AllTheseThingsIveDone.com

This weekend was one of the rare so far, this year, where Jim Bailey has been out on the road. And one of the even rarer times when we stay overnight. Jim was there to do some training, an afternoon praise party and a morning show. So, on Friday evening we started the 286 mile drive in two seperate vehicles, though more on that later, after a coffee just north of Birmingham we made the rest of the journey in good time and arrived just before midnight, checked in to our hotel and….

SLEEP

Actually I slept so much that at 8:37 Saturday morning the hotel phone rang. It was Jim; where was I, we needed to go in 5 minutes. D’Oh! I don’t think I’ve moved so fast in the morning for a while. Luckily the Church was only 10 minutes up the road. We were greeted by one of the most beautiful building we’ve ever seen outside of the Anglican Church. After we’d been there are a couple of minutes one of the eldership team turned up, another Dave (I think the world runs on them), followed shortly by a few of the wonderful tech team.

TRAINING

After unloading the van we started preparing for the training. For me, this consisted of plugging in a laptop and sound cable. The rig consisted of 1 top and 1 sub aside. Unfortunately the subs were much much bigger than the tops and everything was a mush. Jim and I even considered bringing in our rig for the praise party later that day. The kind team provided me with Wi-Fi access, and plenty of coffee, so that I could 1. get on with some work and 2. wake up!

I’m getting to know the training pretty well, so for me it was just a case of listening in, drinking coffee and…waiting to soundcheck.

SOUNDCHECK

So it got to the soundcheck and I couldn’t get it sounding how I wanted - it was just bass. No sign of a physical Graphic EQ, so I had a better option….gather all the Mini-Jack to large Jacks I could find and use my laptop as a virtual insert over the system. Strangely I had thought about not brining it, however the free Wi-Fi the hotel offered swung it for me! I set up a quick Logic Pro session with an Aux In and a Graphic EQ over it. After wandering round the hall like an idiot making sure things were balanced and double checking my thoughts with Jim’s on the “new sound”. With a “thumbs up” it was time for the praise party.

PRAISE PARTY

As far as I know 25 people came along to the training and numbers were probably just above, and I’m probably way off, this for the praise party. It’s fair to say Jim struggled, this wasn’t this down to the crowd, more down to sweat + in-ear monitors. We’d had a similar problem before and it occurs when Jim manages to hit the pan button on the pack. My immediate fix was to turn it all up (in his head that is) and go onto the stage and hit the button. Still not great, must have been a hot room and water creating a barrier.

Despite these, unusual, issues Jim still did fantastically. In the absence of Rosie I took over some of the Special FX team role. Oh, I love “A Spitting Image”! If you haven’t seen Jim recently you won’t be aware of the chaos that is created during this song. Along with another of Jim’s friends we covered the audience in water and silly string. I will apologise right now to the person I saw put there hood up and promptly squirted them with water, it was VERY childish of me, but slightly funny!

AFTERWARDS

This being a double gig meant that instead of packing up and driving home we moved the essentials into the beautiful main hall and headed off with one of the Churches leaders, Dave Gregg, for a meal and chat. I found it a privilege to be sharing some of who I am and what I’ve seen with both Dave and Jim as well as listening to what they had to say. After a great meal, you can’t go wrong with steak, Jim and I headed back to the hotel for a pint and early night, though to avoid a repeat of the Saturday morning I booked an alarm call.

SUNDAY MORNING

Another early start, though happily I made it up for breakfast (without the use of the alarm call) which to my delight was a fantastic all you can eat fried breakfast, and by 8:45 I was checking out and jumping in the van ready for the short drive to the Church. We arrived first and waited to be joined by the tech team, worship team and others. Whilst they soundchecked I wired in my bits, Jim put his props up and a fantastic guy, who’s name escapes me, laid a different VGA cable for us. We all finished at about the same time ready for Jim’s sound check which is always an odd time because once I’ve established the FoH rig works is silent - who needs extra noise when Jim’s using IEM?

As it was Fathers Day Jim’s plan had been for a re-dedication of Fathers and the importance of our Heavenly Father as the perfect Dad. I know that he did a lot of his classic songs, plus one or two new ones. The Camels, who were on much better behaviour, performed Jesus and got a couple of the Worship team involved (see photo above). Grandad was Grandad and bought his brash attitude on life to Southport, but it was still good to see him! All too soon Jim’s time was over and the meeting descended into what could be described as a family like Holy chaos, prayer going on left right and centre; The old, the young and the middle aged all joining in. This was Church. This was Family. It was wonderful to see

Pack up came, and went. Jim headed off to the big mountains of Wales and I headed back down South. But what a great weekend!