Jammin' For Jamaica!

Tuesday nights I go to Northside Baptist Church here in the ‘Boro to a college/young adult church group, called “The Orchard” and I really enjoy it.  This group took a mission trip to Jamaica last year to lead worship and build churches and help the locals, and they are planning to take another mission trip for a week this summer.  There are 30 people going on this trip from The Orchard and there should be some great things going on there this summer, However, like any trip they had to do different fund raisers to make money for it.

A month or so ago, some friends decided to have a party marking the beginning of summer, the date changed a few times do to scheduling conflicts, but they finally decided April 28^th would be the party and it took off from there.  Andrew and I were asked to play music as Nelson/McBride, as well as The Artisan Stage, a band that is well known locally and consists of members of the surrounding churches and all good friends of mine now.  The party kept growing until it was decided to become a Show to raise money for Jamaica with a $5 cover. 

Andrew and I put together a list of songs we could do, a set list was actually harder to make up than I thought it would be.  We had about 45 min to entertain, so we narrowed it down to 12 songs, 3 originals and 9 covers.  We played through our set list at least once a day for two weeks up until show time.  The turn out was great, a lot of money was raised and I sang, which isn’t something I thought I could do, but I would say I did just fine.  I was most happy with the songs we wrote, my rendition of The Ballad of Jed Clampett, and The Eagles Hotel California, actually sounds cool on the ole five string.  A lot of people showed up after we played, but we were the opening act so that’s just how it goes.  There was a large group of Prom goers there watching us as well, I tell ya what, I wish I got to go see a country duo playing a back yard party before prom! 

So our first show as a duo is in the books, plenty of pictures were taken, I had my cowboy hat, and was doing my best Brad Paisley with one less string of course, and now we work towards playing more and more shows, every chance we get, any stage that will take us!