My Kingdom For A Bass Player
This is part three in what will become a series of posts following the creation and evolution of SHINE, a contemporary worship service at Glenwood Presbyterian Church. You can find the table of contents here.
One of the struggles that we faced early on was finding a bass player. We thought we had struck gold early on with a guy named Frank, who Debbie knew. But as we would find out, tragedy was about to strike. As we started fleshing out our ideas, the enthusiasm and trepidation began to grow. One word of caution: these emails contain a lot of references to the Andy Griffith show. If you’re not a big fan, go study up by watching some episodes…
To: Debbie
From: Kevin
April 9, 2006Hi Debbie. Just letting you know that I sent Frank an e-mail explaining what we have in mind. I’ll let you know if I hear back from him. In the meantime, I have a couple of other bass player possibilities, but these are guys I played in a band with years ago, and I am having some trouble tracking them down.
Debbie, while I have you (and I am copying this to Brian as well), here are a couple of other thoughts that I have had:
As a working name for the band, I would like to call it “Christian Endeavor.” I can envision Christian Endeavor as sort of an extra-curricular “adjunct” to the church, sort of the way that the softball team (our famous Gladiator squad) was an adjunct. It wouldn’t be a replacement for anything Glenwood is presently doing, but just a little something extra that could make an appearance now and again. It could feature different vocalists for different types of songs, whoever might be available, whoever has some free time, that sort of thing. I would like to see Sam involved with a couple of numbers. I can envision the choir (or a “mini-choir”) as a vocal component doing backup harmony. Debbie, I see you as a first-rate tambourine shaker. Or maybe Christine. Who knows?
Apart from performing on an occasional Sunday morning or Sunday night, this band could perform at special events (can we say covered dish?). Maybe take the band on tour and do a performance for another church’s event. Or some warm summer evening, a Glenwood church cook-out, with Christian Endeavor playing out on the front lawn (we’d have to get a city permit, but the whole neighborhood would hear the concert, whether they wanted to or not!).
And dare I say it — how about taking Christian Endeavor to Camp New Hope for a live performance from “Drink Machine Palladium.” Volleyball, frisbee, Mountain Dew, swimming, and live music. Glenwood would be the coolest thing going. And throw into the mix an occasional beach music song, or the Eagles, Doobie Brothers, Jimmy Buffett — this would be a Christian music band, but versatile enough to change gears on occasion for “good clean fun.”
Well, I’m getting carried away, of course. But a band can be a very fun thing, and in my experience a band is great device for attracting people — those who want to hear the band, and those who want to be involved in it. Unfortunately, a band is also very time consuming, and it takes an awful lot of practice just to be awful. I note that when I was last playing in a working band (we were fairly decent — we used to open for the Drifters) I was not married, did not have children, and did not have my own law firm to manage. And I know Brian has even less free time than I do (Brian, how do you do it!?). I am concerned that I may be biting off more than I can chew.
There’s also a money issue (e.g., some additional sound equipment, monitors, board, that type of thing; church rehearsal time requires electricity, heating and AC — the Session would have to approve all of this, of course).
So yes, we’ll start with very tiny steps, see what happens, see whether learning even one simple song is going to be possible, and worthwhile. And forget what I said about the Doobie Brothers, that was silly.
I meant Fleetwood Mac.
From: Brian
To: Kevin
April 10, 2006Kevin:
Do you know what we’re talking about . . . we’re talking about having a band concert…
Glad to hear that you are still excited about it – I know I am. I love the name, but I was thinking more along the lines of “The Extremely Mediocres” or “Musical Crucifixion.” I’m also glad to see that you have to fight the inclination to get way ahead of yourself with ideas.
I’m the same way. One thing I envision is at some point having a regular worship service featuring our music and aimed at the young people – a contemporary service with a bible study/devotion/evangelistic talk. Certainly not every week, but maybe once a quarter or once a month – something like that. I’d be happy to (teach/preach/tell everyone what I think they should do) in an outlet like that. Sunday or Saturday nights, maybe? Just an idea to add to the list.The church currently has two monitors (which are pretty beat up, but still work), a limited sound system located very inconveniently in the room beside the choir loft and some extra speaker cords. We have about six or seven good microphones plus the wireless one that was purchased for Brock and Jane’s birthday celebration. In the fellowship hall, we have a basic “thingie you plug microphones into” (at least that’s the technical term for it). We also have two “Singing Machines” in various stages of operation (just like the pros use!).
I have a cheap acoustic guitar and Jeana has a pretty good electronic keyboard which we could use (and the talent to use it to cover a lot of mistakes.) God will have to provide the rest.
As for your idea of a neighborhood cookout, we have spoken about doing a Fall Festival type thing on the church grounds aimed at attracting the community. We will probably not be ready this year, but I envision making this an annual event, so Christian Endeavor (or “Suffering
Sinners”) could certainly be a part of that in the future.We are definitely biting off more than we can chew so let me leave you with these thoughts. Jesus picked eleven disciples to first spread the gospel – eleven mostly uneducated, untalented, ordinary people, and because of them, we are here today.
