Conway, Arkansas has been gripped by American Idol fever. Local transplant and UCA student, Kris Allen is one of the final three contestants. On Friday my friend Robin, her friend Linette and I all headed down to see Kris Allen preform, but also to be apart of the spectacle.

Despite events cataloged on this blog, Conway doesn’t get big rockstars. It doesn’t even get tiny ones. The only rockstars that come here are high school kids playing at the only music venue, which is booze free. They aren’t even coming into town, because they’re already here. Hendrix brings in two bands a year, but those events aren’t open to the public. If I could complain one step further, Little Rock doesn’t even get significant indie rock or even mainstream rock traffic. We should really start calling it Tiny Rock, or Minuscule Rock.

On Friday night the entire community got together and rocked. They rocked the streets. They rocked it topless. They rocked it with brass instruments. They rocked it with their kids and congregations. I can only pray that Kris Allen is the golden calf of an idol that will bring Conway its first beer garden.

Many people lined the parade route, but the real fans where at the outdoor venue hours before the performance. The local restaurants with rooftop decks feigned “wedding setup” when I nicely asked to take pictures of the crowd for my blog hours before events both real and fake. City hall’s roof showed off crowd control police officers on radios, city council family members and a pregnant lady.

If there is one fatal flaw in the town of Conway, it is the railroad track that runs parallel to the interstate, the main highway, and Front Street. We’ve been told stories of how the Union Pacific railroad requires the train engineers to pull on the horn thirty times while passing through the city limits. Some towns will put up crossing gates, bells, and lights at every crossing and have ordinances against train whistles. Conway has just the opposite, interrupting speeches, classes, sleep, and even music performances downtown, at Hendrix College, and in my home.

The railroad track creates the back perimeter to Simon Park, the new school band shell where Kris Allen was set to perform. I thought that area would be our best chance to hear the concert, and possibly get a glimpse of the local idol.

There was clearly a plan to keep people off of the tracks at some point. We heard the nice volunteers in orange jackets stating that we had to be 50 ft. away from the tracks, otherwise we were trespassing. The sad part of the story is that Kris Allen performing on stage would also be “trespassing”. At some point the containment broke down, and Robin hid behind a bush to save us a spot.

A few people got up to pump up the crowd, and after what seemed like an hour of every child under the age of 10 breaking down around us with tired cries, Kris Allen finally appeared. He played three songs acoustic: Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror”, Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money”, and The Frame’s Academy Award Winning Song, “Falling Slowly”.

The photos show that we did get pretty close, but I only could see Kris Allen’s face once. Luckily, I captured that look forever in a photograph.

Friday could have been one of the craziest days in Conway, ever. The previous weekend the yearly festival, “Toad Suck Daze” shut down during an 8.5 inch street-flooding rain. All the students were packing up to head out of town, and Saturday featured three different graduations by institutions of higher learning. It was a nice way to kick off the summer!

All of the pictures I took are available here.

Last Friday night we headed out to the Faulkner County fair with our neighbor Sujith. None of these pictures need captions, except for the “WTH?” on the equal opportunity belt buckles showing the Mexican flag and the Confederate flag (complete with a “13″ and skull and crossbones?). ROCK ON for the Slayer ones.

It was a good night for corn dogs and soft pretzels. We talked to a family that raised lambs from Wooster. A band decked out in gold colors played country and rock hits from the 50s, and of course “Sweet Home Alabama”. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but it seems in some ways Arkansas is the red headed step child of the south. It has the Mississippi, but only half of it. There are no songs about it like Alabama, Georgia, or Louisiana. There aren’t very many blue smoky hills or green pastures of grazing horses like Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Carolinas. Then there is the Texas envy, which probably has something to do with football, but I suspect it goes much deeper. I’m not even sure if Texas is technically the south, or if it is just Texas.

I believe it is for this reason that the crowd at the fair enjoyed the southern rock hits. Being from Nebraska, I know we don’t embrace the Wizard of Oz, or that Iowa band Slipknot. We don’t try to claim the Black Hills of South Dakota, or anything about Wyoming (except water of course). If there is an Arkansas song I’m missing, please let me know. You’d think there would be one since Johnny Cash is from Arkansas.