Stamps-Baxter - Auditions begin...

I can't believe I'm still up. The time on this blog will be incorrect - it's actually almost one in the morning. I got home at 11pm, but I'm trying to book Ontario dates for our August visit, and this is the only chance I'm getting to do it. (by the way, if you have a church in Southern Ontario and you want a concert in August, I know this great singer from Nashville...)

Today was CD recording day. I spent the morning at the office catching up on Ben Speer Music stuff, but by all accounts, the recording was a great success. They did the whole thing in only 3 hours, which is pretty amazing!

In the afternoon, I visited Teri Reid's class to help her students prepare for their auditions tonight. The class will sing as a group on Friday night, but over half of them also wanted to audition as soloists. We went into the auditorium, grabbed a few mics, and practiced their songs. For most of them, just standing on a stage with a mic in their hand is brand new stuff, so I wanted to give them a chance just to stand there and see how it feels. There was also a lot of nervousness, and I think giving them this chance helped get through some of those nerves.

Our concert tonight was by No Other Name. This trio actually met at the school and moved to Nashville to start their music careers. Ten years later, they're full-time and just got signed with Curb Records. I didn't get to see the whole concert, but you can tell they've been together a while. Their voices are strong individually, and their chemistry and blend is wonderful.

After the concert, we began auditions. The SGMG (Southern Gospel Music Guild) visited us tonight with free pizza and brochures, and even free pizza couldn't draw the students away from the auditions. We're having 3 nights of auditions, so it's all pretty intense. Tonight and tomorrow is round one. The students must perform 60 seconds of any song, acapella (stressful!). If they pass round one, they move on to callbacks on Thursday, where they must perform the song they would want to sing on Friday. I don't know who's auditioning tomorrow, but there were some great people tonight.

At the end of auditions, there was a huge sigh of relief and a mad rush to the pizza tables. Great day, but very, very long!