A Night to Remember
So it’s been about a week since I had the amazing opportunity to see Yellowcard’s final show at the House of Blues in Orlando, and my emotions have settled to the point where I can write about it without bursting into tears or having a very scratchy voice from screaming my lungs out all night. To say it was a night I will never forget is probably the biggest understatement. I ended up going to the concert with a girl I barely knew for two weeks who shared my intense love of the band, and we ended up in the pit of the show, which was the first time I ever got to experience that, and it’s something I highly recommend everyone to experience once.
The band started in Jacksonville, Florida in 1997, and is most known for their 2003, “Ocean Avenue”. As lead singer, William Ryan Key, said during his opening monologue at the show “whether you’ve been on this journey since the beginning or you heard about this tour and were like ‘ oh hey they sang that one song that was popular when I was in like fifth grade, we welcome you home with open arms”. My connection with the band starts back in 2003 of course with “Ocean Avenue”. I remember hearing it on the radio, and always loudly sang along.
Fast forward 10 years later, I’m a sophomore in high school and the band is getting ready to release their second album after a hiatus due to violinist, Sean Mackin’s thyroid cancer diagnosis. I remember I was in New York visiting family and by chance stumbled across the news that Yellowcard would be coming to the House of Blues in Orlando that November. I begged my parents to let me go, they said yes, if I could find someone to go with. When I couldn’t manage to do that, they were forced to go with me. Looking back at my life then, my migraines were at their worst; I missed numerous days of school because of the pain and even found myself having to cancel plans with friends when I couldn’t move. The concert marked the first time in a while that I was actually able to go do something fun.
Through the years, mental health struggles, break ups, heartaches, graduating high school, and starting a new chapter in my life, Yellowcard’s music has guided me through it all. Towards the end of the concert set list, as half of the audience is already crying, I had this moment of realization of how much I’ve grown up in the last four years as a person listening to this one band. How their lyrics shaped the way I see myself as a person, and how I coped with my road blocks. As they once said “you were strong and you believed”.