Friends-

    2004 is up and running and we kicked off the year in a big way as we have every year since 1999 with a trip to Rockport, TX and the Rockport Gospel Music Festival.  Rockport has almost become a second home to us.  We've gotten to know many of the wonderful people in town, and we always enjoy renewing our friendships at these annual visits.  It's also fun to see the other groups that have been regularly participating in the program each year.  We appreciate the hard work of the guys in Rockport's Gospel Force Quartet that host the event each year, and their work is paying off big time!

    We've updated the website with photos from Rockport that you'll enjoy viewing - just click here.

    The weather has always been a challenge in Rockport.  In the previous 5 years we've had rain 3 times, pea soup fog once, and the first year we were there we nearly froze to death.  This year made up for all the bad weather in the past - it was beautiful!  Clear skies and temperatures in the mid-60's made for a terrific weekend.

    Not only did the weather cooperate, but our hosts booked us into the brand new Lighthouse Inn at Aransas Bay and gave us wonderful rooms overlooking the bay.  We sat on our balconies prior to heading to the auditorium and watched the birds...and even a dolphin...fishing in the water right below our hotel rooms.  We had a hard time leaving to go sing.

    When we first sang for the festival in 1999 it was a one day show that ran for a few hours on Saturday afternoon and evening.  It drew a pretty good crowd to the 1,200 seat high school auditorium, but I don't recall the building ever being completely full.  Most of the groups were from the local area, though they did invite a few of us "out-of-towners" to participate. 

    In 2000 they added a Friday night show, and last year added a Sunday afternoon and evening show.  This festival is just exploding, and we had record crowds for the 2004 event.

     The "out-of-towners" part of the lineup this year included the Nelons from Georgia, the Goldens, Tender Mercies, Texans, Relations Quartet, and Peacemakers Quartet from other parts of Texas, The Brothers in Christ from Louisiana, Sounds of Victory from Arkansas, and CRQ from far off California.  Some of the groups local to the Rockport area included Chosen, Sweet Six, Sounds of Glory, Bailey Family, Reunion, and the hosts, Rockport's Gospel Force.  David Fountain from Branson, MO was the emcee for the second year in a row.  We love David - he's quite a character and did a great job keeping everything moving right along.

     During the first four years that they've had a Friday night program, the attendance was usually in the 500-700 range.  This year when we arrived at the auditorium just after the program had started at 6pm, we walked in and were pleasantly surprised to see a packed house with people sitting in folding chairs along the side aisles.  It was still full when we got up about 8:15 and sang for 30 minutes.

     Saturday morning started with a breakfast at the home of David Murrah, our host for this year's festival.  Each out of town group is assigned a host family to help with any local arrangements that need to be made.  It's a nice touch and something that we really appreciate.

     Saturday's show started at 11am and we were slotted dead last on the program dead last - at 8:50 pm.  The crowd usually comes and goes during the day, but by the time we got up they were there in force.  They were on their feet screaming and yelling when we wrapped up just before 10 pm (maybe they were glad we were finally done!).

     Sunday morning we sang at Oak Ridge Baptist Church in Portland, TX.  The pastor, Mark Miller, is the son-in-law of Becky Livingston, the pianist for the Gospel Force.  They have a great church in Portland and we really had a good time worshipping with them.

     Sunday afternoon (after the obligatory massive seafood lunch) we headed over to First Baptist Church of Rockport for the Sunday session of the festival.  This was our first year to sing at the Sunday session, and the once again the building was jam packed.  I'm not sure what the capacity is there, but I'm guessing there had to be 600+ in the building.  We did another 30 minute set, and closed out our 6th annual trip to Rockport.  While we love getting back home to our families, it's always hard to leave Rockport.

     Although just about everything went perfectly on this trip, we did have one little problem.  Since we don't drive the bus to Texas, we have to ship all of our product ahead of time, which requires some advance thinking and planning.  In the past we've always shipped more stuff than we needed and ended up shipping some of it back. 

     We did the usual math and sent 4 boxes of CD's, videos and cassettes to our host family in Rockport.  The table was stacked with stuff as we started the festival on Friday night.   Then something amazing happened.  The "Winter Texans" and local folks at the festival descended on our table like locusts on a Kansas wheatfield, and we suddenly found ourselves running out of product.  The cassette packs that we brought were all gone by 4 pm Saturday (and we brought a lot of them!).  By the end of Saturday night's concert, 2 of our 6 CD's were sold out, we only had 1 copy left of one of the others, and we were down to bare minimums of the other three.  We were also nearly out of videos.

     Sunday morning pretty much wiped out what we had left, and by the time we arrived at First Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon, we had exactly 1 copy of one CD, 8 copies of another one, and 2 video packs.  Our table looked silly (see the website photos).  All of that stuff was gone by the time we finished singing.

     In all of the out-of-state trips we've taken, we've never run completely out of product before.  It's a good problem to have, but we sure could have used another box or two of stuff in Rockport.  We'll plan better next year.