Early this year the word began to spread that Willie Nelson and the Country Throwdown was coming to Rapids Jam, a brand new country music festival in Roanoke Rapids, NC. A girlfriend sent me a message, "Do you want to go?" I answered "Is water wet?" We decided to splurge for second row reserved seats in the platinum section. It was more money than either of us had ever spent on a concert ticket, but it was worth the additional cost for the following reasons.
The View
We are both now completely spoiled. After the last few days neither of us want to watch a concert from a jumbotron ever again. The party pit separating us from the main stage was only about twenty feet deep and two sides of our section were catwalk. The people in our section who liked to go up and touch hands with a performer could do so easily as they walked by. Even though there weren't any big troublemakers in our section, the police were very busy getting people back into their seats from the edge of the catwalk. At first this police presence got on my nerves, as I felt like people just wanted to be close and have fun, but it became clear that if they didn't do this, the perimeter of our area would become full and those people who wanted to sit and watch from their very expensive seats would not be able to see, and make no mistake, people were being very clear. "We payed a lot for these seats so sit down!"
The Company We Kept
Our little section ranged in age from eighteen months to eighty. We were a motley crew: a gay man, a chatty lady who came by herself in her forty foot motor home, sisters in their 60s who acted just as silly about getting pictures and touching hands with performers as the twenty something blond with the very patient fiance, the local guy who sat quietly with his wife and friend except when yelling at someone to move out of his view (He was funny. He never reacted to any of the music except to take his fan on a Popsicle stick and flap it at the performer when he approved.) two other local guys who drank a whole lot of beer and threw peanuts at the guy with the fan, (one of them showed up on Saturday looking much more sober with a daughter, a date, and an ex-wife) the pregnant couples with doting husbands, the soldier with his overprotective sister, a couple of lesbians, and of course, us, two Jewish ladies. What we did not have a whole lot of were drunks in their twenties making a scene. They were all on the lawn.
Sitting in the sun listening to music with the same group of strangers for three days is a bonding experience and I left with at least one additional friend.
Ticket Splitting
Unfortunately the friend who I had originally bought tickets with was unable to attend Thursday, the first day of the festival, so I brought another friend that day who wanted to see Willie Nelson. A big benefit of buying a reserved seat versus a general admissions ticket is having the ability to split it the ticket.
Bathrooms
The venue itself is a huge flat field. There was no running water, only portapotties and hand washing stations, but the portapotties we used were only for the people with reserved seating or with a party pit pass. They were as clean as you could possibly expect a portapottie at a music festival to be and were cleaned between each day.
Private Beer Vending
We had our own beer booth. It never had a line, but usually the only line in the entire venue was for the snow cones. Apart from the first day when it was overcast, it was too hot to drink more than a beer or two, at least for those of us who didn't want to be hauled off on an EMS stretcher.
