Recently I was privileged to attend a Travis Tritt concert at the Mable House Barnes Amphitheatre in Cobb County. Cobb Life Magazine hosted the event and I was anxious to hear him in person. 
Travis Tritt lives locally, but plays nationally, and one of my favorite songs of his is “Doesn’t the Good Outweigh the Bad”. He says it is a relationship song about he and his wife’s experience building a new house. “You know how they say that if your marriage can survive building a house it can survive anything? That is absolutely a fact.” As an interior designer, I help people build houses all the time, and he’s right…Anyone can build a house, it takes a lot to build a home.
I took a friend Maria Tingas (Fellow First Wives Club Member) to the concert and we had a lovely time listening to the music of the band “Tabor Dame”. I like the intimacy that the Mable House Amphitheatre provides…acoustically… and also the fact that the stage sits up close so you can really see and hear the music. The guys readily took pictures with their fans and signed autographs.
I was impressed with the blending of their voices on stage, and their comraderie off stage. I bought their CD, and think they are a band to watch for in the future!
Travis Tritt was the one everyone came to see, though. And he did put on a show. I’ve heard musicians say that they like playing to the home court, and I could tell that Travis was having fun! He offered us songs he had written, and some he just liked to sing…and he had fun with a few. I liked some of the catch phrases in many of them, like “Look Out For Number One”, “Something Is Wrong With Me” (Not that I could see…) and one of my favorites, “It’s A Great Day in the Neighborhood”. He used a voice synthesizer to sound almost cartoonish with parts of “Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”, and had the crowd begging for more as the night progressed. 
For the encore, Travis Tritt changed his T-shirt to one that said “An Army of One”…and that is when it hit me: This is my kind of country. I don’t necessarily like all kinds of country music, but I do like the ones I heard that night. And I like what these two bands stand for…working together to be a single unit that supports each other. Travis mentioned that his lead guitar player (Wendell Cox) had been with him for 23 years…and that is a little like building a house together, when two people spend that much time with each other.
My friend Maria and I were randomly seated next to Steve & Brenda Shelton. Steve is the Middle School Principal at Mount Paran Christian School. In one of those weird Six Degrees of Seperation, my in-house designer, Angie Tilley is married to Dave Tilley, Headmaster of Mount Paran. 
Cobb County is a little like that….my small business is part of this county. I advertise with Cobb Life Magazine, who sponsored the event. Melinda Young is my rep with them, and she always helps me get my ads in at the right time. We all work together building the house that is our part of Cobb County Business. Cobb County is part of Georgia, Georgia part of the US…and maybe because it is so close to the Fourth of July I’m a little sentimental right now, but that is “my kind of country”. Where we all work together for each other. Some times it is just a small act of thoughtfullness like the free fans from Barnes Law Group to ward off the heat….It was at least 97degrees sitting in the shade. I literally felt sweat “glistening” all over me (I’m a southern girl…we glisten, we don’t sweat). Sometimes it is more….but it all forms a great country…my kind of country!
Shout out to Mark Wallace Maguire (Director of Magazines), Otis Brumby III (general Manager of Marietta Daily Journal) and Wade Stephens (VP of Sales for Cobb Life) and all their staff for putting on a great show!