It’s been a bit since my last post here on Substack for two reasons: one, I’ve been posting a lot of smaller articles to my Facebook feed and two, this is our first full Summer in Portland so I’ve been spending a lot of my weekends working on the back yard getting it up to shape, so I haven’t been heading out every weekend to see everything that Portland has to offer.
But, this week I began what is going to become a crazy stretch of concerts over the next several weeks by heading up to the RV Inn Style Resorts Ampitheater in Ridgefield Washington after work yesterday. It’s a quick 15-20 min drive from the office north on Hwy 5 and I got their early to avoid the rush of traffic trying to all get off at the single exit and head down the limited road entrances to park.
The venue holds about 8000 under the roof and another 10,000 on the lawn. This was my first time visiting, and I was pleasantly surprised by the facilities.
The surrounding concession stands had reasonably priced food and drinks and the lines were very short. I ended up getting a corn dog and something I had never seen before, a pouch of soft serve ice cream.
The first act to play was Loverboy. It was funny watching a concert where the audience was made up almost entirely of 50 and 60-year olds. The concert started exactly at 7pm, presumably because the band had a bedtime too.
This Canadian band from the 70s and 80s opened the show by playing several of their staple hits, such as Lovin’ Every Minute of It, Hot Girls in Love, Turn Me Loose, and Working for the Weekend. After a run of their best hits lasting about 45-minutes they exited the stage while the roadies set up the headliner to play, Sammy Hagar.
Sammy’s show also ran the gamut of his best songs, across the several bands he played in, including his solo 1983 platinum album hit There’s Only One Way to Rock, and the 1986 Hot Summer Nights and Panama off Van Halen’s 7th album, 5150 (Sammy’s first recorded with the band). Sammy was great on vocals, interacting with the crowd and even did quite well on the guitar, but I’ll be honest here and state that I wasn’t really there to see Sammy Hagar….
I was there to see the guitar legend, Joe Satriani, absolutely shred the axe in song, after song, after song, after song.
Quite the memorable night and I’m even more excited for the many upcoming shows that I’ll be seeing at that venue in the coming weeks. Now that I have the logistics down and have experienced the trip up and back along with the venue things will be even more well-oiled with no apprehensions.