We arrived a little late from San Francisco to the Oakland Coliseum on the lovely, warm afternoon of Friday, May 31.

Although we missed the first opener (Levi Turner), we made it just in time for the second act, Mt. Joy. The Coliseum, while absolutely, panic-attackingly crowded and terrible inside in the corridors, was so pretty outside in the golden hour of twilight.

Our seats were up a couple levels and just left from center of the gigantic stage stretched out across the outfield. The field was half lined with chairs and half open space. It was already pretty full throughout the stadium and certainly mobbed just behind us inside.

I spent most of Mt. Joy’s set braving those corridors and waiting in an enormous line for a tall can of Negra Modelo, failing at resisting feeling old and wrongly attired. I’m not sure where most of the crowd came from, but looking around, I felt a wistfulness at not being a woman who could pull off a wispy white sundress with a straw cowboy hat and cowboy boots, and not just because of the Bay Area’s Karl the Fog.

I’m also not sure how to qualify or characterize the night’s music genres. I’d never heard Mt. Joy before, and was enchanted when I made it back to my seat in time for the refrain Jesus Drives an Astrovan. Clearly this was a crowd favorite, played so well that I can still hum the tune two weeks later. But was I an imposter, not previously having this music in my life before?

As the sun dipped below the stadium rim, the lovely strands of light strung back and forth across the field illuminated the view between seats and stage. By the time Zach Bryan came on, it was dark.

A grainy black western video lit across the entire stage backdrop as Zach and band kicked it off and the whole of the audience, which appeared to be sold out across all stadium levels, launched up from their seats, barely sitting down the entire show.

Aside from the very pretty video backdrops, the first thing that struck me was Zach’s James-Dean-twinkly side-eye gazing in apparent wonder across the fired up crowd. He said something like he “never expected to play a crowd like this,” and although I wasn’t sure whether he meant Oakland, not necessarily a country stronghold, or the sheer stadium size, he seemed fully geniune admiring and thanking the adoring crowd the whole night. It sure looked beautiful from our seats, too.

I wouldn’t have called myself a fan before the show. I had only known a few of Zach’s songs, but those I knew (Something In The Orange, not played this night; and several others that were played, like Burn, Burn, Burn; East Side of Sorrow) hit on some deeper level than a casual listen.

The crowd, on the other hand, was all in, often singing along in a back-and-forth with Zach.

Even when Zach debuted the first live performance of the newly released Pink Skies, the crowd sang along – to every word – while Zach looked on, it seemed, in open wonder.

That’s a special kind of songwriting. I have been looking at show reviews since, and it feels like we really were in the magic hours that night. This is a real-talk guy, and I saw that he had been quite vocal against Pink Skies being released to pop radio that week. I knew his music casually, and likely the better part of the crowd were diehard fans, but a reach across music genres feels like a reach across aisles of a truly healing kind. When he later relented and apologized for being anti-pop or whatever it was – not that that particularly matters – it made me feel less like some kind of imposter without a country background and a carefree, white sundress.

I believe music IS at its universal best when it transcends genres and thus differences. I’m thrilled I got to see this show, and can’t imagine there are many people, even if they don’t see themselves as religious country fans, who would not feel a chill at lines like “I bet God heard you comin’.”

The encore was transplendent. A set of golf carts set out from the stage towards a different platform more in the center of the floor. As the floor crowd got the memo, there was a human surge in that direction. Then this platform lit up, and the band struck up a most lively rendition of Revival. There were many solos from the large and varied instrument pool on stage, including the kickass fiddle solo by the woman who apparently was a guest to the band subbing for a new father, and a fainting act – revival fashion, I realize, with embarrassment, in hindsight – by the banjo player that had me downright fooled. Fireworks ensued. Warm glows bathed the carefree dancers in their white sundresses on the small part of the floor that was empty. It was a stunner of a closing song and setting.

If there is a problem with this superlative of a live experience, it is that all other music, at least for a time after, sounds tired. I’m coming out of that slowly, but I will remember the color and the warmth and – maybe most of all – the feeling like we belonged. From the looks of it, this fellow from Oologah, Oklahoma, felt the same about his Oakland, California welcome.

You bailed him out, never said a thing
About Jesus or the way he’s livin’