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Author Topic: Ancient Land Tour - Tracie & Gregg's Experiences  (Read 9333 times)
Jack1949
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« Reply #15 on: June 19, 2019, 07:56:11 PM »

Hi Tracie and Gregg, I was at the Sat Lancaster concert in the same row as Joe Y, who I met for the first time, but am friends with him on Facebook.That was my 16th concert, but never had met the girls in person.It sounds like the stage door meeting is a good idea.I really love the Lancaster venue, they have the most amazing Christmas show also.I
didn’t know there was a M @ G at Lancaster, but Joe Y got his thru a local PBS station.Hope to meet you and Gregg sometime.
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Tracie
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« Reply #16 on: June 19, 2019, 10:27:41 PM »

Hi Jack! Gregg and I met Joe, his wife, and two others for dinner before the Saturday Lancaster show. It was a lot of fun! We met quite a few other fans also at the stage door. We really enjoy both official meet and greets and stage door meetings.  The ladies are all so sweet and friendly.  We're already talking about going back to PA next year if the schedule is similar to this year. Having three nights in a row in Philly and Lancaster was awesome! Would be great to meet you! We'll have to plan something!
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Tracie
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« Reply #17 on: October 16, 2019, 09:59:58 AM »

Gregg and I are at the airport to fly to Amsterdam today! We just had to go see the phenomenal Ancient Land show again!  The desire to see the show again is a mix between how much we love it and how much we feel like we need some relief from the stress and anxiety of every day life. Nothing helps us more than these wonderful ladies and their incredible music and shows, so we decided to go. We're going to the opening two nights of the Europe tour in Amsterdam and Antwerp.

As I came in here to write this, I realized that I never actually wrote about Red Rocks. Fail! Since I'm just sitting here waiting for the flight, I'll write it now.

Red Rocks was epic, phenomenal, amazing, fantastic, all the good words you can think of and more! If you ever have a chance to go there, no matter what artist it is, do it! Just being at the venue was an incredible experience. The acoustics there are wonderful. I have no other experience to compare to hearing the gorgeous music of Celtic Woman soaring through Red Rocks. Next time they are there, we will absolutely be there! Red Rocks and Johnstown Castle are the two most phenomenal experiences of my life, and quite different from each other.

I've already written about the Ancient Land show, so here are some standout memories from Red Rocks - we had 5th row center seats, which were perfect! There are about 9500 seats and it was very close to full, if not completely sold out. The looks on the ladies' faces when they saw the huge crowd was priceless. Megan was so stunned that she tripped on the step, but quickly got back up without missing a beat. It was so cool to see John start Amazing Grace standing on top of a big rock on the side of the stage and that song prompted a full audience standing ovation. I turned around and looked at everybody standing and cheering behind me and it was so cool. I've seen differing opinions of the crowd there, but I thought they were great! Very enthusiastic cheering and clapping along. After The Kesh Inn, the whole crowd gave a roaring standing ovation that went on and on and on and on. Seriously it was never-ending and had the ladies all in tears. They talked about how it was the most incredible night of their lives and that as performers they live for shows like that. They then had to ask the audience to sit back down so they could sing The Parting Glass. The big group of us that had a fan gathering before the show all had clear plastic cups with battery-operated candles in them (thanks Dee!) and we lit them up after the bagpipe solo, which got huge smiles from the ladies.

The atmosphere was literally electric, with a lightning storm off in the distance. We could see it from our seats above the stage and several miles away and it made for a really cool background effect. I saw some shocked looks on the ladies' faces when they heard the thunder rumbling. It was also very windy, which prompted them to take down the curtains early on the second act. Taking the curtains down allowed a better view of the rocks that are behind the stage, so that was really cool. They used spectacular lighting on the rocks throughout the show.

We had meet and greet, which was really fun to have at an amazing venue like Red Rocks. It was Tom's birthday and we sang happy birthday to him while waiting for meet and greet to start. I got to hug each of them and I told Megan how much we loved seeing her debut performance at Johnstown Castle and then being at Red Rocks and everything in between. I told Tara how phenomenal I thought the Ancient Land tour was and how cool it was to be at Red Rocks. And I told Eabha and Mairead that because our first show was on the Destiny tour, we have seen the two of them in every show. This prompted Mairead to do a really cute fist pump and say "yesssssss!" She also told me for the second time how much she loves my hair and noticed that I had cut it. I was very impressed by her attention to detail considering I had only cut off about an inch! Eabha told me thank you so much for all the support you give us. It was an awesome meet and greet.

