Practice

Just wanted to give you a glimpse into my favorite place to be...



This is the stage area at my church. It's practice for the Sunday morning group, which different folks rotate in and out of. This week, as you can see, Mark and his sidekick Lester are playing lead guitar this week. The fellow in the background standing up playing bass guitar is Frank, who's just terrific. The one seated, playing the acoustic guitar, is Jeff, the worship leader. If you look behind Mark, you can see my little "Paul Schaffer" setup with the two keyboards. We're thinking of getting one of those stacking stands, but for now we just have it set up like an "L" shape. I like being back there by the drummer because he & I can stay together much better with eye contact.

When I started playing with these guys back in November, it was like I was a five-year-old on Christmas morning -- suddenly, everyone in the band has their own monitor and the sound technicians are constantly asking me if I've got enough mix in it, and I can tell them to turn down the vocals and turn up the acoustic guitar, and they can actually do that. If there's something I need adjusted, all I have to do is look up at the sound booth and they're totally on top of it. Can you see now why I absolutely love being there?

Last night, Jeff introduced another new song of his. He had actually played it for me back in January, so I knew it was coming up, but he had a couple of other new ones in the works as well, so this one waited until now. It sounded amazing; it's still a very new thing for me to listen to him play something just on his acoustic and try to imagine what it would sound like with everyone in the band. When everyone added what they thought worked, it came together pretty well. Of course it's still a bit rough just because we just started working on it, but it will gel eventually.

Then when we get done with practice, we're handed a CD that they just burned with a recording of us doing the new song so we can take it home and listen to it and practice.

Again, is there anyone who can't understand why I love playing the keyboard there?