My Band Story (part 5)

I remember the first time I played on mic’d drums. It was always this big dream to play on a real stage where everything was mic’d, including the drums. I just wanted to feel the floor rattle when I hit the bass and toms, because it creates this rush of energy—at least it did in my head, because I had never really experienced it yet. So when we showed up at this one venue on one of our “tours,” and found out they actually had a decent sound system, I was completely stoked. It really raises the energy level for everyone when it’s extra loud. People kind of got into that show, and we did too, because louder equals better. Pete actually kind of went crazy during that show and started climbing the speakers and amps and jumping off of them during the songs. I think it kind of pissed off the manager of the venue. I played on mic’d drums again at the theater in Indiana, where the guy told us he was an angel from God. Those drums had trigger mics, which are a bit fickle. They sounded pretty awesome out in the theater (which was packed out with a whopping 8 people during our performance, while everyone else who came to see the show hung outside and smoked cigarettes until the headliner played), but the monitors on stage were terrible quality so we couldn’t hear hardly anything while we played. That was a bit frustrating, and I’m not sure if we sounded good or were together at all, since I couldn’t hear jack squat.

(one of our shows in the Chicago area)

One of our most memorable performances was at this big outdoor party in Valparaiso, Indiana. How in the world did we get hooked up with these places? Some random connection with someone happens, and voila—we have a show lined up four hours away. So we drive four hours and there are probably 12 bands that have been invited to play throughout the evening. We get there at about 4pm, and we’re not scheduled to play until around 9pm. Then we have to drive back. So we hang out and listen to the other bands, and more and more people start to show up, which means more and more people start drinking--turns out there was a lot of beer at this party. By the time we got on the “stage,” which was just a cement patio with microphones and speakers wired up, the crowd was kind of getting into the bands and we had a decent audience in front of us. For reasons that stump even God himself, Christian convinced all of us that we should open our set with a spontaneous acapella “doo-whop” melody. I’m serious. The band that played before us was this metal band that played a lot of covers and kind of rocked the place, so what possessed us to agree to this, and think it was a good idea, is a mystery for the ages. You know where this is going… We get this big announcement from the emcee, and it’s our chance to at least rival the metal band with some punkish-rock music that, if nothing else, has good energy and can keep drunk people happy. Well, we all walk up to the mic and start acapella “doo-whopping,” thinking this would really win the crowd over. The looks on peoples’ faces turned from anticipation to utter scowl. Then they started booing us. I mean, they were drunk and we couldn’t just play our freakin’ songs! We did a doo-whop! The heavens wept that night. Realizing our grand mistake, we quickly ran back to our positions and jumped into our first song. Soon, people were starting to move a little to the music and we thought we might not get rushed and killed. I don’t think we even made it through the first song, when suddenly the sound system turned off and our attention was brought over toward the entrance of the property where we saw cop cars and flashing lights. The party had been busted and minors had been caught drinking. The party had to shut down immediately and so we packed up our stuff and drove home. Truth be told, those cops just might have saved us from getting beat up.

Later in the life of our band, we got access to a bunch of decent recording equipment because some of our friends worked at media services on the college campus. We had learned enough about recording to do it ourselves with the help of a couple friends, and we had a space in the music hall while everyone went away for the holidays. We had some new music to record and it sounded way better both in quality and musically than our previous recordings. We had access to sound proof rooms and lots of time. Those were some really fun times, creating and tweaking like we were in an actual studio. I loved the whole process of creating music and recording it, which is a rich experience for me to this day. Even just laying down some simple grooves and riffs on Garage Band with my iPad can get me lost in my own world for hours.

During that time of recording, we recorded one of Andy’s newer songs that he wrote, which was a crazy fast punk song, and he had this drum part figured out for me that included lots of tom toms in the beat. We had played the song many times in shows, so I knew it well, but when we actually recorded it, Andy decided to kick up the tempo about 50 notches because he thought it sounded cooler. Well, that’s all fine and good, but my drum beat went from easy to freakin’ fast! Then I kept messing up so we’d have to start the recording over. I finally got a good track laid, and then it accidentally got erased! I almost fainted. I can’t remember how many hours I spent on that part, but my arms were jello by the time I finally got a track we could keep.

