(just) The Bass Player

After nearly a month of touring out west with Casting Crowns, The Afters, & Lindsay McCaul, we finally made it back home for a few days. The tour has been really great, but getting home was a welcome and needed rest. No matter how exciting travel can be, after 2-3 weeks, your brain starts to sizzle, and all you can think about is getting home. The Come to the Well tour goes into December, but from here on out, we get to be home a few days every week. Medicine for our souls.

Now, back east and south, we’ve had shows in Memphis, Nashville, and Savannah, GA, and so far they’ve been really good. About half the Sanctus camp lives in Nashville, so it was great having that “hometown” show of sorts. Next week we’re heading out to Auburn, AL, Lexington, KY, Greensboro, NC, and Macon, GA. If you’re in any of those areas, you better come see us!

Anyway, enough with the jabber. Here’s some photos from Nashville. A huge thank you to Dale Manning for taking them!

All Photos by Dale Manning

Come to the Well Tour - Photo by Jordan Owen

There are a lot of places in the good ol’ US of A that we enjoy traveling to. However, I have to say that overall, the Pacific Northwest is our collective favorite. This is partially because it’s so far from home, and we don’t get to visit very often, but mostly it’s because the area is completely unique and gorgeous, and the weather is always just perfect.

Since our writing day in Lake Tahoe, the Come to the Well tour has been caravaning all around this region. We’ve made stops in Roseville, CA (a suburb of Sacremento), Portland, OR, Redmond, WA (a suburb of Seattle), Vancouver, Canada, Kennewick, WA, and Salt Lake City, UT. There is so much I would like to say about each of these tour stops, but it’s late and I’m falling asleep. Instead, I’ll just say that we really, really, REALLY enjoyed 5 of the 6 cities.

You work it out…

Just kidding. That’s one of my favorite jokes, courtesy of Jason Gray. He’s awesome. He’ll be in the room with the five us and as he’s about to walk out the door say, “I really like 4 of you. You work it out”, and then shut the door behind him.

Aw. I miss that guy.

Anyway, thank you for being so great to us Northwest. We hope you’ll have us back soon!

Come to the Well tour - Photo by Jordan Owen

Come to the Well Tour - Photo by Jordan Owen

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A beautiful night Roseville, CA - PS, I took this photo with my iPhone.

Stops in Portlandia #1 - Stumptown Coffee

Stops in Portlandia #2 - Powell's Books

Stops in Portlandia #3 - Voodoo Donuts

A Day off in Seattle

On the road - Gorgeous mountains outside Salt Lake City, UT

Photo by Mark Anderson

A few weeks ago we ran across our friend from the road, Al Denson. He’s been involved with Christian music for a long time and is an all around swell guy. He offered places for us to stay and rest in different parts of the country if we happened to be passing through them. Well, it just so happened we were. The first place was his ranch in Texas where we rode 4-wheelers. It was a great and refreshing day.

The second was a condominium at Lake Tahoe in Nevada. After our stop in Universal City, CA, we just happened to be headed north with a day off. So we called Al up, and he was more than happy to let us use the space.

Photo by Mark Anderson

We decided to commit this day to writing music for our next album. Earlier in the summer we borrowed a family’s lake house in Michigan for writing, and it was incredible. We were hoping to get some more of that good mojo going on the road…after all, it’s autumn in Lake Tahoe. Mountains, woods, water, crisp clean air. It’s such an inspiring atmosphere and a place we’d never been before.

Photo by Mark Anderson

Photo by Mark Anderson

I’ll say one thing about being in a band and our work being creative in nature. Creativity doesn’t play well with time contraints. Sometimes it flows fast and free and you have to do all you can just to keep up, but other times, and much more frequently, you have to “wrestle the bear to the ground”, as someone smart once said. This writing day was a day of wrestling that old bear. By the end, we got somewhere and we got somewhere good, but it was hard work, and it’s still incomplete. In other words, the bear isn’t down yet, but that’s alright because winter is coming and he’ll be going to sleep soon.

Wait, does that mean a hybernating bear is easier to wrestle, and our music will put people to sleep? That’s a bad analogy. We can’t have that.

I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.  Lake Tahoe is gorgeous and awesome. The end

Photo by Mark Anderson

Photo by Mark Anderson

Photo by Mark Anderson

Photo by Mark Anderson

Photo by Mark Anderson

Jaws

I’m doing a terrible job of keeping up with tour pictures and things. Sorry friends. Today’s post happened over a week ago in Universal City, CA. We accidentally snuck onto a tram tour at Universal Studios. We didn’t know we were sneaking. We thought it was free, but some other guys from the tour tried it later and got the boot. Whoops…my bad. But, that’s part of being in a rock n roll band, right? Sneaking into things…even if it is an accident?

It was a fun tour. It ran us through Jaws, Jurassic Park, Back To The Future, King Kong, Fast and the Furious, and a bunch of other stuff.

Jurassic Park

Clock Tower from Back to the Future!

Ship from King Kong

Dancing cars from Fast & Furious

The best part of the day was right before the concert. We had the great privilege of meeting one of our favorite childhood stars, Candace Cameron! Otherwise known as DJ Tanner from Full House. It was extremely awesome, and she’s super cool. We also got to meet her sister and husband who among other things, own a faith-based toy company called Alphabet Alley. It’s a great resource for toys with solid spiritual values. Check it out.

Sanctus Real with Candace Cameron and the Flemings!

Our favorite DJ is defeinitely DJ Tanner

Where's my sandwich?

What the heck am I thinking about in this photo? 10 points for the best caption…

Anyway, I’m going to run off from Universal City, CA here and try to write about Lake Tahoe. Catch you up north!