KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Concertgoer Nathaniel Bellwood is starting to believe that The Autumn Lightning’s encore tonight was going to happen, no matter what, according to fellow increasingly skeptical sources.
“At first I thought, ‘Wow! It’s so cool that we were such a fun audience, they wanted to play a little more,’” said Bellwood. “But then I realized: what are the odds that a random crowd from Kansas City is really that different from a crowd in Atlanta or something?”
“And they stopped so abruptly,” he added. “They just ended their song, and got out one quick, ‘Thank you,’ but they left their instruments and the lights were still down.”
Bellwood’s suspicions only grew when he saw multiple roadies scrambling to replace equipment after the band’s set.
“As soon as they all walked off stage, some random dude set an acoustic guitar at the front of the stage, which… why would you do that? It’s not like they’re just leaving that there for tomorrow night’s band,” said Bellwood. “And then it hit me — they haven’t even played their best song yet. I mean, were they just expecting us to forget the song that made a lot of us buy tickets to this show?”
When the singer from the opening band joined for a duet in the encore, Bellwood said, he “just knew it had to be prearranged.”
“If the show was really over, that singer would most likely be super-drunk by this point, right? I guess it’s possible it was random, but how could they be certain she’d know the song?” asked Bellwood, checking his list of evidence. “If all this was part of the show, I sort of feel silly for chanting the band’s name for five minutes straight to try to get them to come back on stage.”
The encore, which concluded with small pyrotechnic display after the final chorus of the band’s last song, reportedly made Bellwood “95 percent sure” his instinct was spot-on.
Photo by Matt Gill.