Singer’s Story
By:
David Divers
(© 2008-2010 by the author)
Edited by:
Madison Cole
The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's
consent. Comments are appreciated at...
My apologies to all of Billy Ray’s fans for not continuing for almost a year since the last chapter. Many professional and personal circumstances have prevented me from writing. Hopefully this is now over and I can post regularly in the future.
David
Chapter 20
Rehearsals
Bright and early Wednesday morning Chris and I arrived at the Coliseum and sure enough the marquee out by Highway 90 that the manager had told us about was lit up and advertising our show! It not only had the big red electronic Coke logo scrolling over our ad, but it also flashed a big picture of Chris and me from the cover photo of our CD. The one thing it didn’t mention was that it was a Southern Gospel music show. The show was already being advertised in many strictly Christian mediums so the Christian community already knew what kind of music it was. Others unfamiliar with us could assume whatever they liked—we could be country or, with a name like “The Blood Brothers Tour,” we could even be hard rock or heavy metal. So the music content itself was left unsaid—hopefully we would get some crossover ticket sales from those genres as well.
As we entered the Coliseum, the band was on stage and the director immediately put us to work. We began practicing from the introductory tape forward. He had the entire show broken up into segments approximately fifteen minutes long. We practiced each segment over and over until each one could be performed independently from the segment before it. In that way we actually had six fifteen minute “acts.” It was much easier to focus on smaller segments of the show than it was to try to do the entire show over and over. The musical part was a “given.” The hard part was making the dialogue seem natural and uncontrived. In many ways it was like rehearsing for a play. Chris was the more mature straight man and I was always the naïve, teenage fall-guy who always got the best of Chris in the end. It was humor instead of just a string of individual jokes.
There were other reasons for the segmented format. Ideally, we would do the show in its entirety with possibly one opening act. That would work for the major venues. But there were many opportunities for fill-in dates while we were en route to the major locations. We could interrupt our show for an intermission depending upon the venue and the audience. Or, we could insert other acts into the show and then continue our show afterwards in a variety show format. Also, when we were booked as part of a package show we could perform entire scripted segments of our show instead of just playing individual songs one after the other.
As practice progressed, our personal manager stood with the show’s director and suggested what gestures we should be making and where our focus should be during each song and segment. Chris and I tended to look toward each other during most of the harmony parts of songs. They wanted us to be so well rehearsed that we didn’t need to see each other for cues. They wanted us to pick out a different female and direct our attention especially toward her.
Encore sets are traditional in almost all musical concerts. In fact, a musical group would be insulted if the audience didn’t demand an encore. But strictly speaking, we were not a concert—it was a two-man, Southern Gospel musical play based on our CD and it was being produced for its entertainment value rather than to evangelize. We did have an encore scheduled and rehearsed, but it was to be a musical altar call instead of an encore. However, we would only provide the background music and in every city an ecumenical group of pastors from local associations would be invited in advance to lead it. There were several premeditated reasons for this.
The first was that our personal manager didn’t want us to be simply viewed as travelling evangelists. There were already plenty of those around and some had scandalized the religious world. So he wanted our show to focus on our talent and less on evangelizing. His goal for us was to be viewed as entertainers who also were Christian—therefore more approachable than if we were preachers. Secondly, he wanted the greatest denominational involvement that we could get—widespread ecumenical endorsement was what would fill the seats. Thirdly, the show was unique to Southern Gospel music.
Personally, I had certain qualms about that difference. My whole life and career up to that point had been centered on my Daddy’s evangelical ministry. As I have said, I personally I felt no calling to become a preacher. I was a “normal” all-American boy. But, except for our California vacation, this was the only time in my life when I was out of the evangelical world. My entire life had been centered around religion. It just seemed odd that the whole goal of the show was not to evangelize in some way. But that would be left to outsiders.
