It’s no secret that I will do just about anything to get myself to a concert. Live music is one of few things that fills my life with purpose and my soul with passion. There is something spiritual in the experience of screaming in sync with hundreds to thousands of strangers while the bass wraps around you and the melodies go straight to the heart. Of course, I can vibe with any kind of music and I love any excuse to go to a show, but there are some bands that hold a special place in my heart—special enough, in fact, that they are on a bucket list I keep of artists I have to see live before I die.
There’s a band called The Wombats and they have been on this list since my early middle school days. Their sound has changed a lot over time, but. I think they can best be described as an alternative sort of pop with very slight techno influences. They’ve been around since before I could read, having gotten their start in Liverpool in 2003. In my early social media days, I was friends with an artist about my age and when I was going through a rough patch at the time, she recommended one of The Wombats’ songs to me. It got me through a lot then, and I only grew to love them more as I discovered more of their songs. They began to tease a new album late 2017 and I knew an album release meant a tour would follow. They had never been anywhere close enough for me to go previously so I vowed to myself then as a bold new college student with a newfound sense of freedom that I would do whatever it took to make this work.
I was honestly pretty disheartened when they announced the tour officially and there were no nearby shows. I had to do some scheming and compromising but I realized that I could probably make it to the show in Kansas City, Missouri, on a Friday if I were willing to skip class. I know, I know, it was irresponsible, but what can I say, I’m on this planet to enjoy my time here. I mentioned the idea to one of my friends from high school, and because she was not enrolled in classes at the time, she was able to request the day off work and give an enthusiastic “yes” to my crazy plan. We booked a hotel for the night after the show with some difficulty (for the record, only three hotels in all of Kansas City allow 19-year-olds to check-in alone), and after that were all set to start getting excited about our little road trip.
I should be careful using the word little, I suppose. From Cincinnati, Kansas City is about 588 miles, which boils down to an 8 hour and 20 minute drive in good traffic. We left early Friday morning on January 19, 2018, and let me tell you, it was a trip.
There was something about the energy my friend Hanna and I share that made the 9 hours we spent trekking through a lot of Midwest-nothing some of the most fun I’ve ever had. She graduated high school the year before I did, and then I left for Cincinnati when I graduated, so this trip was the first amount of time we had spent together in quite a while. I remember so many small details of our drive because I spent so many moments laughing and singing and enjoying myself. We stopped at a Speedway in Brazil, Indiana, for road snacks, which I thought sounded way too cool to be such a sad side-of-the-road pit stop. We took ridiculous bathroom mirror selfies and hopped along our way with our chips and slushies.
If you’ve ever thought about going to Missouri, I can give you some great directions: head west on I-70 and don’t stop. You’ll know when you’re there, I promise. One of the few hidden gems, at least for Hanna and me, along this monotonous stretch was the great town of Vandalia, Illinois. Other than having been the capital of Illinois a century ago, it doesn’t look like it has a lot to offer—and really, it doesn’t, but we’re from Vandalia, Ohio, just a couple miles north of Dayton, so we thought it was really neat. Not only are both Vandalias along I-70 and Route 40, but both have the same exit number. It was a great coincidence for two people who were tired of seeing fields, so we really soaked that one in. We tried to stop at the little visitor’s center by the highway to get a brochure or pamphlet or something, but when we drove closer, we saw that it was boarded up and kind of sketchy looking so we just did a loop and got back on our way.
There was no shortage of noteworthy events on our drive. Beyond our Vandalia excitement, there was a solid 10-minute period where we cranked the radio volume all the way up and straight-up belted song lyrics without any kind of discussion about it prior to doing it. There was Hanna’s scarily accurate prediction that an old flame of hers from Wentzville, MO would message her within minutes of seeing on social media that she was in the state. Above all, it was the spirit of laughter and friendship that made the entire journey worth it. It marked a couple personal milestones, too. I had never seen the Mississippi River before this. I had never been so far west. I had never driven for more than six hours straight. I am now a proud doer of all of these things!
The concert itself was amazing (and yes, I did hear all of my favorites). The venue was clean, inviting, and pretty cool, and the crowd had a laid-back sort of enthusiasm that made it so much easier to vibe with the music after such a long day in the car. The Wombats put on a show entirely worthy of having traveled for, living up to all my middle school dreams, but nevertheless, think one of my favorite moments spent in Kansas City was a lot simpler: Hanna and I walked this strange city to get pizza afterwards. It was so beautiful, especially considering that coming into Missouri all either of us expected to find were saloons and cows. Everything was well lit, and the storefronts looked adorable. I felt so at home in a city that I spent less than 24 hours in. We waited at Papa John’s for fifteen minutes, then took our dinner to the hotel in an exhausted sort of bliss, giggling about absolutely nothing and feeling like we had the city to ourselves.
The next morning, we got up early and set back out, taking our cold pizza on the road for breakfast, saying a goodbye to a city we had hardly become acquainted with, yet had been warmly welcomed by all the same. I hope to go back someday. Until then, I smile fondly upon the memories of our excursion there, astonished at the mundane simplicity of the most enjoyable moments of our road trip, proof that the journey can be just as fulfilling as the destination.
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