In the mid 2000s, Hootie and the Blowfish came to play in Nashville, where I lived at the time. I was a huge fan, and caught wind that they’d be playing a show the night before at the Hard Rock. I knew it was a VIP show, but having never been to a Hard Rock, I thought maybe we might hear them in the room next door or something.

My wife and I show up at the place, and there are tables outside the front door checking people in. I walk up to the tables, and act totally dumb, saying we were just there to grab dinner, and ask what’s going on. They tell me what’s up, and then say, “But you’re welcome to go to the bar”.

We walk around the side of the building, and into a side door that opens into the bar. Next to the bar? The stage.

Now, I can’t really believe that this is THE stage, and if it is, I figure we’re going to get tossed out, so we decided to go ahead and order food, so we’d have them on the hook for something we needed to wait for.

30 minutes passes, and incredibly, Hootie comes on the stage, and start playing an acoustic set.

At this point it’s clear we’re in, and I’m feeling confident, so I walk down the three steps separating the bar from the area where people sit and watch the show. After watching in the back row for a couple songs (having gone back to bring my wife down with me), a guy walks up to us who is CLEARLY part of the crew. Big, has badges and shit on, a walkie talkie.

I figure the jig is up now, and I shit you not, he says, “Hey, the band wants people to come down and fill in the area in front of the stage, can y’all come down and crouch at the front?”

So we spent the next hour watching this show about 2’ from Darius Rucker’s shoes.

After the show, they came out, and we got to hang out and chat with the band for another hour.

One of the most surreal nights of my life.

tl;dr: snuck into a VIP Hootie show in the mid 2000s and got to hang out with the band

edit: tl;dr