home. It was a flying trip, forgive the pun, but well worth the cost and effort. Hey guys. Where to next?