Nashville Day 5: "No Hard Feelings, No Bad Vibes"

It was the last day of CMA Fest and we had high expectations of spending the day at the Riverfront for concerts. We got there early and were able to snag two chairs, table, and umbrella. But just barely. Paying so much extra for the VIP tickets was such a rip-off. We watched two or three acts perform

and had some lunch

and then I just couldn't bear the heat anymore. I learned on this trip that I am not the all day, drinking, stand in the sun concert type. I had no issue with the nighttime stadium shows but the daytime gigs were not for me. So we walked back to the condo to hang out until dinner. Dinner tonight was at another little place in Germantown called Butchertown Hall.

We had a taco assortment.

We walked across the bridge for the last time in the daylight. We greeted our friends in front of us for the last time. We took some final night pics from our seats.

The show kicked off with Sara Evans, another 90s favorite.

Then Lady A with special guest, Breland.

Elle King, one of the official hosts of the show, with special guest, Ashley McBride.

An edited version of several performances was to be televised in August and since Elle King and Dierks Bentley were the co-hosts, in between acts they would video them introducing the acts, even those from previous nights. They would ask the audience to make noise. It was interesting to see the process of how they put this together that night and then compare it to how it aired months later.

After Elle and Ashley we got a couple of songs from Parker McCollum.

And then our favorites of all, Old Dominion, who we had also seen the previous week in Dallas with Kenny Chesney. We could never see them enough though so we didn't mind at all.

The final act of CMA Fest was Dierks Bentley. We had mixed feelings about him as we saw him a couple of years ago at Choctaw and he was terrible. He played for about an hour that night even though he was the only act. It was a waste of money and time. We were giving him a chance to redeem himself tonight. He fell short. It didn't help that his special guest was Billy Ray Cyrus. Double ugh. Melissa dubbed him Hillbilly Jesus.

The festival was officially over. What a great four days/nights of music!

We made that last trip back over the bridge in a crowd of people singing the concert songs.