Just like the name of the tour—Jonas20: Greetings from Your Hometown Tour—this experience was almost 20 years in the making for me. The funny thing about being an adult is that you can use the money you earn from your full-time adult job to buy tickets to see a band you were obsessed with in middle school, and it’s totally okay to do so.

This all stemmed back to March when tickets for the upcoming Jonas Brothers tour were going on sale. Their last stop on the tour (at the time) was going to be at Mohegan Sun Arena (where I saw Big Time Rush two years ago), and I missed out on the JoBros’ last tour stop at Mohegan in 2023. I’ve been a fan since I was in middle school and high school, and I’m a Joe girlie through and through.

I signed up for the presale just for fun, mostly to see how much the tickets were going for. After waiting in a queue for a bit, I got in but it seemed like there were only single tickets on sale or most were $300-$400. Then I decided to check back later in the day again, just for funsies, and there was most of a section in the upper tier available (!!!) but at that very moment, Josh was on a flight for a work trip, so I couldn’t call him. (Although he knew I was looking into tickets.) So I called my mom instead and had her talk me into buying tickets. I bought two in that upper-tier section and panicked the entire time until I got the confirmation email. Then I sent a screenshot of that email, without any other context, to Josh for him to see when he landed in Washington state.

In my defense, 1. I bought the cheapest ones, 2. I’ve never seen them in concert before, and 3. YOLO. I spent around $230 each on the tickets, plus ticket insurance, since the concert was eight months away. Josh would be coming with me regardless, but I pitched the concert to him by saying, “Hey, at least the All-American Rejects will be opening for them!” (more on that later). My only goal was to not get sick leading up to the concert because I would cry if we couldn’t go.

In preparation for the concert, I listened to all of their songs on a master playlist, and, probably to no one’s surprise, I still knew all of the words. Can’t remember what I did three days ago, but I can sing you all of the song from their second album that came out in 2007 when I was 13. I kept an eye on setlist.fm, a website where people crowdsource set lists for current concert tours, so I had a good idea of what songs they were singing. I also pre-purchased a shirt from their website so we wouldn’t have to wait in a merch line (which, spoiler alert, was incredibly long), and it came in two days before, so yay!

The concert was last Friday night, so I just took the day off from work because I have vacation time to use. Josh and I left before 4:00 p.m. and got to Mohegan Sun after 5:00 p.m. Josh joked that our first pictures from the concert would be of the parking garage signs (so we’d remember which parking garage we were in, along with what level and section). We planned to get dinner beforehand, so we ended up going to the same place we went to before the BTR concert two years ago—Tom’s Watch Bar. It’s also right above the main arena entrance, so we didn’t feel like we had to rush.

That being said, as we walked by the arena entrance, there was a big screen with a sign that said because of vocal rest, the All-American Rejects were stepping away from the tour and wouldn’t be performing at the show. Whelp, there went my one pitch to Josh. He said he was going to leave and get me after the concert. I mean, I get it, but we were a bit disappointed because I also remember them from middle school.

We each got beers and split friend pickles for an appetizer; for our meals, we actually got the same things: pickle-brined chicken tenders, but I got tots as my side and Josh got loaded fries. I’m still thinking about those chicken tenders almost a week later.

Unfortunately, we ended up waiting 45 minutes until the doors opened at 7:00 p.m. In retrospect, I should have used this time to give Josh a crash course on who’s who in the group. Going through security was quick and easy, and once we were inside, Josh got a beer and I got a soda. We walked around the concourse, again passing really long merch lines, before going to our seats. We saw a lot of couples our age, moms with young daughters, friend groups, and even a father-daughter duo with matching shirts.

One of the openers was Deleasa, a DJ, who I just learned now from Googling is Kevin’s brother-in-law (he’s Kevin’s wife’s brother). Anyway, he was just okay? DJ jams aren’t really our vibes.

The other opener was Franklin Jonas, the youngest Jonas brother; I remember him when he was younger, and it’s crazy now that he’s an adult. I hadn’t heard any of his music before, but it was quite folksy and I enjoyed it. During one of the songs, he ran around the lower section in the audience while singing; one of Josh’s former co-workers was also at the concert and sitting down in one of those lower sections, and she texted him a video of Frankie running right in front of her down the row.

The Jonas Brothers came out after 9:00 p.m., and this is when I scream sang for the entire two hours they were on stage. Here’s the set list if anyone is interested:

• Love Me to Heaven

• Only Human

• Mirror to the Sky

• S.O.S.

• Sucker

• Little Bird

• A Little Bit Longer

• Goodnight and Goodbye / Strangers / Parachute (fan requests)

• Waffle House

• Vacation Eyes

• Celebrate!

• No Time to Talk

• Cake by the Ocean (DNCE cover)

• Jealous (Nick Jonas song)

• What a Man Gotta Do
Coming
• Home This Christmas

• Backwards

• Changing (Kevin Jonas song)
• Lovebug

• Leave Before You Love Me

• Year 3000

• Burnin’ Up

• Please Be Mine (Encore)
• When You Look Me in the Eyes (Encore)

The concert ended after 11:00 p.m., and I tried to grab a few pieces of confetti floating in the air before we left the arena. We did a quick bathroom stop before heading to the car, and thankfully, we didn’t get lost. It was an hour drive back, my voice was hoarse, and Josh’s ears were ringing. I basically swan dived into bed when we got home, and we slept in Saturday morning as it was rightly deserved.

So, was it worth it? 100%. I’m so glad I bought the tickets and gave myself that experience. There was just something healing about screaming all of the words to “Burnin’ Up,” including the part that Big Rob raps (who made a guest appearance during the song!). Josh was impressed with the show and the amount of pyrotechnics that were used.

(And then, just because of course it would happen, I had a mild cold earlier in the week that I’m sure I got from the concert. But at least it’s this week and not last week!)