It’s Crowdah! Say It!

Last night we all saw the David Crowder Band / Shane & Shane / Robbie Seay Band at the Lisner Auditorium over at George Washington University.

It was flippin’ sweet!!

Despite my doubts, we were able to drive downtown and park without a problem. We got there pretty much just as RSB was opening. When I agreed to go to this concert, I had no idea who was opening, just that David Crowder was playing. That was enough motivation for me to go.

Little did I know I’d be witness to the Triad of Texas Alt. CCM.

First off, I had no idea who this “Robbie Seay Band” was. Well, it turns out that I actually have heard them. One of the CDs we use for filler music at VeNture is the RSB! Sweet! When they played their first song - “Hallelujah, God is Near” I instantly recognized them. Music-wise, they lean more toward emo and modern alternative. Lyrically, better than average. Their live performance, though, was just OK. Obviously displayed some skill and they successfully built a wall of sound, but the energy was so-so. Part of the reason could have been that the entire audience was sitting the whole time, talking about how awesome the next two bands will be.

Next up was Shane & Shane. I had sampled a few of their songs beforehand, and wasn’t that intrigued. Well, their live performance wasn’t much different. If the whole concert was a three-movement sonata, they fit right in as the “Andante” movement. Their style is a duo of tenors with a strictly acoustic sound. Their drummer couldn’t seem to break out of the standard 2/4 beat and it seems there’s only so much you can do with a couple of tenors, besides some dynamics - but they only pulled that out on their opening song. Beside that, lyrically, they’re great. A lot of themes taken directly from scripture.

And last, but not least came David Crowder. It was everything I had hoped it would be. As soon as they got on stage, Dave told us all how the pastor who recently died when performing a baptism was the pastor of their church. Despite the sad news, they were determined to “defy death” with a joyous set. That they did. And well. The set was very high-energy and included some classic hymns DCB style. Even I was moving! Julie and I had a blast. I’m sure everyone else with us did as well. For the encore, members from each band came up and played. The last song was the “I Saw the Light” bluegrass tune from A Collision.

Plenty of cool gadgets, too, including an iMac (most likely running Reason), a Theremin, and a Keytar. David was quick to note the “phat beat” that the keytar generated, as he played a cheesy, 8-bit drum loop. One nice addition was a TV on the corner of the stage that displayed the lyrics of the songs - so even if you couldn’t understand what was being said, or didn’t know the words to sing along, they were there. It really helped keep the focus on worship.

Now, a side note about the lighting. It was interesting to see how the lighting was done for a mid-scale CCM concert. They had a rear, upside-down U-shaped truss with an array of intelligent lights, similar to the VL-1000s we use at IBC. At each side of up-stage was a pole with a pair of intelligent lights mounted on them. They used these to wash the stage with different colors. The lights on the truss were used with a fog machine to create a backdrop, and were occasionally used to shine light into the crowd and create gobo patterns on the walls and on stage. For the DCB set, they used a pair of floor lights centered around the lead vocal mic, pointed up at Dave, making him look kind of scary with his giant goatee, thick glasses, and fro. They also had a floor light positioned behind the positions at downstage right and left, creating a ‘mysterious’ effect.

For the RSB set, the lighting guy wasn’t very creative, just using a few standard lighting positions and cycling through colors, which sort of matched the moods of the songs. A lot of yellow/bright blue, purple and red. Sounds familiar! For the S&S set, he added a few jaggedy gobos that wandered around the stage and a few flashes out to the audience. For the DCB set, he focused on sending some cool gobos out to the audience, including a red spot with white circles around the edge of the beam. It was a cool look and created a sort of flickering effect from my point of view.