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 july 6, 1997
Notes from the Road lots to tell you; this may be a long one. first of all i must tell you how very glad i am to be home—finally. the long tour is finally over, for the most part. we still have some loose ends to tie over the next month or so, but the majority of the next month or so will serve as a much needed break. we’ve been on tour pretty consistently since february, with little three or four day breaks in houston every month or so. it was really time for a break. one thing that God has always surprised me with is the way that he can add more and more new situations to certain songs, in a major sense keeping them fresh. what we were discovering was that being on the road that much was keeping us from being able to be a part of any ‘normal’ situations, and therefore we were working ourselves into a rut. most of what i was writing was more about being away from home and missing my family than anything else. while we were all of one mind regarding our decision for needing time off, we all had different reasons. as any of you who know me very well know, i’m textbook anal retentive. i’m haunted by routines and schedules. i tend to go a little crazy if i don’t have a plan all the time. i’m fairly obsessive about parallel and perpendicular lines. i’m the guy who comes into your living room and has to straighten all the magazines on the coffee tables before i can concentrate on anything that you’re saying. it’s just the way that i am, although i’m definitely getting better (so i’m told). all this to say that i have a pretty hard time being outside a normal routine for too long. at the same time i think we can all get a little crazy being in the same routine for too long. we were playing shows almost every day, and having to intro the same songs every night, and began to realize that it was all starting to run together. i’m sure that any of you who have worked at the same establishment for very long understand how it is to need a vacation. more than anything, God really needed us to get focused, more than just personally but as a band and an organization. we’re learning so much about who we are and the best ways to get the most out of the means that God has given us to communicate the message that he’s given us to communicate. it is true that we’re having some financial difficulties as well, but i’ll tell you the same thing that i’ve told everyone else that i’ve shared any of this with: we simply couldn’t be happier with where God has us. he’s got us just exactly where he wants us, and we’re in no position to even try to tell him his business. it’s a very scary and exciting time for us. please be praying for all that’s going on with caedmon’s call. you guys are all as much a part of this as we are. thanks. now on to my fun story. i really wish that i could tell you all this in person so you could sense my subtle sarcasm. actually, it really does have a cool middle and ending, it’s the beginning that’s a little bit rough. now, for the reasons that i explained in the first paragraph, we canceled most of the month of july, except for some dates that we were able to get to by van. when we discovered that the cornerstone festival was included in those dates, we started brainstorming about what we could do in order to still get out there and play. the festival is probably the most popular (but not the biggest) Christian festival of the summer, and this was to be our first performance there. kirby, our wonderful and fashionable manager, occasionally books me for solo stuff when the whole band can’t make it where we’re trying to go, so he and i talked over the options we had. to make a long story short, garett and i decided that we thought it would be fun to go, and we didn’t mind giving up a few of our off days to do it - so we were off. we were in houston for only one day before we had to leave for bushnell, illinois. this is where the fun begins. the day before we left, or the night i should say, i began to call around to get the info on our flights and what not. what i discovered is that we actually had no tickets as of yet, but that we had reservations. i knew that we couldn’t fly to chicago on reservations alone so i began to panic just a bit. by the time that we had the tickets paid for and done it was around 4:30 am, and i was supposed to get up at 4:45 am. against my better judgement, i did go ahead and take the 15 minute nap, and then get up and shower. garett was coming from his folks house in spring, TX, and i was coming from downtown, so we decided to meet at houston intercontinental airport, which was right in between us. our flight was taking off at 6 am, so we met there at around 5:15 am. you should have seen us. i was carrying a shoulder bag with tons of guitar chords and pre-amp and clothes and things, and two guitar cases covered in these huge silver climate controlled padding cases - which made them huge and unsightly. garett was waiting for me in the american airlines line for check in with one of those airport carts full of random drum cases and stuff. by the time we got to the front of the line, we only had about 20 minutes until our plane was going to take off. i was trying to explain to the lady at the counter that we were picking up tickets that were already paid for, the whole time she was typing away at her computer. when i heard her say something to the effect of "oh, this is interesting," i knew that we were in trouble. what we discovered was that the tickets were still not paid for. somehow or another, the info on the card that was used didn’t match up or something, so we had to figure something out quick. luckily, garett had his moms card so we were able to put them on that, but needless to say, that wasn’t in the plan (sorry mr. & mrs. buell...). as we were rushing for the plane, they even paged us on the airport intercom system. "paging american passengers webb and buell; please come to gate b1." they held the plane for us and we got on, but just by a hair. we tried to sleep a little on the plane, but our nerves were a little shot by the morning so far, so we read our cool american airlines magazines instead. once we got to the chicago airport, we started looking around for our shuttle to the festival. we didn’t see anyone at the gate so we headed on to the baggage claim to get all our gear. after not finding anyone anywhere, we called our office in houston to try and get some instructions. luckily aaron was in the office