My Upcoming Gig

I'm doing a concert later this month.

Now, I don't do a lot of concerts. I might do one or two songs at a time for church services and such. I occasionally lead worship somewhere. But today I received an e-mail requesting help "preparing a news release", asking for "a high resolution photo to provide to the media", "a couple of quotes about your work", and a copy of my "logo". After I stopped laughing and got up off the floor, I thought two things.

First, "I'd better start practicing".

And, second, "how do I respond to this?"

I don't have any current photos of myself with my guitar, just with my wife and kids. I'm a no go on the logo, too. A short description of my "work"? Uhh...

This reminded me of a concert my friends and I did back in 1980. We had an opportunity to play our first ever concert at a youth rally some church was having - several church youth groups all coming together at a centrally located church. I was the contact person for some reason and the youth rally people wanted a sample of our music. We didn't have any recordings of ourselves (we were teenagers with no money and minimal equipment), so I made a mix tape of several popular Christian singers and bands of the time. These included Keith Green, Dallas Holm, Amy Grant and others. We were going to be covering some of their songs in addition to doing our own original tunes. The note I sent with the tape said that these were some of the songs we would be doing.

The youth rally people thought the recordings I sent were actually of our band! I got a call from a woman who was helping organize the rally. She said, "we heard your recordings and we are absolutely thrilled! We can't wait to hear you live!"

I didn't say anything.

I was too surprised. I finally just said, "Yes, Ma'am... We're looking forward to the concert, too".

A few weeks later we showed up. Our drummer couldn't hold a steady beat and completetely fell apart during his obligatory drum solo. Our electric guitar wouldn't stay in tune - and even if it would, none of us knew how to play lead riffs. Our keyboard was the church's ancient upright piano and it wasn't even close to being in tune. Our bass, acoustic guitar and vocals were o.k., but nothing like what everyone was expecting from "our recordings".

As we started playing, the youth leaders looked disappointed and the youth were pretty much bored out of their minds.

My Mom liked it, though.

Below I've included a snippet of that concert, featuring me on electric guitar. More than a snippet would be way, way too painful. It makes me cringe and laugh every time I hear it.

So, I'm off to my photo shoot (I'll be re-creating the Rudolph Valentino photo above). I'm sending some logo ideas down to the boys in computer graphics. And I've come up with the following "quotes about my work":


"Mr. Watts appears to be in pain as he sings, no doubt from fingers unused to playing 15 songs in one hour's time".

"The first few songs were well received, but he blew his voice out early and the rest of the show was excruciating".

"Unfortunately, Mr. Watts did not sing with his beautiful wife tonight. Had she been present, there would at least have been someone pleasant to look at".

"Mr. Watts should not begin every song with, 'Uh, this next song is about...'. Just sing the song, Chip. We'll figure out what it's about."


I'm begging you, friends... Please pray for me. This could be very embarrasing.

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(By the way, the singer on this snippet of our song from 1980 is now the pastor of the church where this concert will take place. And the horrible electric guitar player was me.)