The all too familiar hum of a van traveling mile after mile is something I will never tire of. Music playing upfront in crappy speakers for the driving crew, rattling doors and creaks of a vehicle with over 311,000 miles on it, sporadic laughter of conversations, and highway after highway is the atmosphere I am immersed in yet again. We arrived at Hebrews Fort Wayne and were greeted by such familiar and loving faces. It’s been almost 9 months since we last played this place and over 2 years since we first met the fantastic people that run and come to this venue.
Quiet Science walked in as we were sound checking. It’s been a while since we’ve seen them on our last tour together and all of sosaveme was excited to meet up with them and get to spend the next few weeks together. They are truly an impressive band we feel honored to know and are humbled to share the stage and road with them. When you first tour with a band there is always the “feeling out” phase. This is where you have to get to know their personalities, their humor, how they operate, in order to fall into an understanding of one another. Since we’ve toured with QS before, we stepped right into where we left off, touring with friends. I remember eating dinner before the show and hearing Robby interact with people and said to myself, “I’ve missed this guy’s humor.”
Quiet Science
The show went great for a first day on tour. I felt that we were a little rusty as a band getting back into the swing of things. Other than our CD release show on the 7th of October, we hadn’t play a show since June 25th and our last tour was in February. So we had to get our touring legs back again. Recording a CD certainly changes your routine.
When the show ended we were figuring out where we were going to stay when I remembered I needed to call a RYFO family about staying with them (RYFO is an organization that touring artists can hook up with host families to stay at when on the road). So at 10pm at night I called a number I had never called before, to talk to a person I had never met, to ask them if 6 people could stay at their house. The response I got was a pause, and a, “Yes, that will be perfectly all right.” I have to say, I was a little nervous doing this for the first time. I didn’t know what to expect or what we were in for. What I came to discover when we knocked on that door at 12am was the most loving and welcoming family. We were greeted by the whole family at the door and had food waiting for us. We stood in the kitchen eating and talking and in the living room listening to music and talking about our shared experiences in music, as n artist and as a host to artist. The following morning they saw us off with a prayer and loaded us with anything we needed.
Breakfast with the Lubs Family
It is astounding to see the generosity of complete strangers and to see the active work and love of Christ. This family continuously opens their home to bands and does it with the desire to serve like Jesus did, to love those who they are not indebted to nor obligated to care for. It was such a great experience to sit and listen to their life journey and how they had arrived through circumstance and situations into the place where we were meeting them.
sosaveme has always said that people are what matter the most. Not the songs, not the venues, not the travel, not the attention. This is reaffirmed by every person we meet. All of them have a story to tell and a life we feel honored to be apart of. I was at the Hebrews venue a year ago listening to a story of guy who was about to make a huge change to his life and was looking for direction and clarity in what to do. He asked all of sosaveme to pray for him and his family. Last Sunday this same guy came up to me to share a testimony of all of the changes that had taken place in that year and how some of the very things we had prayed about had come to pass in his life. On Tuesday we sat in another RYFO home in Indianapolis and heard story after story of a family who was changing the inner city with programs to help the disenfranchised, the poor, and the forgotten people of society. Listening is an art I am learning a lot about this year.
I honestly can’t imagine another line of work that takes me to places it does and to meet the wonderful people I get to meet. There is so much that has happened in such a short amount of time on this tour that its hard to believe we are just getting started– it has only been three days.
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Enjoy this funny video of Jon at The Goshen Theater giving us all a pep talk pre-show.
