(just) The Bass Player

What’s the deal? I pack undergarments for 2 weeks, it’s only been 1, and yet I’ve run through all my socks. Where am I going wrong? Is it some deep-seeded need for extra clean feet or just poor arithmetic? Either way, I can’t be starting a tour as awesome as Come To The Well without socks. That’s no way to make new friends.

Anyway, enough talk of socks. Here’s some photos of us riding 4-wheelers.

A huge thank you to Al Denson for offering us a great and relaxing day at his ranch.

We’re beyond excited to be apart of this fall tour with Casting Crowns, The Afters, and Lindsay McCaul. It’s going to be such a good adventure, and we’re looking forward to a lot of truly good things to come from it. Keep us in your prayers as we get rolling. I’ll do my best to share the stories on here as they come.

For now, we’ll be seeing you in El Paso, Texas!

dan

En Fuego Festival - Verbena, Alabama.

So our set time was at 6:30pm. Just in time for the sun to set directly in our eyes. Chris convinced me to wear my sunglasses. I always feel a little strange doing this. I don’t know why. Maybe I feel like I’m hiding something. Or maybe there is a better connection between band and audience when we can see each other in the eyes. Or maybe I’m just too cool for school. Who knows.

Anyway, he convinced me to wear them, and it’s going alright until about 20 minutes in when the sun sets below the horizon. I no longer need them. Not only do I not need them, they’re annoying. It’s too dark. It’s too dark, and surely everyone in the crowd wonders why this idiot is wearing sunglasses when it’s dark. He thinks he’s so cool. At about this time I see Chris take his sunglasses off and put them on his amp. I see Pete throw his Sanctus Real sunglasses into the crowd. Matt and Mark knew better than to wear them in the first place. The problem for me is that I have pitiful vision. My sunglasses are prescription, and my normal glasses are on the bus. What is poor Danny to do? Wear sunglasses in the dark and feel funny about it, or take them off, play blind, and feel funny about that. It’s a lose/lose situation. Oh, and my microphone keeps shocking me every time I sing. Unrelated, but Lose/Lose/Lose. All I do is lose.

Since there is no winning for me, I decide to try something new and play the rest of the show with my eyes naked. No glasses. A little dangerous but could be fun, right? It kinda is. Everybody disappears. My bandmates become squabbly blobs and the audience becomes a wash of bright colors. I glare across the stage at Chris to razz him for what he’s done to me. At least, I think it was Chris. It could’ve been an ostrich, a Jonas Brother, or a basketball hoop for all I knew. Although I doubt anyone brought any of those things up on stage while this was going on. It was probably Chris. Anyway, he felt bad about it, but I thought it was funny, like a great accidental prank.

So good one Chris.  Now I’m going to change all the settings on your amps and guitar pedals.

dg

What's up En Fuego!

After our day in Alexandria, I’ve decided that we don’t make it down to Louisiana near enough. Every time we’re there, it’s awesome. They take such good care of us. Their sense of humor is as quirky and great as their cajun accent. They feed us some of the greatest food. Jambalaya, crawfish, things like that. This time it was gumbo with cajun seasoned crackers and homemade fried chicken. They also took us to Spoons, their local frozen yogurt spot, which although not exactly cajun, was still delicious and again, the folks were friendly.

Pulling in, this sign was the first thing we came across, which is always a good feeling.

Matt sharing about our song, The Redeemer

The concert was as good as the rest of the day. It helped that we had all afternoon to work out the kinks in soundcheck. One of these days I’ll write a post about soundchecks and how awful they are. They’re the worst. I mean, hate is a strong word, but we hate them. I think every band does. This day in Alexandria though, everything was good. Our amps sounded good. Our monitor mixes were good. We felt like a better band because everything was working right, which in turn enabled us to give more.

Anyway, the day was great. Thanks Alexandria. Two thumbs up

Last week we played just down the road from Toledo in Bowling Green, OH. It was the grand opening of BGSU’s new basketball arena. What an outstanding night!

Over 400o people were in attendance.

Tenth Avenue North played.

We added a couple members to our band including a string quartet.

