Jars of Clay/Caedmon's Call Concert Review

Gordon College
Boston, MA
March 28, 2003
by KJM

We [Kara and Melissa] saw the buses arrive fairly early and ran into Charlie then Dan before hand. Both of them remembered both of us and I talked to Dan about the open discussion about the perscuted church and the AIDS crisis that would be held later that day at 2:15. Then Melissa and I had lunch and the girls we stayed with on campus were SO generous and hospitable. One of them did my hair and makeup for the discussion which I had been asked by the coordinator of the concert to "lead" or prompt question for that day. I really didn't lead just asked the first question :) People were pretty talkative and asked alot of questions. We got a camcorder rented from the media center thanks to my old roommate Jess Belt.

The Discussion:

It was a pretty small room with about 40 people by the end of it in it and man was it hot in there! At least it was for me but the guys talked a lot and gave a lot of answers to each of the questions. Melissa was nice enough to hold the camcorder the whole time in recording all of it. The guys seemed worn out from touring, but they were willing to do this and you could tell they were passionate and shared a lot of their insight. I have yet to watch the video tape but as usual they gave a lot of deep answers. Afterwards we chatted with them for a bit and got some pictures.

It was pretty hot in the room where we had the discussion but by dusk it was COLD. Lynn showed up and it was good to see her smiling face. I am glad her and Melissa got to meet. My fiance Brian had some trouble getting down there but he made it. They finally let us in and it took a while for the meet and greet to get set up. I had asked Dan earlier if we could pray with them and he had said "I think we can definitely arrange that." The meet and greet was MUCH better than the last one I had been to. Even though it took a while to round up all the guys we just hung out in a small area and there weren't that many of us. Oh yes and we ran into Molly and Jenn just before hand. It was a crew of JoP! So at any rate, you could tell things were kinda helter-sketler but thankfully there were only about 20 people in the meet and greet and it was much better than the "autograph line" meet and greets. Brian showed up with his "Lowell" hockey jersey on he,he and Charlie was all surprised and to see that.

All the guys seemed pretty tired and worn out with the possible exception of Steve :). He was more friendly and out going and had thanked me for getting the discussion together and said he was suprized by how many people showed up. He said that usually when they say they are going to talk about helping those with the AIDS crisis a very small amount of people show up! I was surprized but at the same time it made sense and I told him this discussion had been posted as something about the persecuted church or just a "tea with jars" thing and that is probably why more people showed up. He said "Ohh so that would be why."

We hung out took pictures and the guys were so nice enough that even after the concert had started (with GlassBird opening before CC) they still hung out with us and wanted to gather with us in prayer. We put our arms around each other in one big circle and the jop prayed and once there was a lull I asked if one of the band members would pray and Dan did :). So that was that and everyone else scooted themselves out and it was kind of a blur but somehow I wound up just with Dan at the end of it and I asked him to come and talk to jop. Neither of us had a piece of paper on us and it took a while to figure out what were were gonna do. But I looked at my meet and greet pass and said "Oh I don't need this." Pealed it off and wrote my username and password for jop so he could post there via my name. I didn't have enough room to write the address but I said I would post it on jarchives. He agreed, we hugged, I thanked him and said good bye.

The Concert (or in midwestern accent "cah-cert"):

Glassbird was cool and very much from the heart. Caedmon's call was nice but I was kind of upset when the lead singer put his very honest opinion about how he felt this was a just war. I just cringed because I knew that Gordon was really torn about it and on top of it he played "The Lord Is a Warrior" right after it. I just felt that really wasn't needed. But other than that it was good to hear the Caedmon's songs that I had grown to love. In addition to a Beatles song :). The voice did not sound that different even though Derek wasn't there.

When Jars came on they played a couple songs and then explained the idea of the hat... or tired to when just before Dan said they were going to pull from the hat I said sort of by accident but loud enough for all to hear "HAT!" When I realized everyone heard it I got embarrased and just ducked down to my seat. He, he. It was funny. They really got into the concert and they were so funny! Things like Dan saying "The hat is out master." and someone saying something that sounded like "Wipeout" and then them busting out into PLAYING "Wipeout" even with the cackle done by Dan "Ha HAHAHAHHH wipeout!" Bunch of wackos! :) So then they felt like the hat was getting all nostalgic cause it was picking mostly old songs.

They were debating weither to play "This Road" or another song they said they had just added to the hat but hadn't had the chance to play yet. So we cheered for the anynomous "other song" and they started to play Blind. It was all nice and subdue and then the tune lightly changed in the middle of the song and we all heard these words..."I'm still Jenny from the block..." they went into that for a while! People were laughing so hard but I was half laughing and half saying "No! No! What are you doing?!" But they were having a blast.

Steve decided that he was going to make faces at Melissa and me during the concert :). It took me a while for me to realize he was doing it to me. He was bobbing his head from side to side and acting like he was bored while they were singing , and smiling at me all sort of stuff :). It was funny :) hehe. Yay Steve!

They played Amazing Grace which started out as beautiful but I have to be very honest turned out to be much too country by the end of it for me. They also played Disappear and Melissa and I of course pointed and they also played He which I was happy to hear. I could not remember the full list of songs but there you have it.