Cold. Bored. Sore butt. Is this worth it? Waiting for hours to be in the front row

ON THE SIDEWALK, TENTH AND WILLAMETTE, EUGENE — It’s 55 degrees with a slight wind chill. My flowy skirt and Tevas are no match for the wait ahead. 

Despite my lack of preparation, I’m game to spend the next 10 or so hours rooted in this spot, the corner of 10th Avenue and Willamette Street, to try my best to secure a front-row spot at Lucy Dacus’ concert at the McDonald Theatre in Eugene tonight.

Dacus, for the uninitiated, is “the tall one” from boygenius, an indie rock oracle whose solo work — contemplative, lyrical takes on life and love, sung in a like-no-other steely velvet voice — bored deep into my core when I first heard her at 19 years old. 

You might be asking: Why am I so ready to spend hours on a street corner? 

Listen to “Historian,” front to back. Then give “Home Video” a spin and, once you’re done crying, get back to me. 

You might have the follow-up question: Wait, when exactly is this concert? (Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m.) 

Front-row aficionados know the cruel math that number demands. If a beloved musician is playing at 8 p.m., and a city has enough fans to sell out tickets, when exactly do you need to show up? 

10:21 a.m.: I arrive to see people already set up in folding chairs.

I had planned to peel out of our downtown office a few hours before 5 p.m., but nowhere near this early. But my colleague Bob Passaro came into the newsroom with a hot tip: people were already lining up.

I bolted. 

It’s worth it. I’ve been in her front row before, at a 2019 Valentine’s Day show in Lexington, Kentucky. It was an electric intimacy: we were busheled at her feet like acolytes, lucky to have made it up front after at first going to the wrong venue (similar names).

She had heard about the venue mix-up — we weren’t the only ones who had first flocked to the wrong doors — and she, to the best of my recollection, asked the crowd who had gone there first. Our hands rocketed up.

“Aw, you guys?” She said, looking at our cluster of three before the stage. “I love you guys.” (Many people swear they get precious moments of eye contact during performances, which I understand, but hand on the Bible, she was talking to us.) 

I was buzzing, for the rest of the evening, for the rest of the hourslong drive back to our college town in Indiana. At my second Dacus concert, in Columbus, Ohio, in 2021, I was nowhere near the front but took home a set list that I still have framed.

This time, I resolved, I would be in the front again, no matter the wait. (Or how cold my toes were getting. The answer is “very.”)

10:49 a.m.: A McDonald Theatre staff member — surprisingly adept on an electric one wheel skateboard — placed the metal barricades marking the boundary for the long line to come. 

That announced us as a line with a capital L. The thing about publicly waiting in a line for a concert is that you become a spokesperson for the musician to all of the random people who float by, curious, and ask who we’re waiting to see. 

The patter repeats: 

Who are you waiting for?

It’s Lucy Dacus.

Huh. Who’s that? 

I say, she’s an indie singer-songwriter.

Ah, they say, never heard of her. 

I usually smile, tell them to check her out, and wait for the next identical back-and-forth. One man, addressing the whole line, joked: “So if I got into making music, would you guys wait in line for me?” 

We lightly laugh a please-go-away laugh. 

He could never be Lucy. 

11:55 a.m.: I am ill-prepared to wait in a line for hours, I find. I’m using my laptop as an external battery to keep my phone alive, which falters as a plan when the laptop itself dies.

The young woman in line next to me, Delaney Orzolek, is much better equipped. She has a portable phone charger, a see-through bag and hours of travel time as motivation to stick it out.

Orzolek, 19, lives in Lake Worth Beach, Florida, a coastal city south of Palm Beach, nowhere near any of Dacus’ planned tour stops this year. Orzolek’s mom, Renee, gifted her with tickets to the Eugene concert, a surprise trip chosen because of the venue’s proximity to an airport and hotel.

She’s been a fan for 10 years since the debut album, “No Burden.” Her plan for the line is to listen to a lot of, obviously, Dacus’ music. It just speaks to her, she said.

“My favorite song is ‘Big Deal,’” she said, in reference to a tender track released last year about two friends admitting they’re in love with each other. “My favorite song. I’ve streamed it, I think about like 4,000 times now.”

12:45 p.m.: The tables are turned on me shortly afterward when I’m interviewed by Morgan Hopes, a junior studying journalism at the University of Oregon assigned to interview people in downtown Eugene today.

“Why not interview someone that’s clearly a huge fan of music,” she told me after the interview, “since they’re waiting literally seven hours before the show?” 

This is a reminder that I still have seven more hours ahead of me. 

2:32 p.m.: A woman in a cool jacket and sunglasses walks down the street, looking over at us on her way back from what looks like a coffee run. Is it her? I’m 70% sure it’s her. I make a heart with my hands as she looks over, just in case. 

2:36 p.m.: Someone orders Domino’s pizza to the line. This is genius, and I make a mental note to file the strategy away for the next line I’m in.

2:51 p.m.: I’ll admit that it’s not a mighty line. I have waited some 4½ hours now to be ahead of 15 other people. I pop out of line to use the bathroom and easily pop back in, past the pizza orderers.

This is, if I’m honest, a little deflating. But I know I’ll be ahead of those 15 when the doors open, and we’ll all be ahead of the less dedicated crew that has yet to join us. This is our best bet at pure proximity to Dacus.

It’s at this point I am pushed to consider what exactly I’m getting out of my insistence upon the front row. My taste in front rows was honed in college town basement shows, sharp-elbowed concerts of swaying sweaters where getting up close just meant actually being able to see the band.

Since then, I’ve been shoved to hell and back, near-crushed into a barricade by a crowd pushing forward, splashed with beer. I’ve been up front for concerts I didn’t even care about, just to be in the throng of people. (Post Malone is Post Malone at just about any distance.) 

But I think up-close immediacy is sacred. That’s especially true in a music-listening environment where streaming is so alienated from the actual playing of music, and artificial intelligence-created songs are background fodder for viral videos.

I’ve heard Dacus sing thousands of times, yet I’ve only really heard her sing twice.

That rare air between the performer and the front row is an agreement. This is happening here, and now, and once this moment is over it cannot be summoned again. 

3:35 p.m.: What are y’all waiting for? 

Someone farther up in line answers back, “Concert.”

My butt is starting to hurt in this chair.

4:57 p.m.: I start to read a book on my phone. There’s no romanticizing the final hours of antsy waiting.

5:40 p.m.: Staff gives out wristbands to the first 20 people in line to hold our spots. I look at my blue Kesey Enterprises wristband to see black marker declaring that I am the 17th fan in line. A respectable number. The venue staff is starting to condense the line, rousing us into a tighter spot cordoned off from the rest to stand until the doors open at 7. I miss my chair. A co-worker came a while ago to take it back to the office. (Thank you to all of my coworkers who ran little errands here and there to make my line wait possible. It takes a village.)

6:48 p.m.: I am antsy with excitement. The line is stretching back toward bus station territory, and the McDonald has released last-minute tickets. My favorite thing about the day (second favorite, behind actually going to this concert) is something I didn’t get to see directly: a Reddit post about people who had passed the time playing Catan.

7:02 p.m.: After all of that, I speed walk in as quickly as I can — no running, per McDonald rules. I see it — the spot at the barricade calling my name — could it be?

7:05 p.m.: Second row.