First of the year in the bag....

Winter Slam 2011!!!!!  A great way to kick off the new year.  The weekend for the kids is comprised of worship, teaching, skiing, snowboarding, and not sleeping.  The weekend for the band consisted of an early departure from Buffalo,  leaving all the snow,  playing, eating, and also not sleeping. 

Apart from that,  it was a great weekend for us to get in the swing of things again,  after recording the EP,  getting through the holidays,  it had been months since we'd gone out for a proper gig with traveling, full load in, etc.  The production company on the show, Legacy Productions was top notch.  Let's get some tech nerd stuff out of the way:  Main PA consisted of JBL Vertec 4887 line array modules, ground stacked on VRX subs.  House console was a Yamaha M7CL.  A nice departure from the normal was that they carry Sennheiser 900 series vocal mics, so I was able to have anth and chris on 945 mics for the weekend.  There wasn't a monitor console, so I ran our ears off of the house console.  System sounded good, I had plenty of headroom,  and no mispatched inputs when we started!  Only thing I would have changed would have been to fly the PA, but there was no way to accommodate that.

Ok, enough gear talk.  The first night went real well.  Probably the best first night the guys played in quite a while.  The kids were into it, and sang really loud the whole weekend.  There's something about these events, no matter where we play them that is really special.  Some think they're gimmicky,  or just hype, getting kids on a spiritual sugar high.  I'd have to disagree.  We love doing these weekends because it gives us time to hang out with everyone, and just get a feel for the climate of the group.  A guy came up to Chris Saturday morning,  and thanked Chris for "doing that worship thing last night..." he got really into it,  and actually sang,  he never sang at a church service before.  That's what it's about.  That guy took an opportunity to express his love towards God in way he hadn't before.  Is he going to sing at every church service he goes to now?  I have no idea,  but I hope he continues to push those boundaries, and step outside of his "normal" zone.  It's awesome to be just a small part of that.  As the weekend went on, everyone sang louder and louder, and got more and more into what was happening.  It was pretty obvious there were a lot of kids having step outside the box moments.

During the down time,  it was a great time to meet some great people,  and start some great relationships. I already mentioned the guys from Legacy Productions,  what a great time with them,  getting to hear their stories and how close our missions/purposes are.  Jason Mitchell the speaker is awesome.  He's great to hang out with and joke around with.  What was on his heart was really easy to grasp,  He sent the tone Friday night,  and led the weekend to some great places. 

 All in all it was one of those weekends that ended too early.  If any of the kids read this,  please know how much we all enjoyed hanging out with you guys.  We had so much fun,  and were really encouraged every time one of you had something to say about how God was working in your life that weekend.

Some of the goofier stuff?  The weekend was pretty tame i guess.  we had fun saturday night eating pizza and joking around with everyone.  I enjoyed my debut as a hoodie customization artist.  Pete and Justin went snowboarding, and j shot some video on his iphone,  hopefully he'll post some of that, i found it funny to see peter doing something athletic,   and justin falling all the while not letting his phone hit the snow.

Thanks everyone that was out for the weekend,  come see us again soon when we're around again.

P.S.    Talking with alot of the kids this weekend about gear has inspired me to write a gear head blog about the gear all of us use in the band.  Stay tuned for that,  and thanks for stopping by.