What a crazy week...

This has been one crazy week! You know, me and the Sanctus boys have been anticipating our Fall tour for quite awhile and now that it's here and rollin' I must say that I'm even more excited about it just because it's been such a great first week! I've got to tell ya' though, this stuff is exhausting. I'm wiped out and there's still 29 more shows left to do! Yep, I'm gettin' old. In fact, part of my problem right now is that I somehow pulled some muscles in lower back and so it's been just killing me the past few days. O'well. I can't be young and invincible forever I guess.
Anyways, this week has been great but really busy. Pete and Dan came in from Nashville Tuesday night. We rehearsed our set and tried to figure out ways to make the show fun and unique for those who have seen us a hundred times already. I think I got to bed around 1 am that night and of course with two kids I don't usually get to sleep much later than about 8 am. We met back up at the rehearsal space Wednesday morning, loaded up all the gear and proceeded to meet up with Vota at Cedar Creek Church in Perrysburg, (Toledo suburb), where the first show was to be. We loaded in, set up and did sound check/rehearsal all day long. The Tenth Avenue North guys and Sammy Adebiyi all showed up through out the day and we slowly got things figured out and in order so we could kick off the tour right the next evening. I think I got to bed at 12 am but poor baby Nathan kept us up most of the night. He's apparently teething.
Then we kicked off in our hometown of Toledo, Ohio on Thursday with a great first show. There was about 1000 people there, the concert went great and Sammy's message managed to motivate 193 people to sign up for Mocha Club setting a new record for sign ups in a single night at a concert! I think I went to bed around 2 am.
Friday morning we got early to drive to The Underground in Cincinnati, Ohio. Played to a crowd of about 4-500 people. Again the show went great, but I was rather sad to have to do the three hour drive back home again afterwards. I got to bed about 4 am.
Saturday we got up and drove to Spring Arbor, Michigan to play at the university there. We had about 1200 people attend and the crowd was great, but I must say I felt like I played like poop that night. We had some technical difficulties right off the bat and they kind of continued through out our set making me feel rather nervous and insecure which caused me to make dumb mistakes in my playing. I get really frustrated at that stuff even though I probably shouldn't. I need to allow myself the freedom to have a bad show on occasion. Otherwise I'm simply training myself to be a perfect little robot up there on that stage and actually sucking the life out of the whole concert experience anyway. Who do you want to see in concert; a "play it safe" lifeless machine behind the drum kit or a passionate musician who his confident, fearless, and playing every note as if it were his last?
Sunday was really crazy because we went back to our hometown to do a benefit concert for a family who is going to be on ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition. This event sold out and we got to play in front of 5000 people, meet the cast of the show and even have Paul Dimeo play a song with us. Pretty nuts huh!?! Tomorrow we're going to the site of the build for a little VIP tour and to hang with the cast some more. Fun stuff!
Then Wednesday we'll fly to Oklahoma and do tour show #4 of 32.
Probably the thing I'm most excited about though is the fact that Mocha Club's goal for this next year is to build 30 wells in Jaque Darfur Africa. and in just three show's we have enough people signed up to fund the building of four wells! These wells cost about $15,000 to build because they are in such a dangerous and remote area in the Sudan, but one of them can supply clean water for up to 500 people. That's a good thing because there about 70,000 people there in need of it!
I believe God could very well use this one tour to supply more than enough funding for all 30 wells to be built. Please Jesus make it happen! For your glory God! YOU be lifted up through all this! In Christ' name I pray, AMEN!
Oh, lastly; check out www.tomsshoes.com to be a part of yet another revolution.
Love you guys!
Mark