Jimmy Fortune

 



Saturday December 9th

Millie and I have been fortunate in that we’ve seen live performances by pretty near every living entertainer that we’ve had a desire to see. Some like Gene Watson and we’ve seen multiple times. At times it seemed like we could never connect with an entertainer when he/she was in our area. Most of the time this was because we were traveling somewhere else at the time.

One of the great performers that we had never been able to align our schedules with was Jimmy Fortune. You may know him from his twenty years with the Statler Brothers or his twenty years since then as a solo artist. 

Jimmy Fortune

 

Some months back I checked his website and saw that he would be performing in Liberty North Carolina in December. We hadn’t made departure plans for our winter Florida trip yet, so I decided to book tickets. Even at that early stage the venue was almost sold out, there were a few seats in the rear of the theater and a few in the balcony. Millie and I had been discussing balcony seating recently and our desire to try it so I booked two front row balcony seats.

Asheboro-Greensboro and Liberty


It’s about 150 miles from our house to Liberty so we decided to spend the night and drive home the following day. I reserved a room at the Fairfield Inn in Asheboro which is about twenty miles from the small town of Liberty.

The Liberty Showcase theater


We took the Silver Bullet* because we like the height and visibility of the truck over Millie little Subaru. Not that there’s anything wrong with her car, in fact it is more reliable than most high-priced cars. It seems like everyone I know who has a BMW or Mercedes always has it in the shop for something gone wrong. We do routine maintenance on her car but have never had a mechanical problem and it’s a 2009 with 75K miles on it.

there wasn't this line to get in when we were there


On December 9 2023 we drove up the road past Asheboro and on to Greensboro. We visited with Millie’s sister Lucille for a few hours and then backtracked to Asheboro. Before checking in at the hotel we decided to stop for an early dinner. We passed a local restaurant called The American Roadhouse and its parking lot was full. If it was this busy in the middle of the afternoon, we figured it had to be good. The Roadhouse did not disappoint, even though it was packed with patrons we were seated promptly, had excellent service and a great meal. We both had fried flounder with a baked potato and cole slaw. 

Next, we went to the hotel and checked in, my initial impression was it was a clean and fairly new building. The King bedroom was a lot smaller than I thought it would be, in fact I can only think of one or two hotel stays that have had rooms this small. The room did look clean to me and had no odor, Millie did notice a couple stains on the carpet. The room’s heat pump was blowing cold air, I raised the temperature on the thermostat but when we left it still didn’t appear to be heating. 



I can’t say enough good things about the Jimmy Fortune concert, we enjoyed it beyond our expectations. Mr. Fortune was accompanied by a lead guitar, a bass guitar and a fiddle player, the music was an accompaniment to his voice and did not drown it out. It was a small venue, and our balcony seats were just about the perfect distance for us. The show lasted for two and a half hours with just a 15-minute intermission.

View from the balcony


Based on the show we saw I don’t know know what genre I would but the performance in. They did some Statler Brothers standards, some Christmas music and lots of Christian Gospel. We enjoyed every song, and I can only say if you ever get the chance to see him in a live performance, just go!

It would have been a perfect evening except when we got back to the Fairfield Inn the heater was still blowing cool air. The first thing I did was turn it off, it was 72 degrees and without the fan blowing it was quite comfortable. I then went to reception and to their credit, they offered our change room. I said no, it was 72 degrees in the room, the temperature wasn’t expected to drop overnight and if I could just have an extra blanket just in case, we would be fine. We never needed the extra blanket.



We woke to rain the next day and a forecast for continuing rain all day. We cancelled our plans to do a little touring of Asheboro and drove straight home. It rained steadily for at least 75 miles. I don’t think it let up until we got to Rockingham. Other than that, the drive was uneventful.


(*) Our all-silver Ram pickup.



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