Kansas Trip

Filed in News on July 28, 2009



Many people think that professional musicians have glamorous careers.  For sure, performing can be very nice but it can be very tough too.  This weekend was a case in point. 

On Saturday, I flew to Wichita and then drove 200 miles over to the town of Liberal, Kansas where I met up with the Daybreak Quartet to do a concert the next morning.  Daybreak actually had a concert on Saturday night that was six hours away and had to drive pretty much through the night to get to the hotel at 4:00 am.  More power to them, but I am too old for that kind of thing.

We had a great couple of services on Sunday morning and then I drove back to Wichita for a evening concert at my long time friend Keith Kelley's church.  It was great to see Keith and Jenni again. 

On Monday morning, I met up with Daybreak again and we drove 3 hours to Dodge City, Kansas for another concert Monday night.  The event was actually a city-wide festival of sorts and the sponsors rented out a huge Catholic church for the concert.  Here is a picture.



Notice the piano.  It was a great Petrof 9' and I would say it is one of the best pianos I have ever played.  I would certainly put it up against Steinway.

There were roughly 800 excited people there that night and we were looking forward to a great concert until things started going wrong.  First of all, we had van problems which turned out to be minor but was enough of a distraction to rush our sound checks. 

Secondly, the position of the piano (on its own platform roughly 30 feet from the main stage) created problems.  It was very difficult to arrange things so I could hear the singers and they could hear me.  Many people don't understand why this kind of thing happens because to them, the music is very loud.  But trust me that very often, I find myself in positions where I cannot hear what I am supposed to be hearing whether it is other musicians or my own tracks.

But the worst thing of all was that it started raining.  The cathedral has seating around a center stage and above the stage is a tall dome.  It is a beautiful and expensive facility but the roof in the dome leaks and it unfortunately it began dripping water on expensive sound equipment.  So, halfway through the first song, the track that was playing stopped.  As it turns out, a laptop that runs tracks had become literaly waterlogged.

That began a chain reaction of trying to improvise our way through a concert without tracks while some of us worked on alternative technical solutions.  We eventually got tracks running again but things never got back to normal.

All in all, it was a memorable night.  And I have to say that the crowd was remarkably patient and courteous.  Certainly, in spite of the problems, most people seemed to really enjoy the moment.

After the concert ended, we packed up and headed back to Wichita to drop me off at the airport sometime around 1:00 am.  I am currently working through the night in the terminal because my plane leaves so early in the morning that I really didn't want to even bother sleeping.

Glamorous? Not hardly but very enjoyable anyway.



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Dave Mincy
7/28/2009 7:23:47 PM

man oh man...I'm just glad the leak wasn't over the PIANO! get some sleep!

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