Every show in Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour begins with a countdown clock. A large clock face with roman numerals centred between two digital clocks, counting down the minutes to the start of the show.
As the concert gets closer to its beginning, a few lyrics are whispered through the speakers: “it’s been a long time coming … .”
For Sudbury’s Kacey Wright-Dupuis, it's been two years since she decided, no ifs, ands or buts, she was getting tickets to see Swift at the Toronto leg of her international tour, which has taken the musician to multi-night shows in London, Paris and and even Glendale, Arizona.
The story of Wright-Dupuis getting front row tickets for Friday, Nov. 15, the second night of the Toronto tour, begins two years ago, when Swift’s team first announced there would be Canadian stops on the tour.
To ensure that Swift’s biggest fans had a chance at the tickets first, buyers had to enter to win a promo code, which would allow them to log in first to buy tickets when the chance came.
But Wright-Dupuis didn’t get a promo code. Heartbroken as she was, she told Sudbury.com “I knew I was set on it; I was going no matter what, I just needed to be patient.”
An early childhood educator by trade, Wright-Dupuis had seen Swift in concert at the Rogers Centre before, while the star was touring for her album, “1989”, but said the Eras show was something else entirely.
During Swift’s six-night concert run, tickets for the shows were hard to come by, and at their highest selling for as much as $15-$20,000 each from secondary sellers. That’s how Wright-Dupuis got hers: waiting and waiting for ticket re-sellers to put them online, and then for the prices to drop, at least a little. It was a friend she knew who ultimately sold her a ticket, for which Wright-Dupuis paid $2,000. She also said she would do it again, no question.
Again, there was no separating Wright-Dupuis from the experience.
A fan of Swift since the early days, when the now mega-star was simply a girl with a guitar, playing country music, it wasn’t just Swift’s sound that got her hooked, said Wright-Dupuis, but the magical times she heard each song.
She and Swift are the same age, both 35, and Swift’s multiple-Grammy-award-winning songs are very autobiographical.
“I remember being in high school and her releasing her stuff, being a teenager at the same time as her,” said Wright-Dupuis. And with Swift, for every “Cruel Summer”, there is also a “Love Story”.
That love story came when Wright-Dupuis’s boyfriend, Ken, offered to drive her to the show and back in one night.
She had checked the hotels in the area and the lowest was around $800 a night, so her boyfriend took her down to the city, parked in a parking garage next door, waited for her to put her hand-made costume and makeup on, then watched Netflix on his phone for the first hour of the three-hour show. That man is more than “Kenough”.
Then, growing cold and a bit bored, he headed to a nearby sportsbar to watch a boxing match. Looking a little lost, he was asked by a group of men sitting at the bar if he, too, had driven his wife to the concert. Wright-Dupuis said he met her outside after the show, having spent the rest of the time sitting with 10 other Swiftie husbands.
For Wright-Dupuis, not only has she not stopped feeling the energy from the show, she said it was addictive, and she wanted to go back for more almost immediately.
But those tickets could be a long time coming …
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com.
