Independence Day Celebration- Cadillac Style

Sojourn performed in Cadillac, Michigan on Sunday, July 2 for the town’s annual Independence Day celebration. The day saw a couple musical acts, a festival in the park, a parade, and lots of other stuff happening around town capped by fireworks at dusk.

I got to town a tad early, Noon. This gave me plenty of time to check out downtown Cadillac as I have only passed through on previous trips. Many of the downtown buildings are quite historic and photogenic. I enjoyed my afternoon strolling around with my camera in the beautiful warm weather with a gentle breeze floating in off of Lake Cadillac.

Later in the afternoon, the rest of the band arrived and it became more of a family thing. Personally, I enjoy having friends in Adam, Dean, and Tim and their families as much as performing and making music with them. So, I got to spend some time with Marge, Linda, and Michelle and just be a part of the Sojourn Family. I’m sorry my wife couldn’t take part.

As we ended the softball, picture taking, and lunchtime activities, the guys started setting up equipment. This venue was quite spacious especially compared to what we are used to in coffee houses and the like. I had an entire step of the stage to myself! We had both of Tim’s subs in place and we were ready to rock, or something…

As we prepared and even when we were just goofing around, the Parmenter Clan were handing out fliers containing information on our performance, a little bit about the band and some lyric of our music. I’m not sure how well this worked, if one worked and they stayed to listen to the whole show, the seed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been planted. That’s worth the trip.

It became close to our scheduled time and Adam got his usual nerves in place and we were still ironing out a feedback problem in the PA. I’m not even going to speculate on what the issue was or was not, but I got to ‘test’ the bass drum about a million times! Later, on the way back home, I noticed my right leg felt different from my left. As we became satisfied, we were introduced to a great crowd of mostly folks from our host, Temple Hill Baptist Church.

Off we go. Adam opened us with a rousing, and accurate, rendition of the Star Spangled Banner which the audience jumped right in on. The first part of the show was quite energetic. I felt great in front of that many people. I also had this feeling when we were doing our sound check on stage at the GR Rain Festival but didn’t get a chance to capitalize on it! Maybe I had too much energy because the tempos seemed unsure. We weren’t together, but our onlookers were appreciative of the music. Musically, our performance was lack luster. I dropped the ball, as I think we each did from time to time; nothing new on that front.

The best part of the show was not the music, but between. Adam was in the zone. He was good during our songs but during the gutter between the songs he was great! If Tim wanted to tweak something, he would just point at Adam. Now, most of us that say we love Christ, love to witness, and want to tell the world about Jesus will fall on our face it we are put on the spot. This Sunday, Adam delivered the message, aided by our music, that you can be saved through Jesus Christ. Our songs are almost a complete spectrum of the Christian life which helped to form the purpose of the evening’s performance. It’s almost as if the spoken words were the black and white outline of a picture and our music was the color filling the outline, brining it into perspective, fleshing out the message.

On the whole, I look at the entire trip as a success. I was prepared for rain and it didn’t, we didn’t have to stop in the middle of a song, and we delivered the good news about Christ. Sounds easy to do, but man, there was a lot of work and heavy lifting involved. I can’t wait to do it again.

John

http://www.sojournband.com/

More photos from downtown Cadillac:

http://pictures.kb8sfr.net/Sojourn-Cadillac