My Anger is More Righteous than Your Anger

So, election season is here… And if I could use one word to describe our society, especially in regards to our politically charged atmosphere as we enter election season, it would be “angry.”

It’s not too hard to see how prevalent anger is today. Everyone seems to be on edge. Every political issue that surfaces on the news or on social media becomes an occasion for vitriol. Just read the “comments” section on any news site, or the political threads on facebook, or just listen to people at a local gathering when a hot button subject comes up. And it’s not just in the world “out there,” it’s in the church, too. In fact, a LOT of it is in the church these days.

Quite honestly, I think we often enjoy being angry. I know I do. I’ve struggled with anger for a lot of my life. It sits below the surface until a worthy person or situation draws it out. It’s a hard thing to shake, and some part of me feels kinda good when I’m angry. (I’m imagining the Incredible Hulk here, saying with a glimmer in his eye, “You won’t like me when I’m angry…”).

Fredrick Buechner writes:
“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

We are an angry society for many reasons. The thing on which someone focuses their anger is probably not the only reason someone is angry. Rather, there are multiple reasons under the surface. Many of those reasons are legitimate things to be angry about, and people who hold onto anger believe that doing so is good and right and just. To let it go would almost seem immoral. There is such a thing as a “good” kind of anger— that is, until it isn’t "good" anymore.

The epistle writer James addressed some angry people in the early church, who had some good reasons to be angry:
“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness/justice that God desires.” -James 1:19-20 (“Righteousness” and “justice” in the New Testament are translated from the same Greek word dikaiosune).

James says anger doesn’t establish justice. And isn’t that interesting? Because justice is exactly what every angry person wants: for things to be made right. We’ve all heard the term “righteous anger.” The problem is, we are often deceived about how “righteous” our anger is—often it is mixed with wounded pride, malice, hatred, or envy. James tells these folks who have good reasons to be angry, “Don’t go down that path. It won’t end well.”

Jonathan Storment writes:
"I think this is the great temptation of wrath.  It, like love, promises to cover over a multitude of sins.  But unlike love, the sins that wrath covers over is only our own. Wrath leads us to become more and more self-absorbed and less and less self-aware.”

Jesus said, “Anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:22). So we are told, “Leave room for God’s wrath” (Romans 12:19). The "wrath of God" needs a whole post all by itself, as it is widely misunderstood. But for now, it will suffice to say that God will make everything right, not us. It’s hard to work toward justice, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to long for God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, and to not be overcome with anger at all the ways this world is full of injustice and evil. Someone will say, “Jesus got angry.” Yes, anger is often appropriate. But Jesus did not retaliate with violence. Anger can be a righteous response to injustice and evil. But it can so easily become toxic.

We must trust not only that Jesus will fully and finally make all things new (Revelation 21:5), but that he is the Way (John 14:6) toward that newness. "In your anger, do not sin" (Ephesians 4:26). Resist the temptation to sink to the level of our current public discourse, so filled with hatred, anxiety, violence, and slander. Disagreement doesn't always have to make someone your enemy. Remember the Way of our Lord, who loved even his enemies to the end. As the Apostle Paul instructs us, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

My Band Story (part 4)

Our CD (when it actually worked) had some good takes, but people seemed to especially like our "hidden track" at the end. Remember when those were a big deal? I remember scanning every new CD I bought in those days, trying to discover if the band had put a hidden track at the end, and lots of them did. Anyway, we decided to create one too, and it was one of those "hit record and see what happens" moments. The four of us were pretty goofy, fun-loving guys who joked around a lot, so while the tape was recording we just reverted to all the jokes and off-the-wall comments that were normal between us, and it actually turned out to be pretty funny.

After our “tour,” we got fan mail! Sure it was only one person, but we thought that was pretty cool. It was from a young girl that I knew growing up, and she dug our sound, even though she was probably too young to tell if we were any good. She was our biggest fan. She wrote a couple different letters asking about our plans as a band, and telling us we were great. She actually listened to our CD multiple times. We still laugh about that to this day, and I think she is kind of embarrassed about it. She grew up and married a drummer, so now she's his biggest fan. But she should feel proud that she boosted the egos of four college guys who wanted to make it big.