Rehearsals broke for lunch and then it was back to the grindstone. We practiced each segment five or six times that Wednesday and the director finally called it a day. Chris and I had several interviews scheduled on Thursday morning and then we would begin rehearsing again at ten a.m. Thursday evening we were scheduled to interview live on the Ocean Springs Radio Station where we had begun singing together the year before.
On Thursday morning we had an early live interview on the morning TV talk show on a local network affiliate and we sang “Battleground” for the first time in the local area. Then we also taped an interview for the local Thursday evening news so they would use a brief segment of that song as an introduction to the interview. Then it was across the street to the coast newspaper to interview with the same lady reporter who had called us “The Pied Pipers of Biloxi” the previous year. We gave her an exclusive interview that was a radical departure from the rehearsed answers that we would normally just recite for the press. That lady had been important to us in getting the ball rolling toward this first CD. So we filled her in on all that had happened to us since we had last talked to her. Then it was back to the Coliseum for more rehearsals. Thursday evening we went to the radio station in Ocean Springs and again returned to the Coliseum for more rehearsals. Believe me, by the time Chris and I finally got back to the hotel it was all I could do to drag my butt to bed.
Naturally it was difficult to relax when the show was so quickly approaching. I, for one, was nervous and continually paced the floor of the Coliseum until about 6 p.m. Although I knew that this was the place to work the kinks out of the show because Chris was a “home boy” and the crowd would be forgiving of any mistakes, I was still very nervous. I went to the coach at six and changed into one of my western-cut white suits. Then Chris and I went back to the performer’s dressing room in the Coliseum to run over our lines one last time and warm up our voices.
By 7 p.m. the Coliseum was filled to capacity. Right on time the owner of the Ocean Springs radio station made our introduction and the Coliseum’s lights went dim as the video started rolling on the giant screens. As the video concluded, the stage lights gradually brightened and the spotlight focused on Chris.
As usual, he was dressed all in black and he was seated on a stool at center stage. When the lights went up the band immediately went into the introduction of one of Chris’s first hits, “Heart-healer.” Immediately there was enormous applause and the girls started screaming. Chris began singing and I joined in from back stage. During the instrumental solo in the middle of the song he introduced me as the New #1 Male Gospel Singer of the year and I came on stage in my white suit playing dual lead guitar with Chris’s lead guitar player. As planned, we traded licks for several verses, and then Chris and I came back in on the chorus singing harmony. It brought down the house … I thought to myself, “How can our new songs outdo this opening?”
Because we were all wearing the ear monitors that Chris had recommended, I could hear both the band and the harmony without distractions. We could also all hear instructions from the show’s director from his location in the sound booth. All of the technical personnel also had the ear pieces so they could control the lights and video. Even though our carefully rehearsed show might be disrupted, there were alternate plans for almost all eventualities. So at his signal, Chris and I picked up our acoustics and we began the first song from our CD. The show progressed from that point on and we coped with all the glitches, hitches, and interruptions one might expect from a new and different kind of Gospel show. As we had anticipated, we had to do two encores for our new song “Battleground,” and several additional songs included on the CD as encores.
We managed to get through that first show before the home town crowd without too much difficulty, but Chris and I were both soaked in nervous sweat by the time the show was over. It was a good thing we had some costume changes, because otherwise I would have looked like a drowned rat. The show had originally been scheduled to run from 7 to 9 p.m., but with the delays it was almost 10 p.m. when the local pastors finally gave the invitation to make a commitment to Christ. As expected, there was a large procession of people who accepted their invitation. Meanwhile, Chris and I were already in the concession area meeting and greeting the fans who were beginning to depart from the building. Sales of our merchandise were brisk and we autographed hundreds of pictures, CDs and tee shirts for all who asked. While all of this was going on, the crew began quietly dismantling the stage and packing up the remaining equipment. Although the tour bus and trucks departed for Hattiesburg at midnight, Chris and I returned to the hotel for a late meeting with the director and our personal manager. It was 2 a.m. before we at long last managed to get some time to rest.
To be continued...
As usual, many thanks to Madison Cole for his assistance in editing my stories.
Posted: 12/17/10