Ruel "4th Wall" Tour at Emo's in Austin and House of Blues in Dallas

 June 1st, 2023

The Austin show was the first stop of Ruel's U.S. leg of his tour. This was one of those shows that my sister and I joked about buying a ticket for in the weeks leading up to it. We knew we had other friends going to the Austin stop and the tickets were cheap, and that wound up being enough incentive for the two of us to go through with our purchase within a week or so of the show date. We purchased VIP tickets for the Dallas show the second they went on sale, so we got regular GA tickets and planned a "chill" concert day for the Austin show since it was the day before.

This was one of the best last-minute shows I have been to in a while. As you probably know, I am a big fan of seeing artists I love multiple times on the same tour. I love to postpone the inevitable "post-concert depression" by attending another show before it can properly hit, and living in Texas typically makes it pretty convenient to hit more than one tour stop. Ruel is one of my little sister's favorite artists of all time, so I listened to him purely by association for several years. He has been making music for about five years, and she has listened to him from the beginning. He was one of her first big "celebrity crushes," and she begged and begged my mom to let us attend one of his shows in 2019 when he did his first U.S. tour. I agreed to go with her back then because his show in Houston was on Halloween, and I had always wanted to attend a concert on Halloween (which I still do, it still hasn't happened, so I'm hoping that happens for me sometime soon). My mom said no, of course, because Bryna was newly 16 years old and I had only just gotten my driver's license (I was a few years late on that), so traveling all the way to Houston was a bit of a reach at the time. My mom told her she could just go the next time he toured.

Then COVID happened. Ruel did not seem to have any plans to tour the U.S. again for a while there, so we put those plans on our backburner for a long time. It wasn't until we saw Omar Apollo at ACL in October that we really began our "Ruel relapse" (and we drew this connection because Ruel and Omar have a song together, which does happen to be one of the best songs ever written or released). We hopped back onto it in time with the announcement of his first full-length album and his 2023 world tour. We bought our VIP Dallas tickets first, then let the excitement get the best of us, and we bought tickets and planned to road trip with some friends to Austin for the day of that show.

I was obviously excited about the shows themselves anyway, but the anticipation of the show was extremely heightened by several factors. I was so excited to spend a few days with this particular group of friends because these were people I had gone to shows with before, so I knew they would be the perfect group to go with and bring my sister further into. I was also beyond excited for my sister to finally see one of her favorite artists. I have had a lot of recent opportunities to see many of my personal favorites, and Bryna is almost always the sister who comes with me to shows I can't stop talking about, so I was really, really excited for it to be her turn. I also loved Ruel's debut album, which came out earlier this year, and I could not wait to see those songs live with a group of people who were probably more excited about the concerts than I was.

On the day of the Austin show, we left the DFW area at about 9 a.m. and arrived in Austin around noon. We had planned to take it easy since it would be pretty hot both days (because June in Texas typically is), but we thought we would drive by the venue to check on the line before we went to get lunch. The line wasn't long, so we thought we had plenty of time to take for food before joining it. We drove through the parking lot, around the building, to return to the main road. On the way there, we saw members of Ruel's team entering the venue through a side door. We made jokes about running into him back there, too, but the jokes stopped being funny when Ruel himself actually walked right out next to our car. We had a nice, cute, and a little bit embarrassing interaction with him from our car, and we all changed our minds about our plans for the day the second he went inside.

We "camped" for the rest of the day because we were too excited to do anything else. The Emo's parking lot is conveniently attached to the venue and free of charge, which is always nice, but the line always extends against a dark wall that is fully in the sun. So we sat there for a while and cooked against the pavement, eating our food and slowly getting ready until it was time for the VIP lines to go in so we could finally scoot up to be in the shade of the trees at the front of the venue.

We wound up in about the fourth row. We were in the first row of GA, right behind the VIP ticket holders. We made friends both in line and in the crowd, which helped time to fly in both places. The opener was Carlie Hansen, who played a strong acoustic set, and Ruel came out shortly after. We were anxious about changes to the setlist from the other legs of this tour, and it did not change much for either of
our shows, which I ultimately deemed a good thing. I was pretty satisfied with the sets he played both nights.

The show was amazing. We had the best time, and the best part of it all was knowing we got to do it better and closer the next day. We started talking about when we would get up and head to the venue in Dallas the second he walked off the Emo's stage. We drove back to DFW straight after the show. We got water in the venue and took a photo with Carlie and her guitarist, and then we headed straight home without trying to wait around or anything after. We made it back home at about 2 a.m.

June 2nd, 2023

We woke up bright and early the next day to go do it again. Since we planned to hang out at the venue all day this time, we each came prepared with snacks, blankets, umbrellas, and activities to keep us entertained. Between the four of us, we knew the few girls in front of us in line and quite a few people behind us as well, so this was another one of those shows that felt like a concert-friend reunion to me for a strong portion of the day. We ran into Ruel the afternoon of this show a
s well. We had been walking back from our cars and saw him filming content with his manager and media team behind the venue, and they were all kind enough to stop and talk to us for a minute before he went back inside. This was pretty shortly before they let us inside for VIP, so we saved most of our conversation points for the actual Q&A session that came with our ticket.

This was one of the longest VIP Q&A experiences I have had. He played four songs that wouldn't be on the setlist and answered many questions, but it was very casual, and he was super easy to talk to. You would not know he was famous by how he talks to fans. He's very humble and witty, and the conversations always felt like just talking to another one of my friends.

The show itself was incredible. He told us beforehand that he was still jet-lagged and exhausted from traveling, but he performed like that wasn't an issue at all. Based on his high energy on stage, I wouldn't have ever assumed he wasn't feeling 100%. I was out of breath after the first song, so I have no idea how he managed to perform an entire set with that much energy without missing a beat. His unique voice has always stood out in studio recordings, but it was even better seeing him live. The show was so fun on its own and my friends just made it better. Ruel loved my sister. He kept coming over to sing songs right to her, so I got so many good pictures and videos without having to try for them. I honestly did not have my phone out for much of the show because the energy was just so good being in the front, but I love everything I managed to capture on my phone.

We hung around afterward to meet him at his tour bus, where he signed merch for people and took a few photos. He was so sweet and it has been great seeing him take the time to talk to fans before and after his shows, especially knowing how tired he is from how hard he's worked and how intense his tour schedule is. I always gain a lot of additional respect for touring artists who take extra time to speak to their fans personally and make the experience feel like it is person-to-person rather than artist-to-fan. He is still touring the U.S., making his way across
the country. If my sister and I could have traveled for additional shows, we would have, but our summer schedules kicked off too hard and too fast for us to make the time for that right now. Instead, we have had a great time keeping up with the tour updates from Texas, sharing posts, watching videos, and talking about changes to the setlist. 

These shows were fun ones! I hope his gap between tours is sooner than four years the next time around because I know a few girls in Texas who can't wait that long to see him again. ;)