Julie and Ted Driver didn't attend pop band OneRepublic's concert Aug. 9 that christened the new 8,000-seat, outdoor Ford Amphitheater on Colorado Springs' far north side. That doesn't mean they didn't hear the music, however.
The Drivers live off Roller Coaster Road and Mountain Pine Lane in unincorporated Black Forest, 4.4 miles northeast of the amphitheater's location southwest of North Gate Boulevard and Voyager Parkway, according to a Google map estimate of the distance between their home and the venue. The couple had followed the amphitheater's progress since it was proposed 11⁄2 years ago and was ready for opening night.
After OneRepublic took the stage, the Drivers stepped outside their home to determine if they could hear anything. "We knew this was going to be the big opening night, so we were kind of preparing for it," Julie said. "We wanted to see what we could hear; we were kind of nervous about that.
And we did. We stepped out and we were like, 'Oh, my Lord, we can hear it way clearer than we expected.' "We listened to it for a while, then we came back inside," she said.
"Then we closed our windows to see how much of it came through. We could hear, it wasn't like overwhelmingly loud, but we could still hear the bass notes and everything, even through the closed windows ..
. There was no escape from that." Some nearby residents, though, sought to embrace — not escape — the amphitheater.
"You guys sound like the old curmudgeons from 'Footloose,'" one commente.