st. louis: sara gazarek and the academy is

what a great weekend in st. louis. i really needed that time at home and it ended up being an awesome few days. two concerts in one weekend once again - this seems to be turning into a trend.

saturday night i went out with two friends for a nice dinner downtown and a lovely show at jazz at the bistro. i'm not a huge fan of jazz music, much less jazz singers. but wow. let me tell you, this show blew me away. jazz at the bistro is on a cute little strip on washington street, also home to the fox, powell hall, and the creepy crawl. sara gazarek was the featured singer of the night and i think my jaw was on the floor during most of her performance. her piano player was phenomenal. her bass player was insane, and her drummer has won two grammy's. not to mention her amazing abilities as well. i think all three of us enjoyed ourselves more than anticipated. the seventy five degree weather probably added to our awesome moods as well. i was wearing a strapless dress and was completely comfortable.

i don't think there was a quiet minute the whole night, we talked the whole drive there, we talked at dinner, we talked over coffee, we talked the whole way home. it was great to catch up with old friends.

sunday was also a day to look forward to. the academy is! i hadn''t seen them since warped tour and that's always a little crazy. but this was different, the show was at a venue i'd never been to before - fubar - and was an acoustic set; my favorite kind. the opener, it's all about the benjamins, was actually on my campus a few weeks ago just sitting in speakers circle playing some songs. so i was pretty stoked to see them again. the next guy, evan topenfeld, was certainly interesting to say the least. he used to play for avril lavigne, hence the reason there were a million twelve year-olds fawning over him. he wasn't bad, just a little strange. he would stop in the middle of songs and start telling a story and get way off on a bunny trail... whatever. BUT THEN. william beckett. FAN GIRL MOMENT OMG. i was pretty close to the stage because the venue isn't all that big anyway. capacity was four hundred i think. his set was great - he played some really old songs from his previous band 'remember maine', some songs off of the tai ep 'from the carpet', and some really sweet covers. it was great. i thoroughly enjoyed myself despite being alone in the semi-ghetto.

i didn't have time to talk to any of the bands, or get any pictures or anything. it was a sunday night and i still had to pick up two friends and drive the two hours back to columbia. it was almost eleven by the time we left st. louis, so i'm glad we left when we did. but man, what a great weekend. i couldn't have asked for anything better. all i have to do is make it through this week for more concerts next weekend. party on.