Stories you have likely heard...

Like all of us, I have stories. Mine are no more or less interesting than yours. And like some of your stories, some of my stories get more polished and expand with each telling. There are a handful of mine that are likely beginning to cause eyes to roll among my close friends when I begin them. Here are a couple...

-- There is a certain somewhat famous indie rock band that I have held a personal grudge against for almost a decade now. I will just call them Schmeisley.

I was in Dallas to see my old friend Josiah's band, Holland (now named the Lonely Hearts.) After stopping by the Gypsy Tea Room to say hi, me and a couple of other friends walked down the street in Deep Ellum to eat dinner at Cafe Brazil before the show began. While waiting to be served I overheard a conversation with the server and some girls at the next table. I heard the words from the table "We are from East Texas."

Number one rule about being from East Texas is that, when outside of East Texas, if you hear the words "East Texas," your ears perk up. (Actually, the number one rule is that you should always pour spreadable butter in your salsa at Mexican restaurants, but for the sake of the story, I have changed rule number one.)

My ears perked up, and I joined the conversation. "East Texas, I'm from East Texas! What town are y'all from?"

The girl rolled her eyes and responded, annoyed-- "Well, we lived in Eustace for a while, but now we live in Tyler."

I freaked out. "Eustace! I grew up around Chandler and Brownsboro!"

There are only around 800 people in Eustace. There are only about 879 people who have ever heard of Eustace. It's a small club, so I was excited to be part of it, if only by proximity.

More rolled eyes from the girl... "Ok," before she deliberately shifted her shoulders away from me in an effort to stop the conversation.

Rule number two about being from East Texas is that you get excited and talk folksy with fellow East Texans. Rule number 2.2 is to lose the pretense. You can run as fast and hard as you can away from Cedar Creek Lake and Kickapoo Creek, but their mud will always be on your heals.

I shook it off, finished eating, then went to the concert. About mid way through the show one of the guys from Lonely Hearts, in between songs, said "Oh look, our friends from Schmeisley just came in." I looked back, and you guessed it: Nose-in-the-air girl.

One of my proudest accomplishments is having made it for years around indie-rock kids without actually having heard one of their songs. It is really sickening how long I can hold a grudge, even on such a minor thing.

-- Ok, now the Point of Grace story from my previous post.

For those of you who don't know, Point of Grace is kind of like the ABBA of Contemporary Christian Music. Before they made it big (by Christian Music standards, anyway) they performed at a student Conference in San Antonio. It was the twilight years of my bass guitar career and somehow I ended up being in the "worship band." (For those who don't know what this means, it is like the house band... but without any chance of getting a free beer out of it.)

We did our stuff before the Point of Grace Concert. They did their concert, complete with accompaniment track, and then decided they wanted to end the concert with worship, so they invited the band up to help them out. So they sang two or three songs with me on the bass guitar.

Thus, I was once the bass player for Point of Grace.