A JOURNEY TO THE UNITED KINGDOM
Entry Seven

Today we are going to take advantage of an opportunity to set up and practice some Christian cover tunes that we will be performing at one show here in Birmingham. This is the event that sparked us coming oversees at this time- which we then capitalized on by booking shows around this date at other clubs while we are here. Leaders from about 50 churches across Europe are coming together to talk about getting the European church more energized and using the arts to get the interest stirring and the message delivered in a way that people get. That was Piet‘s vision in bringing over a full live band- with all of our weird fun sampling and such. Piet is the leader back home at Woodcrest in Columbia, MO. At Woodcrest they use video clips from tv and movies and have a live band that covers songs off the radio that support the message they are talking about. Their slogan of “One visit will change what you think about church” always makes me grin because it is still true for me. Worth checking out!! Anyway, these songs are covers- not ours and they are barely there in my head - in fact I will admit that I have a cheat sheet written out on my setlist- a terrible crutch I never should have started it!! I love the songs we picked out to play from the artists: Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, and Violet Burning. They are good “instant better mood” songs to have on the iPod. Troy did a great job coming up with cool samples for us to incorporate. Only catch is that our sampler was maxed out- basically no room for one more little peep to come out. He decides to upgrade to a larger sampler a month or so before Europe and proceeds to transfer years and years of sampling mania over to the new and improved one. It transfers but nothing is as it should be… volumes are jacked, octaves are off, and lengths of samples are chopped off or play and play and play on forever. He probably spends a hundred precious hours sorting through stuff getting it recognizable- where does he get the patience and drive!! Now is our chance to run through the songs a couple more times and check our monitor mixes. Everything that we saved the last night of rehearsal on the digital mixer (just before the finger slicing) was not saved like we thought- I always blame the darn Gremlins. We get to the church, which is just up the street, and they seem surprised that there is a full band. They were thinking of an acoustic act and mention that they are going to move the conference to a smaller classroom instead of the “kick butt” auditorium upstairs with the hundred thousand dollar sound and light setup which we are suppose to perform in. We try to explain to the people there that we would be painful to the ears of anyone in the tiny classroom. No snare drum should ever be pounded in a place like this- I can see the automatic blinking and twitching that people would be doing with every hit. They are sure that it will get sorted out. We will have to see what happens in a couple days. We are not convinced that this is going to work out. With all the distractions and working things out we have time to run through the songs just one time- better than nothing.
Today we are headed to Lakenheath to play at the Royal Air Force base. We have really been looking forward to this gig. Mat worked hard to try to get us on more military bases but they proved tougher to break into than the club scene. So we are thrilled with this opportunity. We meet up in the lobby and poor Shannon is barely moving. She has come down with some stomach deal and we strongly suggest she stay and rest… where she has a nice calm environment… where I won’t be slinging her around in the van… and she won’t have to smell Troy’s can of tuna fish… and listen to load music that she has heard a thousand times way late into the night. Bless her heart- she reluctantly stays behind. She is just like me I think I only missed one Follow show back before I joined the band- it still bothers me to this day that I couldn’t go!! I missed the Follow’s set getting cut short to make room for a back pipe player. Well, we hate to leave her but we are behind schedule and prove to be even later after we find that we are going the wrong direction on the highway. I’m thinking even a dashboard compass might be worth picking up because the signs say the same thing both ways. We come up on a centuries old village that we have to stop and take pictures of- we think it would be cool to do some band shots here “next” time. We finally make it to the base and try to figure out how to get “in”. We pull up at one checkpoint and figure out that these guys are Americans. We were thinking these guys would be British troops with the whole “Royal Air Force” thing in their name. We have to go through the passport search and questionnaire just to get pointed around the other direction to another entrance. There we have to have our photos taken and temporary one day passes printed out. Joe our contact person has to come down to the gate and get us checked in properly. When he showed up in converse shoes I immediately know we are going to like him. We have to register our vehicle too and get an eyebrow raise when they find out it is from Amsterdam. We finally make it to the 48th Avenue, the club where we will be doing the show. I complement Joe on the spiffy load in area. They have a back door that loads directly onto the stage no steps- I love it. I said that there is only one other club that I know of that does that and that is the Blue Note back home in Columbia. He has lined the walls of the place with concert posters and we can see that we will like him for other reasons than just his converse shoes. He has very similar taste in music and sound. He really gets into our automated mixing capabilities and the sampling that we use. He even uses the exact main speakers and amp system that we use when we run sound for ourselves. It is freaky to see this all these miles away. He even thinks to run both types of power onstage in case he gets American acts that come through. Before we play he takes us over to their store, and we get to stock up on foodstuff at American prices. Troy dives into the salsa, which we were having trouble finding and I snag some SoBe drinks. He sets us up with some Pizza and Troy a salad. We get to see some fancy maneuvering up in the sky with the air force planes for about a minute and then have to go inside. We meet a cool band that had written us on myspace. I can’t believe they made the trip in- they had to drive a ways to get to the show. I’m always flattered with the effort people make to catch a show. Joe records us that night so that will be nice to have for a little archive. They take us over to the gas station on base and let us buy gas vouchers at American prices that we can use later when we need them. It is basically half price. The first time we filled up we thought $.89 not bad, but it was in liters not gallons. That fill up was $120.00- so we will appreciate these later!! Now for the drive back. At least we know it will be shorter since we won’t have to do the backtrack thing. We puzzle something else out on the drive back- nothing else to do. We keep seeing these flashes of light across the median as we pass semi trucks going by. Mat remembers reading that we were suppose to get our headlamps readjusted when we entered the UK because they are aimed funny when you swap sides and can be glaring to the other drivers as we pass. We wondered what all the high beaming was about. But the truckers have on these reflective vests and they would light up each time we pass them. We feel bad for blinding them and Mat starts making sound effects when we “light” one up. It’s late and as usual I get the giggles. They probably want to punch our lights out!