Amy Grant Albums - Lead Me On

Amy Grant

Lead Me On 20th Anniversary Reunion Tour

November 21, 2008 - Morristown, NJ

What a WONDERFUL night...wow is all I can say. The day started late the night before with my redeye flight to EWR. Jeanette picked me up, and man was it freezing out...wearing sandals didn't help. Went to the hotel and met up with Nathaniel and Lori. Nathaniel and I had a quick lunch at Applebees then stopped at the dollar store to get some glowsticks.

We went to soundcheck and met up with Marjorie and Andrew, and met a new friend, WJ who flew in all the way from the Netherlands...and we thought we flew far from California! Of course the first thing I asked was if he knew Arald, and he said they had never met in person, but they had spoken online.

Soundcheck was pretty quick, no meet and greet (there were probably 40-50 people, so totally understandable). After soundcheck, we went to dinner at the restaurant next door. That was kind of cool...never gone to a restaurant that was playing only Amy on their soundsystem.

After dinner, a quick trip back to the dollar store to get some birthday candles, knife, plates, forks, napkins, more glowsticks, and a Thank You card for Justin and Jennifer (they have been so awesome on this tour...honestly, putting up w/me is probably plenty of work enough for them!)

The show started as usual with Father's Eyes, then Love of Another Kind. Nathaniel and I were the only ones in the whole venue standing for Love of Another Kind. I was getting a little nervous about the crowd here...usually during that song, a scattering of people would dance, and it was a preview of them getting warmed up. Then, we went to the front because there were many empty seats in the pit, and the security gave us the "access denied" speech. We were also requested not to dance in our seats because he was worried about us blocking the people in back fo us. Totally fair, we don't want to ruin the show for others.

During one of her "tuning" quiet moments with Amy's "Talk amongst yourselves" line, I shouted "We Love you Amy." I was back in row O, so I expected she'd just think it was a random person shouting. To my surprise, she said back something to the effect of , "That's a lot of love...to fly all the way from California John." We went through the normal other stand songs like Everywhere I Go. Our glowstick buddies...we failed miserably. Some forgot to take them out for the song, others held them low. We did our post mortem after the show and I think we'll get it right tonight. For Sing Your Praise I was shocked that only about 50% of the crowd was dancing - I stood in the aisle though just to make sure I wasn't blocking anyone. I'm thinking, there has got to be a way to rally this crowd.

So when Lead Me On came on, I went back to the aisle, and Marjorie by this time had scooted over to be near Andrew and I went down and we danced down there. Of course, the other security guy said I couldn't dance in the aisle because it was a fire hazard or something. So I went back to the aisle by my seat. But slowly through Find a Way, Wise Up, Angels, I made my way back down, and this time got a few people following. Sadly, only the right side of the auditorium was shaking and moving...there was no hope for the left side. By Fight, most of the whole right side was up, the back half of the middle and left were also moving. The balcony was a little tougher. There were 2 people leading the cheer section from the top left. We waved at each other several times encouraging each other to keep it up. I'm thinking there must have been some sponsor deal where the rich donators got the front tickets and the Amy fans got the tickets in the back. Jeanette scored a front row seat that was open (there were still 2 more, but security wouldn't let Nathaniel and I take them), so she and WJ were dancing alone in a 5 row pit.

During the encore, we spontaneously sang Happy Birthday to Amy. She mentioned that they were recording the show and she was excited to be able to listen to us sing it on Tuesday (her actual birthday, also shared with my dad and Jonny Sloan). There was another encore moment where she didn't know if we'd want to stay and hear a bunch of new unrecorded songs. I said we'd stay all night. She responded with something like I have no doubt you will John...after touring up the whole West Coast then flying out East, and some comment about I'd be the doctor and she was the patient...I didn't really understand. But some others could tell I was a big fan because they came up to me after the show and said they had 2 meet and greet tickets and couldn't make it, so they offered them to me. I had actually scored 3 already from Kenny (Thank you!!!) who had an extra, and 2 others, but we had a group of 7 of us, so it was a great treat - we were able to get all of us in.

We waited to go last...but it was a small crowd, so no bigee. Nathaniel went first and did some pictures with a fake boa in honor of Jake (it was garland from the dollar store), some Sunglasses, and other stuff. As he was talking, Amy was mentioning how she was just downstairs with the sponsors and they were talking about me. I asked good or bad? And she said great! They were apparently grateful that I single handedly rallied the crowd to its feet! We did our individual shots, I gave her the DVD that I made, and told her I spent about 150 hours of the last month making it (which is why I couldn't go to any shows between the west coast and last night), and she said thank you, and that she'd watch it on the bus (I hope she really does watch it). I also mentioned that after Sarah had sang, we had chatted on facebook, and she had asked me for a copy of the DVD, so I gave her an extra copy for Sarah. The first question Amy asked was if I got any footage of Sarah singing - such a sweet mother moment, trying to find video of her daughter singing. I was sad to say that I didn't have any, and that I emailed like 15 people who I knew were at the show, and none of them got any either. The only person I didn't hear back from is Joe, so I'm hoping maybe Joe got some footage (Joe, I'm taggin you in the note, so if you see this and got some footage, please speak up!:)

We did our group shot, then back to the hotel to look at pictures, videos, share stories, and get some rest before the drive to Philly.