Ringo Starr and HIs All Starr Band

(Madras, OR) Hi 97 Lo 52 – We have a lot of wild fires all around us in this part of Oregon. It’s making the air very hazy and not very conducive to seeing the beautiful mountains. Here’s a sunset photo we took last evening. The smoke in the atmosphere gives the sun a weird pink/orange glow. (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)



I was very excited about today. I’m a big Beatles fan, and have been since they arrived in the U.S. in 1964 when I was only 13 years old. I never got to see the Beatles perform, but I saw Paul McCartney in concert twice over the years, and this evening we went to Bend, OR to see Ringo Starr. So I’ve seen half the Beatles.



The concert was scheduled for 6:30, and the gates opened at 5. We got to the Les Schwab Amphitheater in Bend, about 45 miles away, about 20 minutes before the gates opened. It was a beautiful evening for an outdoor concert. We had lawn seats, and we didn’t mind the hour and a half wait until showtime. It was fun people watching.



Dee passed the time by taking a nap.


The show started promptly at 6:30. That’s early for a rock concert, but Ringo is getting up there in age (74 years old!) so he probably has to get to bed before too late (like most of his audience).  Ringo never has had what you would call a great singing voice, and his age is taking a toll on his voice. He’s had a few hits, but to keep him from having to carry a whole concert on his own he’s invited singers from past great bands to join him on the tour (hence the name “All Starr Band”).

He’s had various All Starr Bands in past years. For this tour he has the lead singers from Santana, Toto, and Mr Mister, along with Todd Rundgren, who’s been with him for years. They all sang a few hits from their glory days. The band did a great job of recreating the sound of the original bands, especially on the Santana songs. I don’t know who the guitarist is in Ringo’s band, but he sounded just like Carlos Santana. And of course Ringo sang some Beatles songs, which the crowd loved (including me!). We were too far from the stage to get any good closeups of the performers.



This girl put on quite a show of her own, and she was very entertaining. She had a very loose dress on, and it was quite breezy. You can fill in the blanks. Let’s just say she obviously liked to keep cool. And she was blocking my view of Ringo. (Oh darn!)



I tried my hand at taking a ‘selfie.’ (Doesn’t it seem strange for a guy my age to use that term?) I guess we can technically say we had our picture taken with Ringo Starr. He’s there in the background somewhere. Cool!



The concert ended at 8:30 with an audience sing along of “Give Peace a Chance.” It was very moving. The sun hadn’t even fully set, and the early ending allowed Ringo get to bed by 9 in this beautiful bus that was parked behind the stage.



This was our first concert in years, and we had a lot of fun. The audience was made up mostly of baby boomers like us. The nice thing about that was there was very little of the standing/sitting/standing like you see at rock concerts. Creaky joints, you know?   And kudos to the sound engineers. The sound was superb! Crystal clear and loud enough to be enjoyable, but yet we could converse without shouting. Dee remarked that she could understand the lyrics of all the songs perfectly, and that’s unusual for her. We made our way back to Madras and got home a little before 10:00. It was a magical evening!

Tomorrow morning we’re meeting with Jim and Judy for a farewell breakfast, then moving to the Portland area for the weekend. See you in two days.