One of the things that made Red Rocks so special was being there with amazing friends. We had already been planning on going with Tom and David and we also spent a lot of time with both of them doing touristy things around Denver. We also met many more people at the fan gatherings both before and after the show. Many of them I have seen since then at Mairead N's show in Boston and I'll be seeing many of them again on the Christmas and Celebration tours. I can't express enough how special it is to go to these shows with the people who have become our best friends and I'm so excited to see them again! Thank you to this forum for bringing us together!

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Kevin R.I.
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« Reply #18 on: October 16, 2019, 12:06:03 PM »

I have some Dutch friends that are CW fans. Tracie, you and Gregg should try to book a show at the Providence Performing Arts Center in R.I. The theater is an old one and has really great acoustics.It one of the best places for a bus`n greet because the CW coaches have to park on a side street next to the building and everyone exits the stage door and walks up the street to the buses.
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Tracie
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« Reply #19 on: October 16, 2019, 03:21:08 PM »

I have some Dutch friends that are CW fans. Tracie, you and Gregg should try to book a show at the Providence Performing Arts Center in R.I. The theater is an old one and has really great acoustics.It one of the best places for a bus`n greet because the CW coaches have to park on a side street next to the building and everyone exits the stage door and walks up the street to the buses.

I'd love to! Gregg and I like to travel to see Celtic Woman shows. A couple of trips that I've had in mind have been to rent a car and follow them around Florida and follow them around the northeast. We're doing the Florida trip on the Celebration tour, so I think northeast will be great for 2021!
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Tracie
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« Reply #20 on: November 10, 2019, 09:57:36 AM »

Gregg and I wrapped up our Ancient Land experience with the opening two nights of the Europe tour a few weeks ago.  This brought our Ancient Land total to 10 shows over 13+ months - the two nights of DVD filming, six US tour shows and two Europe tour shows.  We loved seeing the phenomenal Ancient Land show so many times!

Opening night of the Europe tour was in Amsterdam, Netherlands and the second night was in Antwerp, Belgium.  We had never been to either city, but we really enjoyed them.  There's such beautiful architecture and Amsterdam's beautiful canals.  We had a wonderful canal dinner cruise the night after the two shows.  We love to travel and see new places and we will be continuing to choose our travel destinations off of Celtic Woman's tour schedule so that we can see lots more of their incredible shows!

I feel like I have run out of ways to explain how amazing the Ancient Land show is, how much we love it every time we see it, and how the ladies and the entire band and dancers blow us away each time we see them, so I'll just talk about the things that were unique to the Europe shows.  The major differences were that Mna na hEireann was removed from the setlist (we missed it!) and that there were two dancers (Carl & Colm) instead of three.  It was interesting to see how they re-worked the choreography with one less dancer because there are so many songs in this tour that they dance to.  The most adorable moment came out of that during Ballroom of Romance when Megan and Tara grabbed hands and smiled very cutely at "like hand in glove, could this be love". Awwwww! Towards the end of the US tour, Mairead had swapped Ae Fond Kiss to County Down and Megan had swapped Shenandoah to Faith's Song.  In our two Europe shows, Mairead went back to Ae Fond Kiss while Megan kept Faith's Song.  We did see Mairead in both shows - it was a few days later when she got appendicitis and left the tour.  Another difference in the Europe shows is that they changed up some of the song introductions (most noticeably for Moorlough Shore, which no longer had the whole story about Charlie O'Neill emigrating to the US), and changed the way they introduced Megan, now saying that it was her first Europe tour rather than saying that she was new to the group.  The Amsterdam show started about 15 minutes late.  Lloyd came out on time to start the show, but nobody else came on stage.  He stopped playing the music and the lights in the theatre came back on.  We sat and waited for awhile, then Mairead came on the speaker system (Gregg and I were like "hey Mairead!" when she started talking) and said sorry, we're having technical difficulties, but we're coming out to start the show right now, woo! And as I mentioned in David's thread, Megan coughed during Faith's Song in Antwerp.  I really don't mind when stuff like that happens (we're all human!) because while I have never once thought that they lip sync, it gives me stories to share when other people question it.  They absolutely are singing live!  Gregg and I gave Megan a standing ovation after that song to show our appreciation to her and I think she appreciated that support because she gave us a big smile as she walked off stage.

