Join the Tribe and In the Hands of God

*schedules post to post exactly two weeks after the concert started*

To retell the happenings of that most delightful day...

We (this being Heather, Kale, and I) left our home at about 2:15 Saturday afternoon. GPS, suppers, cellphone, tickets, etc. all in hand. We drove for two hours (Google had said a hour and a half but with construction on various tollways it ended up being two hours) and found the highschool where the concert was to be held with only minimal difficulty. (Don't you hate it when it says, "You have arrived" and you actually haven't?)
I was uber-excited to find that we were the first in line! Woot! We were about the third person to arrive but, yes, first in line! The other cars really didn't mind and didn't actually 'venture out to get in line until we'd been there for about ten minutes. That was downright awesome!
Waiting in line was mostly excruciatingly boring. Near the beginning of our wait (after we'd been waiting for 15-30 minutes) Bryan Oleson came out of the building and walked right by us, met up with some people, got in a car with them, and drove off. (Incase you are totally confused: Bryan is the lead singer of VOTA. Also a former member of the Newsboys.) That was pretty cool.
People began to arrive in a steady stream at about 4. We (Gold Circle ticket holders) got into the building at six. We had been told earlier that when we got into the building we should go straight ahead to a big room (where the artist merch was being displayed) and "hang a left." Well, after we got our tickets ripped and were given blue wristbands we half-walked, half-ran to the big room and hung a left and...didn't see the door we were supposed to be lining up infront of. We found it after a few seconds but in those few seconds we went from first in line to about seventh. :( Most distressing. We stood there for another half hour or so. We took this opportunity to leave Heather to keep our spot and use the restrooms. We were right near the Newsboys' merch table so Kale went to look at that next and came hurrying back saying in an excited way that "they had it, they had it!"
"In the Hands of God?"
"Yeah! Come see!"
And so I went and saw and we both got a copy of that most awesome CD. I'm listening to it now, so, so good. More on that later.

Finally they let us in to the room where the concert would be. It was a basketball court with a state at one end and chairs lined up on the floor. The $35 people got the chairs and the $25 people sat on the bleachers. We got the three chairs in the second row right next to the catwalk on Jeff's side.

(A picture taken by one of the security people and posted, by them, to Facebook.)

I labeled it so those of us who don't know this kind of thing figure it out. This is just for perspective on where we were sitting and to make you all insanely jealous.

One we got our seat we sat for another half-hour waiting for the concert to start. The lady infront of us shorted all our waits quite nicely by engaging in a most interesting conversation. She started by asking us if we liked K-Love, the answer was no, of course, and then...

Her: I guess you all go to the same school?
Us: N--yes. We're homeschooled.
Her: Then you know each other through your homeschool group?
Us: We're sisters!
She looked at us kind of funny. "I'm a writer," she said, "I know when people are lying to me."

"You certainly don't look like sisters. Where are your IDs?"
"We left them in the car."
"Very convenient!"

Her: You made this all up on the way down.
Us: Why would we? Would we really sit down and make up a story?
Her: You've done it before!

"Your names don't even have rhythm."
"Maybe if we had all our names it would have rhythm."
"Yeah, what if we added all our siblings in? There's eight besides us."
Pause. "This is a Christian concert in a Christian highschool, you should not lie."

She was a British teacher turned (horror story) writer , and didn't think that homeschooling was very good because the students didn't learn the miseries of life fast enough. "I'm surprised your parents even let you out of the house, let alone letting you come down here. I guess I'm alright with homeschooling for academic purposes but the kids are so innocent. I will admit they're generally nicer than public schoolers, though."

"Do you have any brothers?"
"Three."
"And they're all little?"
"Yes."
"You're very good at this."

She introduced us to her daughter, Lisa, (who was third in line at the beginning and slid infront of us in the moving of lines). "These girls live in WI, they say they're all sisters and from a family of eleven. They're very nice but don't believe a word they say. And they're homeschooled!"
To which Lisa immediately replied, "Oh, that's wonderful! Public schools are corrupted and dangerous" and proceeded to tell us the evils of her school. According to her, the principal was perpetually drunk and one year she skipped school forty-two times before they caught her and gave her detention.

"Cheeseheads are very nice people, when my husband and I first came to the US we were in WI, it was Christmas time and we didn't really have anywhere to go and a couple we didn't even know invited us in and we had Christmas with them. They even gave us a present. You're very nice but you lie."

We also talked to her during the intermission and then at the end of the show, I think near the end when Kale got desperate to make her believe us she asked for pictures of all of us and we immediately grabbed our cameras and I moaned because I had deleted a picture of all the sibs off the camera just that morning and Kale showed her a pictures of about four of my siblings. I think she atleast mostly believed us then.

At one point during our waiting Jeff and Jody did a little miniature soundcheck. We (Kale and I) waved at Jody and he waved back, kind of a "Woah. Fangurls." wave. :P Jeff was ignoring the audience so we got nothing from him.

Well, then the concert started with a bunch of radio show host people plugging themselves. One of them threw t-shirts into the crowd but we were too far front. After them was a band called The Least of These (see the Myspace). Their music was okay. The guitarist was fantastic. Purty impressive. And the drummer was funny. That's all. We had alot of acts with really interesting people in them. That helps in the music business, I think.

After them was Sevenglory (see the webpage). They sang a few songs that I knew, kind of half and half. I like their music but I'm not a fan of them. I don't "know" them well enough, I guess. And unless you're a fan of the actual singers seeing them live isn't as awesome as it could be, or atleast, that's what I'm thinkin'. That was good. The guitarist was pretty good here too, but not as impressive as the other one, and the drummer wasn't as energetic and the bassist's pants--carrying on.