“God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that were not – to nullify the things that are, so no one may boast before Him.” 1 Corinthians 1:27-29
“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” Matthew 19:26
From: Kevin
To: Brian
April 10, 2006Brian
The similarities between this project, and a certain band concert in Mayberry, are so frighteningly palpable that I had hoped no one would think to mention it in polite company.
Thanks for the inventory of sound equipment — maybe there’s more stuff than I thought. There is also a collection of spiders underneath the choir loft (oops! did I mention that again!?)
Hey, great idea about the Bible Study for young people, with “Musical Crucifixion” as kick-off music. Believe it or not, Jennifer has expressed a strong interest in being involved in something like this at Glenwood (she
mentioned an occasional Wednesday evening Bible series, rather than Saturday or Sunday — but the same basic idea). Jennifer’s idea was that me and her could do the lessons, and she has even gone so far as to sketch out five
Bible lesson topics already. I was quite surprised when she expressed so strong an interest in this. She wanted to start next month. I told her the band wouldn’t be ready for another twelve years, and that’s assuming Clara can get the mildew out of the uniforms.I was only half-joking in my e-mail to Debbie about rock or pop numbers (Doobie Brothers, etc.). Some songs could be just for fun, but surprisingly an occasional Christian theme is heard where you least expect it (”Don’t you feel it growing, day by day; People, getting ready for the news…” –from “Listen to the Music”). Put this in the “getting way ahead of ourselves” category, but it would be fun to take a song like that, tweak (or omit) a lyric here or there, and create “subtle” Christian music out of classic rock that would catch an audience totally off guard. When I played in a band called Timberwolf, it was always the greatest fun when the audience could never anticipate what was coming next. [Here's another song idea, capitalizing on the recent success of the Johnny Cash movie. The song "Walk
the Line" could be a Christian song in its own right, without changing a word. Send Rob Kota out in a black suit and a guitar slung across his back, folks would go nuts...]. This suggests that even if this turns out not very good, it could still be quite entertaining!Hey, seriously, I appreciate the enthusiasm for this crazy idea (Suffering Sinners), and the scripture you provide lends much encouragement!! But as Andy once told Goober, don’t over-expect. And let’s not allow ourselves to
become discouraged if it doesn’t work out. My biggest concern now is not having adequate time to devote to it.
For those of you that like to skip to the end of a book to see how it ends, you will be glad to know that Johnny Cash/Rob Kota did indeed make an appearance at SHINE this year, singing “Walk the Line.” Things were starting to take off!
To: Brian
From: Kevin
April 13, 2006I have located some very basic drums. They were salvaged from Fat Albert’s junkyard circa 1971, and purchased recently at a yardsale for $6. Thank Rick Smith for this. Hey! Hey! Hey!
Word of our project has leaked out somehow. I don’t know whether it was Laura Lee Hobbs at the dimestore, or Helen (not Crump) at the coffee clatch. But it’s clear that the gold truck is on its way. This is not the crowd I was expecting to get excited, but let’s take what we can get.
To: Kevin
From: Brian
April 13, 2006As for the excitement generated, the demographic I have always excelled at is 70-80 year old men and women. Jeana was the exception.
And I’m going to have return the drum set I bought from that Sanford guy and his son - I paid $10 for mine. Boy, did I get ripped off! I felt sorry for him because he kept having chest pains while I was there.
To: Brian
From: Kevin
April 17, 2006Okay, here is our first rehearsal date: Tuesday, May 2nd, 6:30 p.m. See if this works for you, and I will pass it along to Frank.
Assuming we will meet at church, are we now at the point that we should seek some sort of approval from Randy and the Session to go forward? I suppose if we got together somewhere besides the church we could postpone alerting the paparazzi for a while longer, and avoid more rumors about a gold truck coming through Mayberry. Just like the episode, this truck may not have any gold on it either (I understand the real band will go by way of Raleigh). My preference would be to meet at church, however, since this is where the sound equipment is.
As usual, I am getting way ahead of schedule with these meanderings. The goal now is to see if we can put together one song. Let me know what you think of the May 2nd date.
So the plan was hatched. We had our first rehearsal date. We thought we had a bass player. Past that, we weren’t sure what we had. Unfortunately, Frank suffered an injury to his shoulder at work the next week and couldn’t lift his arms. I think it may have required surgery. Kevin then tried to recruit a guy who was supposedly named Landon Crane, although I’m sure that was an alias. That didn’t pan out either - but we marched ahead nonetheless.
To: Kevin
From: Brian
April 23, 2006Kevin:
Just wanted to let you know that the Session approved our rehearsal date - I just told them that I was getting together some “special music” so as not to alert them about the gold truck.
…But they’ll hear the music … and they’ll know it’s tonight…
In our next installment, Christian Endeavor appears on stage for the first time at rehearsal, and we add a few new members to the group. A couple more bass prospects die mysteriously. Stay tuned!