The Amsterdam theatre was part of a big convention center and although we spent some time earlier in the day walking around it, we couldn't figure out where the stage door was, so we unfortunately didn't meet the ladies in Amsterdam.  We did meet them the next afternoon in Antwerp though!  We had a long conversation with the four of them, which was wonderful.  We had told them via instagram that we were coming to Amsterdam, but never said anything about Antwerp so we could surprise them at that one, knowing they would see us there because we had a front row seat.  When we met them in Antwerp then, they certainly were surprised and Tara said they didn't realize we were coming to Antwerp too, to which we said we kept that one a secret!  In Amsterdam we were in row 8 and weren't sure if they noticed us that far back or not.  But when we talked to them, Mairead said they could hear us cheering in the Amsterdam crowd because we were always the first ones to start the cheers.  How cool is that, that they know what our cheers sound like!? Awesome!  Valid too, because we've seen the show so many times that we were always a second ahead of the rest of the crowd in starting to cheer after each song.  We talked about the upcoming Christmas tour and Megan said they're putting a very special show together and it'll be amazing (no doubt about that!).  We told them we're coming to four Christmas shows, the first of which being the Minnesota show that is only five miles from our house.  To that Eabha said, wow that's a little bit easier than Belgium!  Haha, yup just a little bit!  We said we already have tickets to eight Celebration tour shows and are still getting more.  Mairead looked really surprised at that and said they didn't even really know where they were going for Celebration yet because they had just gotten their schedule a few days ago.  That was really interesting to hear.  We explained how some venues list the shows and put tickets on sale very far in advance and that we started buying Celebration tickets back in May.  We told them that the main reason we had decided to come to Europe is because we've had a lot of stress and anxiety and that their music and shows are what gives us relief and that we were feeling very much in need of that relief.  I didn't see it, but Gregg said that Megan put her hand over her heart like awwww when I said that.  We got a lovely group picture, which is on my public instagram page (tracie_dorn).  And ever since our Lancaster show in April where Gregg sat up front and I sat in the balcony, anytime we have met them before a show, Tara has asked us where we would be sitting that night.  She continued that in Antwerp and we told them how we got one front row seat from David and then bought one in the balcony and that we would switch seats with each other at intermission.  Mairead said she hoped somebody else with a front row seat wouldn't show up so that we could both sit up front.  Wish granted Mairead - I sat in the balcony for the first act, but nobody showed up for the seat right next to Gregg, so we both got to sit in the front row for the second act.  I really do enjoy watching the choreography from the balcony, but nothing compares to being right up front where they can see us and interact with us during the show.  And when the show ended, as Mairead was walking off stage, she was waving to the crowd in general.  When she got in front of me, she stopped, locked eyes with me and then smiled and waved to me and gave me a thumbs up for getting the front row seat.  Carl and Lloyd also waved directly to me and Gregg as they walked off stage.  Carl knows who we are from all of our lobby chats with him, though unfortunately he wasn't in the lobbies at those two shows.  And Lloyd frequently watches me sing and dance along when I'm sitting in the front row and always gives me big smiles.  So much fun!  We hadn't figured out where the stage door was in Antwerp either so we didn't meet them after the show, but we were fine with that since we had the really long conversation with them earlier in the day.  And that meant that my final moment with the ladies on the Ancient Land tour was my favorite singer on earth giving me a smile, wave and thumbs up (I love them all, but don't think it's any secret that Mairead is my favorite) <3.  Absolutely love it!

Thanks so much for reading about all of our Ancient Land adventures!  The 2019 Christmas tour is right around the corner (our first show is 26 days from now!!) and we'll have lots more to report back on.  Can't wait!!

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Gregg
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« Reply #21 on: November 10, 2019, 02:23:19 PM »

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VegasDavid
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« Reply #22 on: November 10, 2019, 03:29:26 PM »

I'm glad that all of my speculative Europe tickets went to such good use.  That was so cool that Mairéad gave you a thumbs up from the stage!  Now that all our Ancient Land stories are done, it's time to make some new stories happen for the next two tours.
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