The Sunday Musician

One of the things the Big Church did, and did very well, was big productions. I loved and hated them. The hassle was incredible, they were utterly time consuming, and the buzz I got from it all was seriously addictive. The good outweighed the bad, but by a margin similar to that by which George Bush beat Al Gore in 2000. Here’s a little reminiscence from one of my favorite years:

The electric guitar player stood up suddenly, put his Stratocaster on the chair, string side up, and sat down hard again - on the guitar. Right down on it, grinding the strings into the pickups. Legs out in front of him, arms folded across his chest, he scowled straight ahead for 30 seconds, then got up and stomped off the platform. I had no idea why. I felt like Colonel Potter from MASH: “Why didn't I just shoot myself in the foot and stay in Hawaii?”

It was tech rehearsal night for our big, sprawling, all-original Easter musical - complete with five remote controlled spotlights, six musicians, seven actor/singers, eight wireless mics, nine months of hard development work, ten overseeing elders and eleven tons of pressure from my boss to make this happen (the Twelve Lords a-leaping were cut in rehearsal and left, starting their own church).

The drummer walked in at that moment and found his drums - which he'd spent an hour the night before arranging in one-millimeter increments until they were perfectly aligned - had been squashed together by the sound guy to make room for a monitor.  He declared loudly that he was giving his time for free and didn't have to put up with this s**t..

The Director, right on cue, informed me publicly, over the PA system, that the local newspaper was here, and that we needed to run through a couple of numbers so they could get photos of the show in action. The drummer shouted back at her, “I WON’T BE READY FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR!!!!”

Later, the guitar player walked back in with a sheepish grin on his face. The monitor guy (after being asked by the guitar player NOT to do this) had sent phantom power back up the low-impedance line running out of the guitar amp. The 48 volts coming back into the amp had almost fried it. The guitar player had a reason to be upset, although not to lose his temper. The drummer had given up time with his family the night before to get his drums arranged exactly to his liking, only to have the monitor guy squash them together to make room for an extra monitor.

When we got a break in the action later on, the guitar player said to me, “I feel sorry for you. I wouldn't want your job.”

“Why?”

“Because you have to put up with people like me, people like us. Musicians.”

He was right. Musicians are…an unusual bunch. They’re weird and difficult, but I'm one of them. I understand. I get it. I'm just as weird, and at the time the only real difference was that I got a paycheck.”

Directing a group of musicians in a church can be, as my dad used to say, like trying to stack BB's. When the band is 'on', when people are moved by the music to connect with God, when everything comes together, I wouldn't trade it for a '59 Les Paul with original pickups. It's the best of all worlds...when it's working.

That, of course, is only part of the time, and it depends on what you call 'working'. From January of 1994 until June of 2005 I was a Director of Instrumental Music, and in that time I learned a lot. It was fun, frustrating, highly rewarding, and disillusioning all at the same time. Took a while to get used to. I carried the church a few times, and they carried me a lot more. Oh, the stories I could tell…