already, and got me on the phone with kirby. what we then discovered was that there was supposed to be a connecting flight to somewhere called peoria, illinois, which apparently had gotten lost somewhere in our credit card transition. regardless, we had to get there, and we were running out of options. aaron, being the miracle worker that he is, somehow arranged for a friend of a friend of his to drive out to the airport and get us and drive us to bushnell. since it was that or turn around and come straight back to houston, we agreed. what we didn’t really know was that it was a four and a half hour drive to bushnell, and that the car didn’t have any air conditioning to challenge the 95 degree weather. the guy who came to get us was totally amazing though. his name was brad (i feel awful for not catching his last name, but we were all in quite a hurry). not only did he not mind driving us all that way in the heat, but he was surprisingly enthusiastic about it. we had a pretty good drive - we managed to get in some pretty good conversation between napping and sweating. once we got to cornerstone and convinced the security that we weren’t just a car full of college guys trying to pass themselves off as a band to get in free, things went pretty smoothly. we were headlining on the compassion international side stage that night, which meant that we still had plenty of time to get things organized and change strings and do whatever we needed to do. the stage manager and stage hands were all really cool and easy to work with, and garett and i were much too exhausted to make a fuss about anything, so things worked our nicely. we were only there for about 30 minutes before rich mullins showed up. now, i knew that he was going to be there, and we had talked about hanging out a little while we were all at cornerstone (this was all talked about while he was in houston helping us with the video for ‘hope to carry on’), but you’re always a little shocked to see rich mullins walking towards you. nevertheless rich is the kind of guy that you’re always pleasantly surprised to see. he immediately drug us off to find something called an ‘ostrich burger.’ he is an amazing person to watch. he’s always so surprised when people come up and know him. anyway, we ended up spending the whole day with him and some of the guys in his current touring band. rich almost immediately asked the both of us to go ahead and stay at the festival to hang out until saturday when it was over. garett had some things that he had to get back for, but i told him that i thought that i might stay. although i ended up coming on back for a variety of reasons, i really wish i could’ve stayed. he even offered to put me up in his room on the campgrounds, to drive me the 4 ½ hours back to chicago - since he had his jeep there, and to pay for the cost of changing my flight. i’ve rarely met anyone as giving as rich. i was completely blown away by his generosity, the whole time wondering why in the world he would want to hang out with us - being rich mullins and all. the stage had lost power for a few hours during the day, so all the bands had gotten pushed back quite a bit, which ended up putting us on stage around 1:45 am. while we were waiting to play, we all walking out into the woods - so we could hear what we were doing - and worked out ‘hope to carry on,’ which rich had offered to sing with us sometime during the set. the good thing about everything going so late was that all the other concerts were over by the time we played, so around 4000 people gathered all around the tent. ‘three crosses’ played before us as well, so i’m sure that didn’t hurt anything either. we opened with ‘in God’s country’ by u2, and tried to keep the set kind of random since we weren’t sure how many of these folks even knew who we were. we were really pleasantly surprised that many of them knew our stuff, and even had requests, many of them we tried to do. we even played an impromptu version of ‘i’m alright’ by kenny loggins. at the height of the energy i told the story of how we’d recorded a song of rich’s, and how he’d come to houston to be the in the video for it, and what a profound inspiration that he’d been on us musically and spiritually over the years. i then introduced him and he came out and we did ‘hope to carry on,’ with the crowd singing louder than we were. it was all pretty incredible. what a blessing from God this all had turned out to be. i played a few new songs that i had written in the last few months, and bore my soul a little to the folks there at cornerstone, eventually ending up with ‘busdriver.’ what an incredible experience. you may be wondering by now why in the world i’m telling you all this in such detail. i realized in the middle of that set why it was that God had brought us there. i was introducing a new song that i had finished just days before, and realized that the song was about exactly what i had been going through that day. all this to say that God runs my life the way he does for good reason, and his will is perfect. the same applies in our financial situation in the band. everything that God brings us through is part of making us all into the people that he wants us to be, and therefore making us more effective in the places in which he has us. i’m so glad that God is God and that i’m not. i’m beginning to grow content with my life being completely out of control. i’ve also learned once and for all (i hope) to be wary of what i ask for, for fear that i might get it. even though i still react so poorly to the challenges that God often presents me with, i say keep ‘em coming - for that very reason if for none other. this is the song. faith my eyes
as i survey the ground for ants looking for a place to sit and
read
how i’m all wrapped up in my mothers face
hometown weather is on tv
but if i must go, things i trust will be better off without me
(chorus)
even from chico to charlottesville i’m always well provided for
but i get turned around; i mistake some happiness for blessing (chorus)
what’s passed down from year to year; sentiment, names, and
recipes i know that this has been long, so i really appreciate you hanging with me. i hope that your summer is going well. since i’m home for a while, i’ll try to write more than just once a month... by the way, stop by the chat channel if you get a chance. the few of us who hang out in there are getting a little lonely by ourselves. take care and God bless-
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