Something we frequently encountered at the shows we played during those years were big promises that ended up being major disappointments, if not flat out lies. I don't know why, but it especially seemed to happen at the Christian venues we'd play at. Some church or coffeehouse would promise us that anywhere from 200-300 kids would show up at our concert, plus we'd get reimbursed for gas or sometimes even paid a stipend. Now we never did any of this for money, because we sure didn't make any and we just loved to play. But when someone promises you some moolah for playing a show for their youth group, it's kind of like icing on the cake, particularly since we were poor college kids. But every time we were promised something like this, it inevitably turned out that somewhere between 5-20 people would actually be there, and then we'd get stiffed on the reimbursement. Usually we got some sob story about how things were a little tight at the moment, then they'd offer us a coupon to Burger King or some cookies instead. Oh, but they would pray big blessings on us before we left and I guess we were supposed to be fine with the whole thing, since we were "serving the Lord" together. Sometimes I wanted to serve them a backhanded slap.

Sometimes we would even get "a word from the Lord" about our band. One guy who was at a show we did at a theater in Indiana told us he had a message from God for us. In fact, he was an angel! We were all very intrigued once he said that (plus, he was an angel with a Yooper accent)! The message was that the Lord was going to bless our band and we were doing good work so we were going to spread our music all over the country. That's quite a nice thing to say to a no-name band that doesn't have a prayer, and even if it's off the wall it can be encouraging. The only problem was, after this guy told us these things and left, Christian leans in and tells us that he was the same guy who was telling people dirty jokes just a few minutes ago, so he probably wasn't an angel. And it turns out that our music didn't get spread all over the country (we couldn't even get it to spread from a CD to a CD player), so he probably wasn't speaking for God.

It wasn't all disappointing though. We had some really great times, too! There was this one dude who was a youth pastor in a suburb of Chicago, and he invited us to play several times. All of our shows there went pretty well, but there was one in particular that we would all probably consider our best show ever. It’s hard to say what was different about that night, but there was some sort of magic in the air because we freakin’ rocked the socks off that place. Energy came from somewhere and we rode it like professional rock stars. All that hard work of practicing and tweaking had somehow converged into a unified moment of transcendence that we all tapped into. We were just one of the openers, too. Actually we ended up feeling kind of bad for the “headliner” that we opened for, because they really sucked and they knew they didn’t hold a candle to our performance. They were this strange combination of music and dancing in spandex that was supposed to give people a worshipful experience, and they kept screwing up their dance parts and playing the wrong music tracks while people awkwardly watched and tried to make them feel like they were still awesome. It finally ended and all these people kept telling us afterward how we rocked it. The headliner band/dance team was actually signed to a record label and the guy who was there from the label talked to Christian about our band, saying he liked our sound. Of course that never materialized into anything, but it still felt good. We even got really great pictures of our band from that night where the light hit just right and the pictures caught us in these great poses that looked totally rock and roll. It was a magical night, and probably the closest any of us would get to feeling like true rock stars.

My Band Story (part 3)

When we finally got finished with the recording, we had finished tracks for 18 songs and spent way more time and money than we had originally planned. Granted, 18 songs is a lot and we should have narrowed it down to save money and do a better job on the best songs. But we also kind of felt shafted. The guy who did the recording liked to talk... A LOT. So in between takes he would tell stories and jokes and rack up a lot of time, which we were paying for. So after the whole thing was done, we got the bill and decided we were going to have a little talk with our "producer" before we left on the tour. For some reason we decided to do this the day we were leaving for the tour. I guess we thought it would be a quick chat and he'd understand our point of view. Had we not learned from our recording sessions that this guy liked to talk a lot? We ended up staying there at his house talking about God knows what, and finally reaching a compromise. Andy, our bass player, had gotten pretty pissed off early on in the conversation and went out to wait in the vehicle while the rest of us reached an agreement that gave us a little more money for the road.

