My 2012 "BELIEVE" Tour: Mission L'il Lambe

WARNING: This is really, really long! So I’ll split it up into a couple posts. LOL.

My CW Tour story actually started back in the fall when the North American Tour dates were released. I was scanning the list of cities, looking for shows that would be in my general vicinity, and hoping for weekend shows since I only had one personal day left at work until the end of May. When I looked at the 2012 shows and dates, I couldn’t “BELIEVE” my eyes! There were SIX possible/doable shows in an eight day span that just so happened to be during my Spring Break! (I work for the local school system.) Wow! Cincinnati, South Bend, Akron, Columbus and two shows in Chicago! I called my sister (Barb Beaver) and we began the planning! My mission was to meet Lisa Lambe which I had yet to do! We had all the dates of the PBS shows, etc. and began counting down the days. Pretty quickly, however, the show in South Bend was cancelled, which was a huge disappointment as that had been my only show last year and we had a BLAST! We hadn’t really planned to attend the Columbus or Akron shows.....but I am getting ahead of myself!

Tickets lined up for Cincinnati w/M&G and two Chicago shows, one with M&G and one without. So TWO chances to meet Ms. Lambe....I was getting a little nervous.....that didn’t seem like very many chances. As the calendar inched closer to March, we began to tweet Lisa about how much I wanted to meet her. Barb had already met her and Lisa seemed to know her from her tweets! A couple weeks before the Columbus show, the local PBS station announced they would have LIMITED M&G. Since we had passed on getting tickets in the fall due to the fact that there was NO M&G, we decided to go ahead and try to get them now, (it was one of those where you can’t buy them on-line, you have to call the station when they are airing, blah, blah, blah.) Seriously though, they had all these “rules”, like you had to live in the viewing area, and you could only buy one pair of tix, etc. What the heck? Thankfully, Barb lives in the viewing area and we were able to secure two tickets with M&G for the Columbus show. OK, so now my chances are looking better! Plus I knew I would get to see the other girls and hopefully get to meet Susan as well. By now, with 4 shows scheduled and 3 M&Gs, we were getting so excited! Now, we’re hearing rumblings that we may be able to get tickets for the Akron show....with ONE M&G. And that’s just what we did thanks to a friend who upgraded his seats!

So, we started our “Believe Tour” driving from Columbus to Cincinnati on Saturday. We ended up sitting in the 2nd row of the center pit with John (Starman), Neil (CW_fan) and Annie (Needleworklady), and Mike (Cash) as well as two young men from the CWforum that we had not met, Mattycakes and Jimmy. (You can read Mattycakes’ review Believing in Cincinnati.) The show was phenomenal as many reviewers have described already. Having been to the Atlanta tapings, I was pleasantly surprised with the changes in this Spring tour. Love, love, loved Lisa and Chloe’s new introduction to T.A.R. which took place on the stage but off to the sides. Mairead was her usual “fierce” self and had me jumping to my feet at the end of her first solo! So glad they kept the audience participation in “Green Grow” as that was so much fun! By now, Lisa knew to look for me and Barb (she had also had some prompting from Annie about the fact that I SOOOO want to meet her.) Once Lisa spotted us, we received tons of attention from her, including a nod during the “sweetest hours....spent among the lassies-o,” as well as “mwahs” and blown kisses! Susan is fitting right in and has such a beautiful voice! And I have no words to describe Chloe’s “Ave Marie”, even with her little bit of huskiness, it was still flawless!

Also enjoyed all the different musicians getting to have the spotlight more in this show. Loved Anthony in a suit and then later playing the djembe (LOL, I only know the name of the drum because Anthony tweeted that he loves playing it.) I also have to say that I think this dancer, Craig, is so talented! He was awesome at all of the shows I saw this week! Tommy’s new, longer solo was really a treat! And Ray coming into the audience and talking to the folks upstairs was fun. Sort of makes these folks seem more down to earth, doesn’t it? Got lots of exercise getting up and down during this show! On to the Meet & Greet. I had fingers crossed, but had the inkling that I would not get to meet Lisa tonight as she had been at the previous two M&Gs. As the girls walked in, James announced that we would be meeting Susan and Mairead. I was able to get some good pictures as we made our way up to the table. It was so good to see Mairead again. I had some scrapbook pages of our trip to Atlanta, which included a picture of Mairead outside the stage door. She signed that and chuckled at the fact that she had her arm in front of her face. Oh well, it was the only one I got of her and so into the scrapbook it went. Had a nice chat with Susan and I must say, she is definitely a sweetie! The PBS station took a nice picture of Barb and me with the girls. After saying good night to our friends, we headed back to Columbus for a couple days of rest/relaxation, etc.

Onward to Akron on Tuesday. We met up with about 20 CW friends at the BarleyHouse. It was so good to see familiar faces and meet some new friends! Our seats were in Row 6 and we were right next to Annie and Mike (Cash). We had quite the gathering of forum fans that night! Again the show was wonderful. Lisa and Chloe introduced T.A.R. this time from the audience, but still right up by the stage. So nice to see them changing things up and having a little fun with the audience. We were far enough back that the girls couldn’t see us, so no attention from the stage! At intermission, a note was passed back to me from Tom, one of the forum members. I opened it to find a 2nd M&G pass for us! Wooooo! Seems Neil was talking to the folks to his left and noted that they had an empty seat. They told him their fourth person was home with a fever. Did he know of anyone who could use their extra M&G? How lucky is that!!!! I was sure it was a sign of good things to come......ahem....L’il Lambe at the M&G perhaps? I was getting more and more nervous. When James rounded us up and took us to the M&G room/lobby, I was so excited! There were about 40 people in this M&G. Much bigger than usual. We were towards the end of the line. James went through his “rules” and joked about the $10 fee for taking his picture. Then out walked.....Mairead and Susan? Now don’t get me wrong, I love these ladies......I was just surprised because the Cincinnati show had been the last M&G the girls had done and it was M&S there too! Strange! Now I had to scramble to find things for them to sign! LOL. As we waited in line, I saw Anthony down the steps to my right posing for pictures. I hurried down the steps to get his signature on a picture from Atlanta! He’s so gracious! While we were waiting in line to talk to the girls, a security guard walked down the line and said (very quietly), “Please do not ask the artists to pose for pictures.” Now how strange is that? We figured it was because there were so many of us that night. So I didn’t get a one-on-one with Mairead. Guess I’ll have to get that next time! A side note: Barb’s birthday was coming up that next Friday, so I had asked Annie if she could get a birthday card and have whichever girls were there sign it.....secretly of course. She was at the end of the line, so she was able to do that and slip the card to me before she left. Barb and I headed to the hotel and then back to Columbus the next day, Wednesday, which was show day for Columbus! WooHoo!

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