Dear guys
So yesterday we left for San Bernardino. Trip down was relatively uneventful, 'cept 2 blocks away from our destination we saw a head-on collision at a light, which kinda threw everything off for a few minutes. We arrived at the church around 6:30, halfway through the event, and 35 minutes before it was time for us to start playing. It normally takes me 30 minutes to plug in my guitar rig. I got it done in 20, which left me enough time to get out of the noisy area (a big task!) and tune my guitar. We never got a soundcheck, because apparently it's unprofessional to have your hosts be considerate of the fact that you drove for 6 goddamn hours each way just to play two songs. Fucking bullshit, it wouldn't have taken very long at all. They had two overhead mics for the choir, one for the vocal lead, the drums were the host church's drums (and they had two overhead mics and one for the bass drum), and all the instruments had direct line-in from the amps into the mixer. 5 fucking level sliders total. It was bullshit. Apparently we sounded amazing, but we wouldn't fuckin' know, we couldn't hear a thing over the monitors or the house speakers. Our drummers, being the gods among men that they are, were able to keep their tempo in their respective songs SO PERFECTLY that they were exactly on cue for every single thing on our backing track. And they couldn't hear anything over their headphone monitors. All they could hear was my amp because it was right next to the drum enclosure. So I was the only tempo reference they had. I couldn't hear the backing track whatsoever. But we got the best reception out of any group that night, and I personally got loads of recognition for playing the guitar. I could only respond, "Really? Thanks! I couldn't tell, I couldn't hear myself" when the sound guys themselves came up and congratulated us.
After all the musical guests were finished, it was time for all the musicians to go eat. At one point, the band and I were separated. And the crowd was something like 500 people. Problem? Not when you are the only non-black person in the entire building. My group and I were reunited in 30 seconds.
After the event was over, we packed up and pulled out to go to the hotel. It was great until we tried to check in and we realized we were at the wrong Western Inn & Suites. Then our keyboard player, who was driving the big-ass rental van, lost the keys for a half hour. Which led to hilarity. So we went to the other one which was 10 miles away.
Then this morning we went to downtown L.A. via South Central (we picked up our tenor's daughter from her house there), which was awesome. I was reminded how shitty it is that my iPod broke in January, 'cause I'd have killed to have been able to listen to Tupac while rolling through South Central. That'd have been fucking epic.
Then we dropped off our tenor's daughter, got on I5, and headed north. More road trip shenanigans ensued, including pranks on the pastor. Right around the time we passed Westley (around 9:40pm) we passed another traffic accident, this time between an 18-wheeler and a Mazda Miata. The front of the 18-wheeler was obliterated, and I can't even think of strong enough words to describe the destruction of the Miata. It was bad. Blood on the grass in the median, two full body bags, and one shaken-to-hell truck driver sitting on the side of the road talking to the CHP. I've never seen anything in the world like that.
Anyway, that's my weekend.
Love,
Me!