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This Past Weekend in IL, OH & PA
Mon., Aug. 21. 2006 11:41am EDT
A lot of wild things happened this past weekend in Pecatonica IL (Friday), Park Ridge IL (Saturday), Oregon OH (Sunday), and Elizabethtown PA (Monday), but should we really have been surprised?
As we mentioned in last week's newsletter, Friday was our keyboard player Bill "Wild Thing" Hubauer's 200th concert with ApologetiX. Pecatonica is located very close to Rockford IL, which made it a fitting locale for the occasion, because Bill's first started playing with us a semi-regular basis on February 27, 2004 in Janesville WI, which is also very close to Rockford.
Rockford was a key place in ApologetiX history -- the site of Q-Fest in May 1999, our first major festival, and our first meeting with the good people of Illinois and Wisconsin, many of whom are now old friends and were in attendance Friday night. One of those friends, Pamela Mathey (daughter of the world-famous Dawn Mathey), just returned from spending a year with Teen Mania Ministries in Texas and came to both Illinois concerts on Friday and Saturday. Welcome back, Pamela!
Speaking of Pamela and Saturday, Pamela Anderson was also at our Park Ridge concert -- but not the woman who just married Kid Rock (We didn't play "Choirboy," our parody of Kid Rock's "Cowboy," anyway). This Pamela Anderson moved to Illinois over 25 years ago from Wampam PA, which is located very close to our bass player Keith Haynie's home. In fact, we played the Wampam Centennial celebration back in 1996.
Speaking of causes to celebrate, congratulations to longtime ApologetiX fan Chris Christopherson, who also attended both Illinois concerts and told us the wonderful news that she is now engaged to her boyfriend, Michael Bailey. The couple are planning to marry next April. Chris is a great friend of ours, and has now seen us play at 39 concerts in 13 different states, tied with Jon Eklof for third place on the most-states list, behind Beth Davis and Larry Davis.
The organizers of the Park Ridge concert first found out about us while searching for new music for their puppet ministry, the Guppets (God's puppets). We love that name, although we still think they should have considered calling them the Park Ridge Family, but maybe we're partial to parodies of the Partridges because their mom, Shirley Jones, hails from Smithton PA, not too far from our beloved Pittsburgh.
While we're on the subject of "C'mon get happy!" we must say that although all of the weekend's concerts had great crowds, Sunday's was one of the liveliest in recent memory, particularly the teens in front of the stage. They were loud and boisterous, but they also demonstrated a surprising amount of Bible knowledge, answering questions from the stage regarding various topics from Nehemiah to the Gospels.
We had a large number of young people who chose to celebrate their birthdays (often bringing groups with them) at our concerts this weekend, most notably our good friend "Pipe Down" Marie Polick who celebrated her 17th birthday at our Elizabethtown concert along with her dad, Rich.
Monday's concert was also the one-year anniversary of the first time another one of our good friends, Greg Micher, ran sound for us, and he celebrated by -- running sound for us once again. Furthermore, we celebrated our fifth year in a row at the Elizabethtown Fair. Thanks to our buddy "Uncle" Jim Schreiber for hooking us up with those folks back in 2001!
Thanks also to:
our concert coordinators: Ron Murphy (Pecatonica); Carrie Mercer and Jeannine Woerz (Park Ridge); Sharon McQueary (Oregon); and Bev Laughlin (Elizabethtown).
our roadies: Larry (Oregon) Rich (Elizabethtown), and Greg (Elizabethtown).
our merchandise coordinators: Erin, Kelli, Connie, and Charlie (Pecatonica), Corey and Randy (Park Ridge), Julie, Lin, Rob, Shane, and Renee (Oregon); and Jenn, Marie, Heidi, and, surprise, our friend and Seamstress of the South, Wanda Rose Bush (Elizabethtown).
Before we close, we have one other thing to tell you. For last week's newsletter, we'd written an article about the previous weekend's concerts in Pittsburgh, but we forgot to include it. One important part of that article read as follows:
Honorable mention to the amazing Leasure family (Derrick, Brandi, Jenna, and Caleb), who were in attendance for all three concerts and have now been to at least one ApologetiX concert for eight straight weeks! That's got to be some kind of record, but we'd have to double check with their fellow Ohio native Beth Davis to make sure. Beth, who also attended all three concerts this past weekend, holds the all-time record for concerts attended by a fan who is not a blood relation (84 concerts in 18 states!)
Although that article wasn't included in the newsletter, it was posted online, and Beth was kind enough to answer our question (by the way, after attending our Sunday's show in Oregon, she was up to 85 concerts):
I went to 13 straight concerts (13 straight meaning didn't miss a single concert you played in that time frame) from Feb. 25, 2005 in Elburn IL to Apr. 16, 2005 in Berea OH, which would be eight straight weeks.
I had never actually sat down and figured out how many weeks I've gone with at least seeing you once per
weekend, but I just looked back through 2006 alone and the most I found was January 27 through March 19 -- nine straight weeks, 15 concerts :)
Not to be outdone, the Leasures were also in attendance at Sunday's concert, running their tally to a record-tying nine weeks! However, with next weekend's sole concert located in distant Montana, it appears they'll have to share that record with Beth. Ironically, both Beth and the Leasures were closer to Montana than they realized on Sunday night; a fan of ours named Corrina brought her teenage daughter, Montana, to her first ApologetiX concert ... in Oregon ... Ohio.
Yes, as we told you already, ApologetiX concerts are definitely where the wild things are.
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