Another Night Leading

I led praise band last night. It was a trip. The band I started with had two people who worked at the same plant and an emergency came up. Replace two guitarists. One normal drummer working, the other out of town...inexperienced drummer, who I later learned wasn't acclimated to 3/4 time yet. So, I swapped two songs out of the set just before warm up. Add a graduating senior singing who needed to catch up on her own life, and a singer who thought they could make it but couldn't get back into town in time, and sick people, and out of town people...and there was no one left to ask anywhere that I could think of. Wow. Two days of calls and I still had no one. Rotating Sunday nights give everyone a break, but if you don't have a "normal" group to work with, building a band is hard.

I begged the minister of music to duet with me on vocals, and enjoyed a guitar led service with electric, austotic, and bass. No keyboards. I decided I wasn't going to try to play and lead at the same time this time just to see how that felt. I enjoyed it, except knowing the order of songs as we are going to sing them is not yet a forte I've developed.

I went to make new chord charts to replace the two I needed to substitute to get rid of the 3/4s, and the toner was out of ink in the church copier. Fortunately, I was able to get the office unlocked--fifteen minutes after I started. My pen was out of ink, my pencil lead broken.

By the time the service started, I had so much brain haze I could hardly get out an intelligible comment. I'm used to playing the songs, not singing them...and a couple songs were literally so low for my voice that I had a hard time leading without harmonizing. But, oh well.

We'd started practice later than usual to get everyone some rest, and I won't do that again. The band needed another half hour, and so did I.

But, things worked out and the service went fine--somehow.

I enjoyed leading and didn't let myself stress or overplan too early on, so I'm proud of that effort.

With all the changing variables all week, there was no point in overplanning music! I switched the set four times as it was to accommodate the crowd and singers and instrumentalists I had. What work! I have a refreshed appreciation for those who lead for sure.

Well, I made it! I'm still breathing. God's grace was there.

~Me