Gibson Amphitheater

Okay, this venue rocks. The hands rock. The day was awesome. Setup up in a little over two hours. Loaded out in one hour flat. Now have been waiting for Merch for over 2 hours. I would sleep, but they are loading the trailer on our bus. Not their fault, I hope. Just wish I didn't need to be up at 5am.

Tomorrow morning we are playing at the Mayor of Anaheim's Prayer Breakfast. We shall acoustic their faces off!! Rockstar Energy drink in my near future.

After that I hope to get in a round of golf with the guys.

Reason We Are Gonna Be Late Today

Saw I missed a call from our bus driver. As we were the last bus to arrive yesterday, I thought I should go check what is up. He told me we are going to be between 30 and 60 minutes late for load in. "Why," you ask?

"We got caught behind a spaceship going about 30 miles an hour."

Seems reasonable. We were/are driving thru New Mexico.

Back On Tour

Well, I guess we quit posting quite a while back. Let's see if we can get this back up and going.

We headed out yesterday. First show tomorrow in El Paso, TX. I see a Whataburger in my future. This first run is always the longest for us, but it's still only 3 weeks. I've had worse.

Rehearsals went pretty good. Had some big gremlins, but they have been exterminated. More to come as we roll these buses and trucks across the Western United States.

See you somewhere soon!

Carter

burns both ways

This has been the story of over half of our shows so far. Notice the lack of gas tank. I'm not sure how hard it is to check and be sure that there is enough fuel in the fork lift to make it through load in, but apparently too hard for a lot of venues to do.... Enough about that.

This is all of the hot sauces that our last caterers had. It may seem trivial at first thought, but this is an indication of the attention to detail that they had. James and the rest of the guys from Ned Winters' catering took some time away from their normal gig with Gaither vocal band and spent 4 days with us. I knew that I would like them when one of our vegetarians asked about the vegetarian options and James shouted, "Hey everyone, come and look at the vegetarian!" loud enough for all of catering to hear. Especially because after he said that he pointed our guy out to another chef who had a hot vegetarian meal waiting for him. Prepared vegetarian meals are very rare for our non-meat eaters, much less good ones at every sitting. And the word from Carter and Snooch was that all their meals were amazing. And it wasn't just the vegetarian meals. I am pretty sure I gained about 10 pounds because I couldn't put my fork down. It was that good. Past that, they took the time to learn our names and what we liked, and they genuinely cared whether or not we enjoyed ourselves. Seriously, if you are in a position that allows you to hire caterers, do yourself a favor and save this info:

Ned Winters' Catering
based out of OK city
405.409.4598

And now because I laughed out loud, here's some samples of names and slogans from the hot sauces:
Hemmorrhoid Helper - burns both ways
Scorned Woman - don't get mad, get even
Liquid Stoopid
PETA - people eating tasty animals
Trailer Trash - hott sauce y'all!
Dave's Gourmet Ultimate Insanity
and (editted for family viewing) Big Daddy's Butt Burn - Heck goin' in, Heck goin' out

CCCC

Hey everybody. Sorry it's been so long since we've blogged. We've been gearing up, and starting the Casting Crowns Christmas Celebration. We're just finishing up the 5th show in a row, and have a much needed day off tomorrow. Here's a few shots of what we've been through so far.

A little peak at the set. Way to go Snooch!

Tech Crew Tip #1 - invest in Duracell. We go through 40-AA and 10-9v batteries... every day.


I'm not sure if this qualifies as OCD, but I am uncomfortable with un-organization.

nerds everywhere

Here's a few of us hanging at a cafe in Heidelberg, Germany enjoying some great German coffee and internets.

no matter where we are

So we're in Arhus, Denmark tonight, doing show 3 of our European tour. I've been working with Crowns for almost a year now, and a good portion of that time I spent the whole show staring at a screen, pressing space bar, and reading the lyrics to the entire show, so it's not like I haven't heard these words before. But tonight I am having the chance to walk around a bit. I walked back to the lighting console to ask Snooch to do me a favor while the band was playing "Praise You in This Storm." On my to the console there were several people in the audience with their lighters in the air, which I thought was cool in an 80's rock sort of way; then, on my way back, there were a lot of people with their hands in the air singing, "for You are who You are, no matter where I am." In that moment, God, being who He is, took the opportunity to smack me upside the head with some truth. This God, who I love and serve, is the same God who all these people in Denmark love and serve. This God is bigger than our towns, or our countries, or what language, or even what side of the road we drive on. God is God, no matter where we are; and that is rocking my world tonight (from another part of the world).