I looked cool in my hat and jean jacket ;)

Chris and Jeff look cool all the time

Matt sang songs

Mark drummed drums

Mikey rocked the Hammond Organ. We’ve never had someone do that with us before. It was awesome!

I looked angry and pointed at Mark, but I wasn’t really angry at all.

At the end, BG gave us all hats to wear

And one of the coolest things anyone has done for Sanctus Real, the promoter, Scott Bressler, had a brick made to mark the event. Next time you’re in BG, you’ll have to look under the right wing of the Falcon statute and see it.

Thank you to everyone who came to the show and made it such a special night. Can’t wait to do it again. And Thank you Brett Thomas for letting me post your awesome photos.

After Spirit West Coast, I ditched the band and spent three days in California with family. I didn’t have many plans for my adventure except for a couple things. I wanted to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur and see the Bixby Canyon Bridge. Well, I wanted to look at the ocean and mountains too, but I wanted to see the bridge in particular because I’ve read books and listened to songs about it, and they’ve inspired me. If you’ve read a Jack Kerouac book or listened to Death Cab For Cutie, I’ll say I have a different belief system, but as a fan, it was great to get my geek on and stand where they stood and see what they saw and were inspired by.

So we did it, and it was a really neat thing to have this new insight into their stories. We drove over the Bixby Creek, past the famous Nepenthe restaurant, and on down to McWay Falls, a unique 80 ft waterfall that drops directly into the Pacific Ocean. Might I add that it was the most gorgeous place I’ve ever been?

After that, we headed north toward my Aunt’s home across the bay from San Francisco. The next morning, she forced her Saab convertible upon me and so with top down I wandered the region trying to take in as much as I could. I drove through Napa Valley, over to Santa Rosa, and on down to Muirs Woods and Beach. I bought old Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac records in Berkeley. I ate awesome local brunch at Sunny Side Cafe and delicious dinner at Becheeso’s Mediterranean. The next day I reunited with an old friend from home and we explored some of San Francisco. He introduced me to ice cream from Humphrey & Slocombe. I tried candied ginger, salt & pepper, and Blue Bottle Vietnamese coffee ice cream (which was really good! …but doesn’t beat Jeni’s Splendid).

The trip was really great, and it was a blast hanging with family and friends that I don’t get to see enough of. I can’t wait to get back out with them again. I also felt privileged to visit a part of our country that the rest of us hear so much about and has garnered many reputations. From jazz to Beat to hippies to drugs to homosexuality to going green to fine wine to organic food to sourdough bread; things there are different than the midwest, which is different than the south, which is different than the north. Cali residents are proud of their claims to fame, just as we all are. In that respect, I also found it no different than Ohio or Tennessee or Texas. We’re all deeply connected to home and the ground we live on, and we’re all looking for our place to fit in. We’re all drowning and in need of rescue. From coast to coast, church to jail, rich to poor. We all need The Redeemer.

Some folks just get better scenery.

I had been looking forward to last Saturday’s festival outside Monterey, CA.

First off, the temperature was in the 50’s & 60s, which was a wonderful departure from the 100 degree festivals we’d been playing at. Second off, it’s held inside a curvy, hilly racetrack where only two weeks earlier, I watched on the television the only MotoGP World Championship race in the United States. What’s Moto GP, you ask? It’s a bunch of these guys doing this stuff…

Crazy motorcycle racers

Our visit to Leguna Seca wasn’t quite as dangerous as theirs. Saturday morning, we flew from Detroit and Nashville into San Jose and were picked up and driven to the festival. The Afters were there. Tenth Avenue North was there. TobyMac. Phil Keaggy. It was a great day of music to be apart of. After we finished playing our set, we hung out with KLOVE. Thank you Spirit West Coast for having us. Thank you everyone who watched us and came and said hello.

Once all our duties were performed and the sun began to set, turning a comfortable breezy day into a frigid cold night, it was time to leave. The band hopped back in the van and rode off to San Jose. They had to catch early flights home, but I didn’t. I arranged plans to ditch those jokers and stay out in area with family and go exploring, which I did for next 3 days and will tell you about tomorrow.

Tomorrow...

July 23^rd. Dallas, Texas. Six Flags Amusement Park.