So we finally got onto the road so we could begin our tour, leaving over three hours later than planned and with a little more money in our pockets than we started with. We got onto I-94 heading out of Chicago, when the most ridiculous snow storm hit and backed up traffic for miles. It took a full two hours to get out of the city and on our way. A couple of us took turns driving as we got late into the night. Andy had awesome parents who supported us the whole way and even let us use their minivan for the tour. I remember waking up at one point, probably around 2:30am, and I looked over at Andy as he drove. His eyes were bug-eyed and fixated on the road as he was white-knuckling the steering wheel. Then I looked out the window and noticed how fast we were going. Cement columns and pillars were flying by on either side as we flew through downtown Kansas City. Overpasses were going by too quickly to count. I was too scared to look at the speedometer, so I just rolled back over and tried to sleep as I prayed to God that we didn't all die. We safely arrived at my parents' house somewhere around 5am and crashed for a few hours of sleep. But my dad had promised some acquaintance of his that we could help move furniture the next morning, not realizing of course that we would arrive so late. So we ended up having a really short night, but we were in the town of our first show of the tour and we were pretty pumped.

The tour involved performing in a few of our hometowns, which we were all really excited about because we were hoping to impress all of our hometown family and friends with our rockin' band. The first show was at my home church, and I had asked the youth pastor if we could get reimbursed for gas to help cover costs, to which I received a flat “No.” Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying. The first show went pretty good-- I guess it's not all that hard to impress a bunch of teenagers in youth groups who can't really tell yet if you're good, as long as you're loud and have decent stage presence. Plus, two of the guys in our band, Pete and Christian, were brothers and most girls found them attractive, so that helped. They shared lead vocals and played guitar and both got pretty wild during shows, which increased the overall energy. All of the adults that were there tolerated us, and some even said nice things. My dad bought our CD and asked us to sign it, which was a pretty big ego boost at the time. Most of the youth group kids wanted us to sign our CD’s too, so that was kind of surreal giving autographs like we were someone famous. Little did they know that most of their newly bought CD's wouldn't work in their CD players.

(from the inside of our CD cover)

On our way out to western Kansas, where we would play in two different towns, we took two vehicles because of some travel and lodging arrangements that had been previously made, which required another vehicle. I was driving the second vehicle, and Andy was driving the first vehicle. I guess Andy thought we were still in Kansas City or something, because man did he drive fast! I had the pedal to the metal in our little Oldsmobile just trying to keep up so I wouldn’t lose him, and of course he had the directions to where we were going. These were the days before Map Quest and Google and cell phones, so I had to stay close. Well, I just knew we were going to get pulled over, and sure enough a highway patrol car slowly creeps up behind me before I realize it, so there’s no reason to try to slow down and act like I wasn’t speeding. What surprised me was when the officer began to speed up and pull around me to pass! I thought maybe I was going to get out of a ticket! After all, he really should go get the leader who was going faster than me anyway, and it was his fault that I was speeding. I didn’t want to go that fast. So as the officer passed me, I nervously looked over at him, and he looked mad. But he didn’t look at me at all! He just looked straight ahead with a scowl on his face, lifted his right arm up and made a very deliberate pointing motion to the side of the road as if to signal to me, “Pull over!” I took the hint and pulled over, while he sped up ahead, turned on his lights, and pulled Andy over too! Then he gave us both tickets! I don’t even know if that’s legal, but he nailed both of us. And they were expensive tickets! I didn’t know he could actually do that, but I wasn’t going to question him. I was kind of mad at Andy after that, but he didn’t even slow down. He just kept driving like a crazy person. Somehow we all made it to the next town where we would prepare for our next show.

We played in a rented out store front for a youth group, and we all thought it went great, until the leader told us we weren't invited back because he didn't like one of the songs we played. It was a song about banging your head to loud music, and that was apparently inappropriate. We took turns discussing how stupid that was, and then Christian eventually called the leader and told him it was stupid. The kids loved us, but that didn’t matter. We also played a show in Pete and Christian's hometown, which we were all really excited about because we thought for sure we'd get a big crowd of adoring fans. The people in charge of setting it up even rented out the school gymnasium and the poor janitor had set up a couple hundred chairs in front of the big ol' stage where we were set up to play. You know how many people showed up? Six. And that included our two roadie friends who came along. We still had fun performing on that stage, and the six people watching us really got into it. Pete really took advantage of the room on stage and started skipping back and forth across it. Christian had gotten pretty excited during the opening song and jumped really high while strumming the chords. Unfortunately, he landed on the stand that was holding Andy's other bass guitar, and it came toppling down on the hard floor. I remember glancing over at Andy, who closed his eyes and just shook his head. The show went on and we had fun. But we kind of felt bad for that poor janitor who set up all those chairs for nothing. Then he had to take them all down again.

