It has been a little while since I’ve been on here. However, that is life I suppose. I want to write about one weekend, the weekend that closed out the month of April.
Now for some of you who have followed my work over the past decade or two, you know that I have done a lot of sports photography in the past, being an employee of a few of the local teams, and even covering some events for The Pitch.
However, this year, I made a little promise to myself that I would focus strictly on concert photography, as that is what gave me the most joy in the photography world. I did make one exception though, and that was for the National Football League (NFL) Draft when that came through Kansas City, Missouri.
Now, I had never really watched the Draft before on TV, or paid any attention to the images that came about from it. I did do my research prior hand and got a good understanding what to expect.
And then the concert series was announced for each day, after the Draft had finished for that day.
I knew that the Draft was going to bring in 300,000+ people to Union Station that weekend, but I wasn’t entirely sure how things were going to go down. I will say that, even two weeks after the entire thing is over, that it was most likely the most intense, exciting, exhausting, and amazing thing that I have covered in a long time, and I mean a LONG time.
It was three days of nothing but shooting, leaving my house at 9am and not getting back until 1:30am the next day.
While Day 1 of the draft was amazing, the excitement started to dwindle down over the entire complex by day three, where there were no possible draft picks there, waiting to walk across the stage, and the final rounds breezed by like it was more protocol verses something that would change someone’s life forever (think that these college players being paid the league minimum pay at somewhere around $750,000 per year for 2023).
But outside of all that excitement was the three concerts that were announced for that weekend, and they were free to anyone who attended the Draft. Day One was Fall Out Boy; Two was Motley Crue; and Three was Thundercat.
I had never photographed Fall Out Boy before, but I knew their music. Little did I know that it was the Lead Singer’s birthday that day, but my 20 year old daughter is a HUGE fan and wanted to attend that show as well, so spent the entire day at the Draft and was exhausted by the time that the draft part of the day actually got underway, and she wasn’t the only one, as I was as well, and you could see it on the faces of a lot of the people who showed up early to partake in the NFL Experience (everything that the NFL had brought to KC to entertain the fans before and during the Draft).
The band brought it their all on this unusually hot day, and sounded great. We were supposed to shoot only the first three songs, no flash (the “regular”) as was told by word of mouth, but the band didn’t seem to care that some photographers continued to shoot. The band’s set list included their hits of “Sugar, We’re going down”, “Dance, Dance”, and “Centuries” to name a few from the 11 song that echoed throughout the World War I and Union Station grounds, and by the time it was all over, the crowd walked away happy.
The second night, for Motley, it was a little different. While the band played on the slightly less popular evening of the Draft, the crowd seemed up for them, regardless of all the media attention that has been going on and the feud between them and their ex-guitarist Mick Mars, and the claims that even Motley has said were true and then back tracked on it all that the band used Backing Tracks.
However, this was the second time that I had photographed them in one calendar year (the Stadium Tour was the first) and regardless of what was taped and what wasn’t/what was played live and what wasn’t, the crowd really enjoyed the six song set list that included some of the band’s classic hits like “Kick start my heart” “Home Sweet Home” and “Girls, Girls, Girls”. This also presented the first time that their new guitarist, Johnny 5 (previously with Rob Zombie) had been with the band in Kansas City. He bopped around on stage, playing, but didn’t really seem into the evening, like the rest of the band, especially Vince; who (like at the stadium tour) was hard to understand half of the time when he was trying to sing, as well as just seemed not there completely during the vast majority of the show. His teleprompters were still in use (however not as many as there were at the Stadium Tour) and he said to the crowd at one point that he “likes football, I really do” however not convincing in the least. I would honestly say that the only one who actually looked like that he might be excited to be there was Nikki Sixx, who had his bass guitar wrapped in a “NFL Draft” skin that was the same font and everything as everything else that was used at the Draft.
The last evening, Thundercat performed, after an hour and a half delay due to high wind. I think that the NFL PA Announcer guy could have done a better job telling everyone that we had to evacuate the Draft Theater due to the winds other than saying “Attention everyone, due to severe weather, please evacuate the Draft Theater and the area around the Fountain.” A lot of people were confused and thought it was a hype thing for “THUNDERCAT” (think about it for a second…yep, you got it). However, when all of that died down (which it did and no one told us photographers that the show was back on, I just happened to step outside to see what was going on, saw his piano player warming up, ran back inside and yelled at everything that the show is starting now), the funk, soul, acid jazz etc. performer lit the stage up, giving everyone who stuck around during the delay, a show of their life. It was said that they wanted to bring back some of the music history that Kansas City is known for to close out everything (and if you don’t know, it is Jazz; research the 18th and Vine district). All in all, I decided to stay and photograph the entire seven song set that he did, and spent a lot of the last few songs just standing there, admiring his performance.