According to the thermometer, it’s 100 degrees in the shade. It’s so hot, two kids throw up in the front row while we attempt to play. Actually, I’m not convinced it was from the heat. Maybe we’re so terrible, we make kids puke. Hmm…you can choose your own adventure here.

Anywho, before we went on, I met a guy back stage. He was a happy, handsome fellow in his mid-twenties. A few years ago, he lived in Ohio, working for an environmental group that cleaned up a huge crude oil spill running from Findlay all the way to Lake Erie. I’d never heard about this spill. Now he worked at Six Flags, doing security and such.

I’d only known my new friend for a minute when he started telling me about a girl that was coming to the show. He’d never actually met her but was really digging her. She was a mid-twenties, single, Christian mom who worked hard 7 days a week. Since he was a young, ambitious, single, Christian guy who liked kids, I liked the potential of these two.

This guy had a heart of gold. He’d really only seen a picture of her (shared by their mutual friend), but he pulled strings and called in favors for her to come to the show for free. Free parking, free tickets to both the park and concert…everything needed to make a nice day for a mom who might not have the time or money otherwise. He didn’t want to meet her at the park. “Why on earth not?” I asked. He said he just wanted to let her have a good day at a theme park and a concert with no strings attached. He’d meet her some other time.

Personally, I don’t know how he could stand it.

As we talked, he kept glancing around the corner to look into the crowd and see if he could spot a girl that looked like her. Sure enough, he did. She was sitting with a friend, about 30 yards away. And from my surmising, she seemed to be looking for a guy somewhere around the stage that looked like him. It was cute. I hoped she was as anxious about him as he was about her.

Anyway, that’s all the scoop I got. We played our show and then flew home. I don’t know if they met or not, but I’m rooting for them, and I’d like to think they did. I’d like to think it was charming and nervous, but who knows. I guess we can all choose our own adventure on this one too.

The time has come! We’re writing for our next album. It will be our sixth, and this puts us in a new ballgame. We’ve been around for awhile. We’ve already recorded 50+ songs over the last 10 years…in a genre that only writes on one general topic. Add to that, people seem to like our last album best, so now we have a new standard to meet. In other words, we don’t to make an album we don’t believe is our best. We’re excited about the endeavor, but we’re also nervous. What do we have to say this time that we haven’t said already? Then, how do we say it in a way that is compelling and melodic? Do we still have all this in us, or is our best music behind us?

To get the creativity going, we started with a change in writing environment. In the past, songwriting took place either in Toledo or on the road in dressing rooms, which can be anything from bathrooms to elementary school classrooms to church nurseries, where the faint smell of diapers and ointment never fades, to middle school locker rooms, where the overwhelming smell of stinky teenagers will haunt you forever. In fact, I have two distinct memories. One is of the band sitting semi-circle in an echo-y locker room shower writing “Don’t Give Up” from The Face Of Love. The second is when several guys from various bands went to use showers assigned to us in a middle school locker room. As we’re going about our business, gym class ends and 15 teenage boys come barreling through the doors after an hour of playing dodgeball. I don’t know which group was more freaked out, them or us. Even as I write now, we’re in a hybrid of these…an elementary classroom that smells like D & O inside a church.

Sometimes this battle against space is helpful. It forces you to dig internally to find inspiration. This is good, and we’ll always write this way as it’s always available, but it’s time consuming, mentally taxing, and we’ve done it for five albums already. We needed a new method. We needed inspiration from something external. This might sound like a silly detail, but it truly has a drastic affect. To get 5 guys to feel the same emotion in making music, the writing environment is key. Think of it this way, if you’re sad, you’re not likely to write a happy song. Or, if you’re writing an energetic rock song, you won’t be lounging on a couch in a vibey, dim-lit room. Conversely, if you’re looking to write something melancholy and introspective, that’s exactly where you’ll be.

Our problem was, we didn’t know what we wanted this time. We wanted a space that could act as a catalyst. We wanted to be surprised. So we asked around and connected with a family who owns a lake house in Michigan. They were extremely gracious and let us borrow it for a weekend.

