Taking the band on the road

Last week we took 32 students and adults to Garden City Beach, SC for a spring break retreat on the theme Faith - It's what you do!. We stayed at the Garden City Retreat Center and Chapel. It is a great place to host a retreat.

We took our youth worship band, The Exit, on the road as part of the retreat and I really want to thank Karen, Casey, Drew, Brianna and Kathy for their hard work in leading worship. I'd also like to thank one of our adult leaders John Harvey for his efforts as a band roadie and for leading us through some fun songs on the keyboard.

It takes a lot to take a band on the road. I thought I'd give you a quick listing of the items that we took with us for a couple of reasons:

1. The list of gear gives you an appreciation for the equipment needed by a praise band to do it's work. As WHBC restarts contemporary worship this list is indicative of equipment we will need
2. To demonstrate the amount of planning that is required to conduct a youth retreat and how it is a team effort.

So, here the list - in no particular order:

• Roland electronic drum kit
• Drum throne
• Drum sticks
• Drum foot pedal
• 16 channel powered mixer
• Two speakers
• Two speaker stands
• Two 50' speaker cables
• Two 25' speaker cables (as a backup)
• Bass guitar
• Bass guitar Amp
• Three guitar stands
• Electric guitar
• Acoustic/Electric guitar
• Keyboard
• Keyboard stand
• Keyboard foot pedal
• 100' stage snake
• Three microphones
• Five direct boxes plus two spares
• Six 1/4" instrument cables
• Three 1/4" patch cables
• Eight 25' XLR microphone cables plus three spares
• Three mic stands (including one boom stand)
• DVD player
• Guitar effects pedal board
• One RCA to 1/4" adapter
• One 1/8" to RCA adapter
• Six RCA patch cables
• Two VGA cables
• Video Projector
  
• One wireless remote for laptop
• Two laptop computers
• Eight pieces of poster board (for a makeshift video screen)
• Double sided tape
• Screwdrivers
• Sheet music
• One guitar A/B foot switch
• Video camera and blank media
• Copies of slides with song lyrics, etc.
• Four music stands
  

Things we wish we had had with us

• Monitor speakers to help singers hear themselves so we could play/sing in tune.
• An amp with more inputs

Later this week I will have some posts on my approach to picking music for worship.