AHQ Mini-Tour 7-04 -- Singing in the Smokies
8-24-04
Written by Tom Troyer
Well. Over a month ago I sent out a little notice saying AHQ was back on tour and that an update was forthcoming. Some of you long ago started to doubt me, and maybe most of you forgot all about it, but here it is regardless of which camp you find yourself!
AHQ hasn't sung a whole lot since Konrad got married and I moved to Indiana. After his wedding in November, we sang at another wedding in Michigan last February, and from then until this tour we suffered through a long period of withdrawal.
Except for releasing our new CD! Our long-awaited album, Purpose, has finally hit the streets. Visit the Order page to get your own copy.
Anyway, the other three guys and Shannon (and my parents) flew in to Indiana on Wednesday evening, June 30. We rehearsed some that night and tried to get back in the vocal groove. It definitely had been awhile! Our tonal center was drifting around like a sailboat caught in a hurricane.
But we managed to get our act together, and it was a good thing because we had a program Thursday night. We sang at the church I attend in Goshen, Living Water Mennonite. There was a group of people who drove down from Gary, IN (several hours away) to hear us that night, and it was good to meet some new friends.
My sister Jean and her husband Kevin (and son Cody) are with the Gospel Echoes Northwest Crossroads Team, and they were touring their way out to the Goshen GE headquarters for their annual meetings. They took a few days off and took their bus on tour with us. We rented a car also, and hit the road for our next program in Plain City, OH.
Long time AHQ update subscribers will be pleased to note that this was the same bus AHQ took a tour in with Brent Baker in the latter part of '02. It was good to get our bus back!
We really enjoyed being back at United Bethel Mennonite, it was great to see our friends there again.
Now I'm going to tell a behind-the-scenes quartet story. Please skip over it, as it is embarrassing to me.
No matter how experienced you are, there is always the danger of a singer forgetting the words. It's happened to all of us, I think, except for David. He never forgets the words. It's a good thing, because then he can tell us what they are when we forget. We've pulled some fast ones on stage over the years--from switching verses mid-verse, to pausing and starting back up, to stumbling over a spot where a key singer (ahem) went completely blank, and yes, to just making up words however it suited! Kon did that once in a solo. I must say though, we were the only ones to know about it because he even got them to rhyme!
But anyway, back to AHQ at UB. Remember, we hadn't sang in months and months. We were doing one of the songs off our new CD, "Forgiven Says it All," (Dale Kropf) on which I unfortunately have a solo for both verses. I launched in with great confidence and successfully pulled off the first verse. The second verse was looming ominously ahead. I couldn't think how it started, and soon it was bearing down on me like a Mack truck. I comforted myself with the thought that surely those elusive first words would come to me just before I needed them. Ha. Better luck next time!
I launched in anyway with great but empty confidence, using the words to the first verse. I was thinking, ok, now how can I switch over to the second verse? I tried mixing up phrases, using random words, maybe I could make up my own verse! Courageously I forged ahead into very uncharted territory, digging myself deeper and deeper into the mess I had made. The futility of the whole exercise was becoming rapidly apparent to me, and probably the whole crowd! I gave up, admitted I was in egregious error, got the words from David, and just started the second verse again.
How embarrassing.
Skip back in here.
The next day we traveled to North Carolina for our engagement at the Inspirations' Singing in the Smokies. We got there later in the evening and went in to the Inspirations' reunion concert they were having that night. Afterwards we talked with our friend Ronnie Hutchins of the Inspirations and then went to our motel.
Just to come back early the next morning! A number of friends had come that day, and it was good to see and visit with them.
This was the last day of about a week's worth of concerts the Inspiration's held at their park in the Smoky Mountains.
Did I mention how hot it was that day? And in addition to that, the humidity was very non-Oregon-like. We were in our quartet suits, of course, and we thought it was pretty warm. Ha. Little did we know what was coming.
There was a number of groups on the all-day program, we each did 2 twenty-minute sets. Our time was coming up, so we headed backstage.
We were announced, went on stage, and started warbling our way through our first set. That's when we discovered what hot really was. There were a bunch of stage lights mere feet away beating down on us with all the fierce intensity of the noonday sun!
I've addressed this in previous updates, no matter where you sing it's always hot onstage. But this day took that principle to a new level! We survived just fine though I guess.
It went really well and was a lot of fun. And it was loud. Loud is good!
So that night we sadly split up and headed for home. Jewel and I went with my family on the GE bus back to Indiana, and the other three and Shannon headed for Knoxville where they caught their plane to Oregon the next day. The end of a much-too-short tour.
I've put a short movie clip of AHQ onstage that day on our Listen page, check it out! Thanks to our friend Russell Lee for editing it for us.
People are wondering what is going to happen to AHQ now that we're physically separated by thousands of miles. Here's By to address that question:
"When AHQ last convened to sing together in July we had ourselves a little business meeting. This business meeting concerned the future of our group. Surprisingly, we were all in agreement. It seemed pretty obvious that no one wanted to talk about quitting or retiring as a group."
"So we settled on this: as of then, AHQ would be considered 'inactive.'"
"What 'inactive' means: the entity still exists, but it is not actively pursuing music together and its members are free to go their own ways without feeling constrained by their commitment to said entity."
"What 'inactive' doesn't mean: AHQ will never, ever sing again. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. My personal opinion is that we'll never sing together as we have in the past. The possibilities are endless, really. AHQ as we know it could completely die, we could sing together on a more limited basis, we could morph into a group with different personnel. Who knows? Only God."