My Band Story (part 2)

Our band was called “The DoLoreans,” named after the car in the movie Back to the Future, because one of our band members always liked that name. I never quite figured out what the capital "L" was about (we eventually did away with it). I guess he thought it looked cool. But we were also a bunch of Christians, so we decided we wanted to spiritualize the name and we came up with a strange combination of words in Spanish to make it sound legit. We even had a Bible verse to back it up. I’m not sure why we couldn’t just stick with the car image, because that would have been a lot easier. I guess we thought we would be a more positive, Christian influence if our band name was more spiritual than a car from a movie.

We were all going to college classes, but what we really got excited about was band practice. We were allowed to practice in the multi-purpose room at the college, and we had a few crappy microphones that we'd set up to record ourselves and create demos. The problem was, we had no way to balance any levels on the recordings, we'd just do the best we could beforehand and then whatever came out in the recording was final. Oh man, they were awful sounding and to this day those demos give us all a good laugh. The best parts are when the vocals would intensify during a song and suddenly become so loud on the recording that you couldn't hear anything but a distorted, passionate voice well beyond the appropriate level. Or there were times when the guitar solo turned into a mix of improvisation and mistakes, and made some awful sounding squeals that resemble a dying Chewbacca. Then there's the infamous drum solo, which always goes way too long, and isn't great to anyone but the drummer. However, I did use cowbell in the solo, which counts for something. The bass player and I came up with this slap-bass and drum combo thing that we did during performances to fill time while the guitar players tuned, and it was actually kind of cool because the bass player was good.

During our first spring break, our band went on a small "tour" that we had arranged in the Midwest, but before we went, we wanted to have some CD's to sell. We actually saved up money to make a "real" demo with a guy we had connections to through our friends in the ska band. It was an exciting time! So we got it all set up and arrived at this guy's house who had some old analog recording gear in his basement. He was nearly blind and looked like an 80's fan, with a balding top and long hair on the sides. His house was so packed full of crap that we literally had to walk sideways to get through the living room and down into the basement. Plus his brother lived upstairs, and his brother didn't like all the noise we were making during our recording sessions, so every now and then he would come downstairs right in the middle of a good take, and start yelling and swearing at all of us to keep it down. Then he and our “producer” would get into yelling matches while we sat there awkwardly wondering if we were going to be able to finish our session. You can't make this stuff up.

(at our stop in Clay Center, KS, we visited the zoo)

In order to make CD's, we decided to make a print out for the cover, which involved lyrics and an awful picture of the four of us on the front. We tried to look cool, but sort of looked constipated. We had a photo shoot with a guy that our bass player knew from his hometown, who generously accommodated our rock star poses. So we designed the CD cover on the computer, and then made black and white printouts at Kinko's. We chose black and white because it was way cheaper, but we told ourselves it was also cool and made us look a little retro. We also had to burn the CD's manually on our friend's computer, since we couldn't afford to have them made professionally. It took forever to burn the CD's and cut out the printouts, and we were doing it right up until the very last minute the night before we left on the tour. We actually wore out the CD burner on our friends computer, but he was gracious and said it was old so he didn’t make us pay for it. We even had plastic packaging we had somehow acquired so the CD's looked a little more authentic. Sadly, after all that work, close to half of the CD's we had burned wouldn't play on the average CD player and we ended up having to either refund or burn new copies for a lot of the people who bought them. I'm guessing some of our friends and family decided not to even tell us their CD's didn't work because they didn't want us to feel bad. One of my friends worked for a radio station at the time and said he'd give our songs some airtime, so we were pretty excited about that, but when I checked in with him later, he told us that his CD didn't work either. I guess some things just aren't meant to be.