After them was VOTA (see the webpage). It felt like Bryan looked at me several times... :P He was interesting to watch and I like their music so this is the best act so far this evening. Will anyone tell me why the guitarist isn't in any of the publicity stuff? I'm too lazy to look it up myself. :P I enjoyed Hard to Believe, for obvious reasons, and found a new favorite VOTA song: Honestly. Love the bridge.

Then there was the intermission. I have a vast and great dislike for them. They are so boring. Unforgivably so.

Then Duncan got up (woot!) and introduced the top dude from GlobalTribe and that guy gave a miniature version of Paul's old speech. I liked Paul's way better. (Houston We Are Go is a great CD/DVD and all but some parts of it disapointed me and the leaving out of his speech is one of them.) After he got done talking there was another short pause and then all the 'boyz got up (Jody, Duncan, Jeff, and Mike) and Duncan introduced Mike. The setlist is not something I really remember. :P

It was Something Beautiful first, I know. Mike has a whole different way of singing than Peter. Peter does it the same every time and just like it's recorded on the CD whereas Mike's a little freer. He kind of does his own thing with the lyrics which makes it harder to sing to.

Then was Wherever We Go. I've never been a major fan of this song but, eh, whatever. In this one when Mike came down the catwalk he put out a fist for me to "bump" and I being the slow person that I am didn't do the "bump" properly. Sigh. :P

I don't really remember the order of the setlist but songs before the b-stage included were The Mission, Blessed Be Your Name, In the Light (dcTalk), In the Hands of God, and He Reigns. Mike made a mistake in He Reigns. There's been a lyric mistake in every single Newsboys concert I've attended but never one quite as large as this one. :P We sang the first verse, the chorus, and then Mike started singing the chorus again and the audience sang along with him like it was no big deal. Then after a moment we realized that Jeff was playing something different and Jeff prompted Mike has to where we were supposed to be and we carried on in the correct way. :D
The b-stage came. Mike did a Newsboys and dcTalk friendship history speech-thing. He sang old Newsboys songs (I'm Not Ashamed, Shine, and *squeak* Turn Your Eyes) and dcTalk songs (Coloured People is the only one I recognized) and then we sang Amazing Love, I believe. Mike gave a speech of sorts but I really couldn't hear a thing he was trying to say (the room we were in wasn't made for this kind of thing and everyone knows second row is not the best sound space). I did catch that he is the youngest of nine, though, which is pretty cool. On the way back from the b-stage Kale and I put our hands up to be high-fived by the band members. I got a bunch of Duncan's sweatcloth in mine (*snickers*) and Jeff kind of ignored us. *pouts*
They also sang Breakfast, Jesus Freak (Mike got a little freaky in that one!), and Duncan spun around and dueled with himself (the drum solo is the coolest thing ever from that close) and they closed with I Am Free. When Mike introduced the band he said that Jeff had a "baby face" and Jeff said "Who are you to talk" or something. That would mark the first time I've heard Jeff talk live without his vocorder thingy. Totally cool! :P
The audience stomped and cheered and waved their cellphones and stomped and cheered and begged for just a little more and the 'boyz came out and did Your Love is Better Than Life and It Is You. Afterwards, when they went to do their bow thing Mike went to stick the mic back on it's stand-thing but he didn't sicure it properly and it fell and rolled off the stage. Ha!

Now, my review of Tait:
I'd "come to peace" with the change awhile ago. I'm cool with it. Pete wants to head off, Mike's taking his place. All is well. The only problem is I'm just not a big fan of Tait's singing voice, style, stage presence, etc. For this reason, I think the Newsboys have dropped on my Favorite Artist list. I'll still love them, I think, just not quite as much. It's lacking in the old energy. I barely got off the floor once! And...yes, indeed.

After the concert we filed out into that center room and I bought VOTA's CD Vota (so original! :P ) and got it signed and all of us had fun meeting VOTA and getting our picture taken. My sister had her earbuds in and they asked what she was listening to and she said "Skillet." The bassist took her earbuds out of her ear and put it in his own, listened for a minute, and gave it back to her with a nod of approval.

I also got Sevenglory's CD, Atmosphere. And I found it amusing that Least of These sells their old, broken, and beat-up drumsticks at their merch table. (I saw two drumsticks fly out of Duncan's hands. Yet he didn't miss a beat. Awesome job, man!)

And that was the concert. We got home at eleven-thirty-ish. Kale slept part of the way back but Heather and I very loyally stayed awake (which was good because she was driving! :P ) Went to bed at, like, a quarter after twelve. Got up the next morning at seven-ish. Went to church, didn't fall asleep in church (woot! :P ), brought In the Hands of God to church and showed Kiwi the Paul Colman way to open CDs (she'd requested I show her), and when we got home I listened to it and found that I love it!
I was afraid when they said that it was going to be really rocky that it would be really hard rock but it wasn't. Kind of Thrive-esque with a little bit of my favorite album (Love Liberty Disco) thrown in. Dance is a little cheesy. I know, everyone's favorite. It seems I tend not to really like everyone's favorites. And I don't like the chorus of My Friend Jesus, and The Way We Roll isn't exactly as amazing as everyone is saying. I love all the others, though. Like RSL 1984, Lead Me to the Cross, The Upside, In the Hands of God, etc. etc. They've got some great tunes on here. A really nice "farewell" and last record with Pete.

And there, that's that.