Coffee and BBQ and Music, Oh My!

This full Saturday kicked off with the monthly church singles "Coffee Talk." For whatever reason turnout this time was mostly guys so we had some good guy talk, especially after the outnumbered girls retreated to the kitchen for girl talk.

But the big event for today was that about a dozen and a half of us had tickets to Winter Jam 2013!


Southern Man is not a big fan of contemporary Christian rock but he does love concerts and he figured there would be at least a few good groups there. He would not be disappointed.

We met at a local BBQ place...

The gang's all here! Photo by a kind passer-by.

The decor. Another hint to the identity of Southern State - all of the Texas tags were hung upside-down. As they should be.

Then we carpooled to the venue where thanks to the Southern Man Ticket Acquisition Group (in other words, we paid extra for early entry) and some not-so-subtle line jumping we got floor seats one section off the tee-shaped stage, in a front row so there was plenty of room, and near the bottom of the "tee" so we were only a few dozen feet from the performers when they came down that part of the stage.

Ready to rock! Photo by one of the gang, and cropped to hide the fact that Southern Man has neglected his diet of late. Which did not stop him from flirting shamelessly with every girl there.

The groups that played, in roughly this order, were Capital Kings, OBB, Jason Castro, Royal Taylor, Sidewalk Prophets, NewSong, Jamie Grace, Red, Matthew West, and TobyMac.

Turns out there was a small stage behind us as well and our row - yes, our row - was the conduit for musicians to run back and forth. Yes, the girls all squealed when Jason Castro came by. And one of our guys ran into Toby McKeehan. Twice.



The top two pics were nabbed from Instagram; the bottom one from T's FB page.



Red was amazing. At one point the lead singer came down into the crowd right in front of us; that video was shot from Southern Man's side (not sure who, everyone had their cameras out but this was probably by D). Christian rock sure didn't look or sound like this in Southern Man's younger days. After their set Southern Man ran upstairs and nabbed their latest CD.

Southern Man was also delighted to see that Christian music could sell out a 17,000-seat arena. It was a terrific night! Lord, the Psalmist wrote that they praised You with drums and dance, with strings and flute. Let our praise tonight on electric guitar and keyboard be equally sweet to Your ears. Amen.