My Band Story (part 1)

One of my great aspirations ever since I was a teenager was to play in a rock band. It all started when I began listening to music somewhere in my early teen years. I began with pop radio and some light rock music. There were certain songs that caught my attention, and I would listen to them over and over. At some point I was introduced to contemporary Christian bands, like Carmen, DC Talk, and Petra. Once I began to listen to Petra, my love for rock music was born. Then I learned about bands like Whitecross and Bride, and the style just kept getting heavier. I really identified with the passion and intensity of these heavier bands. They screamed like they had something important to say. Eventually I discovered more mainstream bands like Metallica, and I never looked back. I had become a hard rock fan.

I learned to play drums and guitar during my teenage years, and nothing made me feel quite so alive as playing along with some good rock or metal albums. I learned drums first through concert band in school, where I learned rudiments and technique for snare drum. Around 7th grade, my band teacher introduced me to the drum set and I was hooked immediately. I learned for a couple years through private lessons, which was mostly swing and jazz focused. I liked that stuff okay, but the excitement and creativity came by mostly listening to rock bands like Petra, Bride, Metallica, and Pantera, while trying to copy the drum parts as I listened and played along. I eventually got my own drum set at home, and I practiced for hours and hours, driving my family and all my neighbors crazy. I learned guitar after my friend let me borrow his electric guitar without the amp for a week, and gave me a chord chart to memorize. At the end of the week I was ready to learn more, and my fingers hurt like crazy, but I wanted to get good at it so I kept going. My grandparents bought me an acoustic guitar as a birthday present, and I was all set. I practiced the heck out of that guitar and I still have it, though some of the frets are completely worn down and don’t work anymore. Eventually I saved up enough money through my job of making doughnuts at 3 o’clock in the morning, and bought myself an electric guitar with a little 10 watt amp that I got through a magazine sale. I was on my way to rock and roll! I learned guitar mostly by listening to Metallica, Tom Petty, Steve Miller Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and some others, trying to figure out the parts by ear. Tablature was rare in those days, and you usually had to pay for it, so I figured stuff out by ear the best I could.

I did some jamming with some friends in high school, and we even did a couple performances at school functions, which was fun, but I really wanted to get into a "real" band in college. Lo and behold, during my freshmen year I happened to meet some guys who were looking for a drummer and I was available, eager, and growing my hair out, which made me look a little bit rebellious. We started practicing and before long we had a long list of songs that were ready to perform, or at least we could get through them without too many mess-ups. We started out performing at any function on campus that would allow us. Amazingly, we had several opportunities. Some included shows with friends that had their own ska/punk band (Threefold Cord) that had already been playing for a couple years, so we had a good avenue to get our stuff out. The only problem was the ska band’s guitar player used to fill in as the drummer for the band that I was now in. I had replaced him since I could commit more fully, and I was actually quite a bit better at drums than he was. I think he was bitter about it, but he shouldn’t complain since he was already in another band.

Now whenever you get into a band for the first time, you think you are pretty awesome, and we were no exception. I wrote an email to everyone I knew bragging about the fact that I was in a band. And the reality is, we had worked pretty hard on our songs and put our whole hearts into the creation process. We just downright loved playing music and spent all of our free time trying to create new stuff and record it, so when you’re that excited about something you just want to tell everyone about it. My hometown of about 5,000 people caught wind of the fact that I was "in a band," and someone informed the local radio station, which then called me up to have an interview! When they called me, I was completely stunned. So there I was in my dorm room, not being familiar with how to do interviews about my newfound fame. When the radio guy asked me questions, I gave these short, one-word answers and then there was a lot of awkward silence. At certain points the guy just said, "it's okay, we can do some editing." My dad ended up getting a copy of the interview on a cassette tape after it was aired, and gave it to me for a souvenir.

My wonderful parents... they were supportive all the way, even though we really didn't sound that great, and they certainly weren't fans of our punk/teeny-bopper/sometimes-hard-rock/pseudo-alternative sound. But they cheered me on anyway.

"Greater love hath no one than this, that they tolerate their son's annoying band music." -2 Opinions 3:16