We were sitting in the office when an annoying, high-pitched alarm began to sound. I walked around the building to discover that half of the lights were out; I learned soon after that power in the auditorium was off. Further investigations revealed that a transformer had blown, and it would take some time to fix it – so much time that we wouldn’t have the auditorium for our student concert night.
What began as a small crisis turned into a surprisingly beautiful evening. Crammed into a seminar room at Judson University, equipped with nothing but one microphone, a few guitar amps, and a drum set made up of a snare drum and a 6″ splash cymbal, the student concert went off without a hitch – quieter than normal, smaller space than normal, no stage lights.
We had singer/songwriter acts such as Danielle Thomas (with faculty member Greg Horne)
A bunch of really sweet blues numbers such as “Got My Mojo Workin’:
and a ton of other good tunes with lots of energy and audience participation:
The night ended with a sing-a-long of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”, sung my NGW’s own Matt Smith and led by a young man from Milan named Elio:
We were all delighted at how nice the evening was! It reminded us of the “good old days” of NGW, when we were at the CT campus and had outdoor concerts on the patio in front of the office. We almost considered not going back to the stage for the second night, but we did. To be continued…