I have been playing churches for over twenty years. My ex-wife convinced me to try out this little church at the time called CCV (Christ church of the valley) in Peoria AZ. When I started playing there there was maybe 800 people there. I passed the audition and within a month I was playing every other weekend. It was a great time as I was new to the process of course back then I was young and skinny. 15 years had passed and I was still playing every other weekend, we grew in that 15 years to almost 20,000 people, stupidly large if you ask me. we went from a high school theatre, to the actual premises in a large Tent, to finally a large 3,000 to 3,500 seat auditorium with huge jumbo tron monitors on both sides of the Humongous stage. For easter one year I even got to play the local 30,000 seat Jobing.com Arena, man I was a rockstar for that day. We'll I'll be honest I was starting to get a little freaked out by then as I became a little celebrity in town, because so many in my area went there. I got stopped at the grocery store, movie theatre etc. It was kind of hard to not notice me, I was there for so long and I was 50 ft high on the screen. So this is where I start to feel a little entitled, this is kind of what happens when you are famous nationally or locally, you kind of start expecting stuff, and stuff starting coming. I won't go into gory details but it was fun but also troubling.
A church to grow that big, will have its problems and this church was no exception. As it got larger the staff would keep getting recycled. I would have a new Worship leader every six months to a year. So dealing with changing of the guards was getting old. Now mind you I was still playing every weekend and some times a full month if the other guitar player was traveling or sick. Six services a weekend, crazy. I neve got my laundry done during those years. So in the process, I got divorced from my first wife, I took some time off to deal with that, seemed prudent at the time, then came back a month later playing every other weekend again.
So I meet my next wife doing the powerpoint for the song lyrics for the big screen, and at this time it was before we moved into the colosal building, that they are in now. Time passes and they just start to add more guitar players finally, as time went on more worship leader changes and this time a program manager change. He was basically managing the Youth area. We'll I knew my days were numbered as I was probably 42 or so and his cronies started filling the stage, which was fine, but slowly it took about a year, they started scheduling us older guys out.
So Next chapter started. I finally said they are not scheduling me as often and I'm a musician, this is what I do, so I quit. I started playing as many churches as would have me. I played every where south phoenix, north phoenix, central phoenix. It was great, I didn't have to follow church politics anymore. It would be a bidding war with dates (never got paid, doesn't see right to me), I would be scheduled every weekend at a different church and they loved having me. I did that for about a year and a half or so, then my wife started freaking out because I was gone so many weekends. Now remember, I was playing six services before to two services on a Sunday, to me that was way less. To her it was every weekend, so she won, so I just cut to one church that I thought had the spirit and the possible growth, as i kind of dug growing churches, it's fun.
So as of late, I play one church every other weekend. Low stress, I can feel like the mentor and help boot strap other musicians up, it's extremely enjoyable. So I have been at the bottom, to the top for a real long time and now back at the bottom. Crazy fun times.
So I started with a roland VG88, to a tonelab se, the big one, to a pod, x2, x3 to finally going with fractal back in 2010 I think with an Ultra to the Axe FX II, I got on the wait list the moment it was created.
Even though my playing improved over the years as I got better and learning music by ear and reading sheet music, I would say my learning Improved 10 fold once I started using the fractal gear. I can't say necessarily why , but I guess I would equate it to having a professional instrument like a real expensive guitar, you just start playing better faster.
So I'm apologizing after the fact that I took you on a long journey. I enjoy telling stories, and I have nothing to hide, except for the fact that I used to work on Nuclear missles and I used to build crappy Guitars in my garage.
Peace
