Tegan and Sara at The Orange Peel

Two days later and my vocal chords are still recovering. During the Tegan and Sara concert at The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC, we screamed and sang at the top of our lungs for over two hours. It was the best concert I have ever been to in my life!

It was a mad scramble to try to get there in time after Valerie and I picked Cristin up after class in JC. We managed to arrive in Asheville only minutes before the concert was set to start. But then we drove around for the next 15 minutes looking for parking.

When we finally found a spot (on a creepy dark street next to a man standing on the sidewalk talking to himself), we hiked back up the road to the venue, hoping not to miss too much.

Then we saw the line of people that was out the door. We sighed in resignation and added ourselves to the line. But happily, the line moved quickly. Tickets were scanned, hands were stamped, and we were through.

We didn't hear music yet so we made a pit stop at the bathroom. That's when the screaming started. I freaked out. "We're missing it!!" I jumped up, ran out of the stall, washed my hands, and started jumping up and down yelling, "Come on, come on, we're missing it!!!" To tell the truth, I'm not even sure if I was done. Valerie will probably never let me forget that, haha.

When we rushed out to the room and saw the stage, we realized that people had just been screaming to try to get them to come out. Hadn't missed anything after all. Shortly after, Tegan and Sara came onstage with their guitars and the whole place went nuts. They first did an acoustic set and the whole audience was singing along from the very first line of Call It Off.

Throughout the first set, they had 2 or 3 Q+A sessions in the intervals where they answered audience questions such as, "What impact do you think Lady Gaga has on people's perception of women musicians?" and my favorite, "In case of a zombie takeover, what would be your survival plan?" to which Sara answered, "I would be dead."

After a 20 minute break, during which Val, Cristin, and I sat on the floor and got stepped on and spilled on while we made comments about people's footwear, they came back out with the full band do to a total rock show. We danced, clapped, sang, and screamed for the next hour and had the best time ever.

If I had one request, it would be that they stand on stools or something, because even though they were on a stage, I still had to stand on my tiptoes the whole time to be able to see their short little selves. But even the fact that my middle toe fell asleep and my arches were breaking, it was so worth it. They were magnificent and funny and being in a room full of people who loved them as much as I do was such a great experience.

It seems we made an impression on them as well. Once they were finished and had left the stage, we couldn't stop cheering. Finally they came back out, surprised to be doing an encore, and played two more songs. That seems normal, but they really don't usually do encores. They loved us, and told us so, and we loved them back.

Later on Twitter (yes, I follow them on Twitter), Tegan posted "Thank you Asheville. I have a serious crush on you. That show rocked my world. #wow"