This was perfect. Almost everyone in Sanctus grew up traveling to different parts of Michigan. Whether it was to visit family, take vacations, or to go on dates with a future spouse, there’s something about the Mitten we all have a deep love for. Sure, everyone knows about Detroit because Eminem and the auto industry have told us all about it, but that’s just a dusty little corner in the basement room of an old beautiful house. Michigan is surrounded by the the largest bodies of fresh water in the world. There are vineyards and orchards and maple trees tapped for syrup. There are small lakes and sand dunes and the Mackinac Bridge, which leads to the Upper Peninsula where you can eat delicious pasties and come Autumn, watch the country’s most vibrant and invigorating change of seasons.

When we arrived at the cabin, we instantly felt a connection with the space. Inspiration was there, and we wrote three songs in three days that we all love. I believe they’re going to be some of our best. In the evenings, after the music had come, we put down our instruments and went outside to watch the sun set over the lake. It took with it our fears and insecurities about the next album. We were having fun making music as a band, and it had been awhile since we felt so relaxed.

Anyway, I have to go now and listen to our demos again. Catch you next time.

dan

After our minds were sufficiently blown from a night of watching U2, we left Chicago to begin a four-day, cross-country run of shows. We knew it was going to be a lot of work to make it happen. Chris and Kurt did a great job of preparing for the craziness, and it went as smooth as it possibly could. Arrangements involved planes, trains, buses, and automobiles. At times the schedule was extremely tight. Other times it was relaxed and calm. Here’s how it all went down:

Day One

1. 9:00am cst (10:00 est) – Drive from Chicago to Toledo. Hang in T-town for a couple hours. Drive up to Detroit and fly to Oakland, California. Several delays due to weather. Arrive at 1:30 am pst. Eat In n Out Burger (delicious, but bad decision). Go to sleep at 2:30am pst (5:30am est).

Total time awake: 19.5 hours

Day Two

2. Wake up whenever we can. For me it’s 10:00 am pst. Take the train into San Fransisco. Drink Coffee.

Mocha from Blue Bottle

Look at the bay.

A view of the Bay Bridge from San Fran

Pete takes a picture next to the Full House house.

"Everywhere you look..."

Runner picks us up in a van at 1:30pm. An hour before, in broad daylight, his window is smashed while inside the same In n Out Burger we ate the night before, and his belongings are stolen. We post on Facebook and Twitter for people to pray for him. Someone finds his bag in downtown Oakland and calls him. Electronics are stolen, including a nice camera, but personal effects are still intact, including his paycheck. Say another prayer for him if you think about it. He was a good guy having a terrible day. His name is Chris. After all this, we play at Alameda County Fair in the evening. Go to sleep at 12:00am pst (3:00am est).

Total Time Awake: 14 hours

Day Three

3. Wake up at 3:30am (6:30 est). Arrive at Oakland airport by 4:30am. Fly to Denver to Great Bend, Kansas.

Smallest plane we've ever been on. Pretty awesome

Landing in Great Bend

Play in the evening at the fairground where the first NHRA Drag Race was held. Get picked up by a bus that belongs to the band, Vota. Go to sleep on the bus 12:00am cst (1:00am est).

Total time awake: 19.5 hours

(At this point, I think I stopped taking pictures because I was too worn out by the crazy sleep schedule…)

Day 4

4. Drive 11 hours to Olathe, Colorado. Wake up around 10:00am mountain time. Hang out with Mercy Me (They’re fun guys). Play at Night Vision Festival before a big storm hits. Sleep on the bus at 12:00am mountain time (2:00am est).

Total time awake: 14 hours.

Day 5

5. Ride the bus to Denver airport. Arrive at 4:30am mst (6:30am est). Fly to Chicago. Get picked up by our bus. Drive to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Have good times playing at Three Rivers Festival with The Afters, Mandisa, and Aaron Gillespie. Nashville guys rent car and drive 8 hours home through the night. Arrive at 7:00am cst. Ohio guys head back to Toledo. Arrive at 2:00am est.

Total Time awake, Nashville: 26 hours. Total time awake, Toledo: 19.5 hours

Day 6

7. Sleep till Labor Day?

So anyway, it was a whirlwind few days that could’ve been a nightmare but went surprisingly well. Thank you, Lord, for making them so. Amen.

That’s all I got for now.

Catch you later.