Shark Bait



Shark Bait

Yesterday we began our 35-city tour with Building 429 and After Edmund. Yep, 35 cities.
I have to be honest, I have been a little anxious about this whole tour business. For the past two years we have been out on “tour” with Planet Wisdom; a student conference that took us all over the United States. But I say “tour” in parenthesis because as a band, it was a luxury tour.

We got quite comfortable with our tour-mates and they are like family now. We actually got paid money to be on the road. We were the only band, so we even made a good amount of money on merchandise. We traveled with an 18-wheeler, which meant that while our gear made it from California to Florida on the highway, we traveled by air; and air verses 4 guys and a girl riding cross-country is highly luxurious. Tour food was always, always amazing. We played for thousands of students who we grew to love and even remember from year to year, had amazing moments of worship, and loved every minute of it (ok, most every minute of it). Most importantly though, we were home a few days a week.

Fast forward to this new tour…we are gone for weeks on end. We are one of three, sometimes four bands that are competing for merchandise sales and fans and all that other stuff you simply must have to financially survive on the road. We do not get paid to be on tour, so we pray that we sell a lot of t-shirts each night and that is ulcer inducing for someone who has anxiety issues. There are so many new people I don’t know on this tour. Boys, more boys, and more boys. We are in a van driving cross-country, the food is unreliable, we play five songs then we are off (smiling and waving and run, do not walk off stage) (can you name that movie?) and for most of the next two months I am sleeping in hotel beds.

I didn’t sleep the night before we left.

I had our fate figured out. We are the fish. We are the freshman. We have gone from luxury liner to small, dingy boat, with little holes in it and no life vests.

I am going to drown. A shark will eat me, and I will die hungry, alone, and having only sold 4 t-shirts and a sticker in the process.

Millionaire in the Making
Look people, if I had a dollar for every outlandishly horrible scenario I have thought up in my life, I would not be writing this blog right now. I would be a millionaire lying in a hammock by an ocean somewhere. (And I would feel guilty about four days in as I thought about the rest of the world, so you have caught me on day two).

The first night of the tour was wonderful. So far I have not been eaten by sharks, we sold more than four t-shirts, I was well-fed (duh, Jenny, you freaking live in America), I had a great nap in the van ride, the boys, more boys, and more boys were incredibly kind, and the entire night on stage was such a well thought out, spiritually reviving show even I sat in the audience and was touched.

So here we go.  35 cities here I come. You should come too. Check out our concert schedule and see if we are playing in a town near you and then, PLEASE COME! And if you come, please tell me you are part of the blog family. I met “Euphrony” the other night in Houston and I was so excited, but I had no idea he was a blog reader until he coyly said, “I’m Euphrony” at which point I got so excited I jumped up and hugged him. I felt like I was meeting a long lost family member!

Discipline Yikes!
Yesterday I roamed the beautiful streets of Ft. Smith, Arkansas. I quickly realized that I must have a goal during the tour or I will waste away hours of my life on random nothingness. There is a lot of down time. My goal? To blog about every city or tour stop during the next 45 days. They don’t have to be terribly deep or long entries, though they may be, but they do have to bring you inside the life of being out on the road on a real “tour.” Hopefully I will introduce you to some really cool people, have lots of random thoughts, beautiful moments where I have seen God show up, and even suggestions on what to do while in…Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Like going to La Huerta’s on the downtown strip for lunch. Kind of like Tom Brokaw’s trip around America.
So join me on my trip around the country!