The Castellows - Ways To Go, Great NY State Fair, Empower Amphitheatre, Syracuse, NY, Aug. 21, 2025

Описание: The Great New York State Fair was a great for this ‪@thecastellows‬ show, opening for Thomas Rhett. The Empower FCU Amphitheatre at Lakeside is a nice venue, similar to our Budweiser Stage here in Toronto with a covered seated area and a lawn seating area beyond it. The weather was great for everyone - dry and not too hot. It was chilly by the evening and so my new Castellows merch - the grey hoodie !!! - came in handy by the end of the night. I also bought a brown version at the Austin show so I'm all ready for Canadian winter :)

This song, Ways To Go, has been the opening number for most of the shows I've seen since 2024 starting from the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor in March to Jordan, NY in August. They switched to Place To Leave later in the year. I think (just a guess) that with a short Thomas Rhett opening set they don't want to change guitars with the opening tuning Ellie guitar in Place To Leave at the start and want to keep the momentum going, right? I heard them play it a lot before the official release of that song. In Austin they just reworked No.7 Road as the opener, adding a rockin' instrumental intro (Blake on that new Gretch), Brad thumping those skins and then the ladies came out and they STARTED with the No.7 Road CHORUS !!! It worked so well - George Martin got The Beatles to put the chorus at the front of Can't Buy Me Love too. Anyway you slice it it is heaven :)

Back to Ways To Go - how catch are these lyrics - “Penny in her pocket, a pick for her guitar.” I like this so much I put the chords and lyrics on Ultimate Guitar so we can all sing and strum along: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/...

The band has a fun lyric video for this song here:    • The Castellows - Ways to Go (Lyric Video)  

What is better than seeing this song played live in this video? Seeing The Castellows (Powell, Ellie and Lily Balkcom) and the talented gents The Castfellows (Justin, Blake, Brad and Mason) play it live? Check out the band’s official website for tour details so you can see and hear for yourself: www.thecastellowsmusic.com

We were stage-left for this show, i.e., the "Powell side". Being off to the side gave a good view of all the gals and Blake and Justin together most of the time. I zoomed in on my Pixel 8 Pro for close ups and my buddy recorded this in widescreen form the same place with an action camera, a DJI Osmo Action 5 camera, similar to a Go Pro camera. I'll edit these two together some time in the future... a fans work is never done :)

We thought that the lighting was going to be 'bad' for these recordings because the sun was setting in the background making it hard to see the stage. But the sun did set and it made for some purdy MAGIC silhouettes when Lily and the band went out on the catwalk :) Here is an Instagram roll of some of those pics: https://www.instagram.com/p/DOiiKsjAJ...

The Syracuse sunset pics above are STUNNING !

Enjoy !!!

#thecastellows #castellows #castfellows #thecastfellows

PS - THANK YOU so much for watching this fan channel. The YouTube Partner revenue goes to good causes BTW - last year Hurricane Helene relief through the American Red Cross and this year to two 4-H groups the band was supporting with this Homecoming show. More good to come :)