Connections Band is proud to announce our new show, and hopes you’ll come hear us this Saturday night. The new show is a tribute to Elton John and the Doobie Brothers. We continue to push ourselves musically with this great tribute show.

Connections Band: Tribute to the Doobie Brothers and Elton John
Saturday, October 4th, 7pm
Suncreek UMC
1517 W. McDermott
Allen, TX 75013
(Google map here )

(more after the jump…)

This is our fourth tribute show, and one that we’ve had in the works for several months. As is our tradition, our debut show was last Saturday night at SVUMC, the defacto home church of the band. (In fact, the last three years, we’ve debuted our new show on this same weekend…we knew the date months before we knew the artists we’d be doing!)

Rehearsals had gone well, although my sense is that most of us had forgotten how much work a new show is. We’d been rotating among our other three all year shows all year, which gets to be kinda like riding a bicycle. So, the rehearsals to learn new stuff are a little more challenging, and there is a time where you wonder, “is all this going to come together?!”

One sub-text to the show is the loss of Russ Noland. We’d certainly assumed he’d be with us…especially on the Doobies stuff. We’ve added Brian “Doc” McPherson, who is more than ably filling in on electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and some keyboards and vocals. So, as with everyone else who joins us, we’re feeling blessed by the talent that surrounds us.

We’ve also got a really nice string/brass section for the Elton John set….for stuff like “Levon,” “Philadelphia Freedom,” and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”

I can now report that the SVUMC show went really, really well. As usual, everything seemed to come together in our final rehearsals, and the audience seemed to love the show last Saturday.

I’m singing some of my favorites from both artists:

Doobies:
Black Water
Taking it to the Streets

Elton John:
Levon
Daniel
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me
Philadelphia Freedom

As with our other shows, these are songs the audience knows by heart. People sing along, and we go back to some of the best times of our lives. For me personally, Elton John’s “Greatest Hits” (Volume One) was the very first record I ever bought with my own money. I’ve been singing these songs to myself for decades. It’s a blessing to be able to sing them to others now.

Ditto with the Doobie Brother’s Greatest Hits. It was also a staple of my growing up. And I know it was for a lot of yall too.

We raised an additional $ 2,600 for UMCOR last Saturday night. That officially puts us over the $ 40,000 mark in terms of fund raised for our two lead charities (UMCOR and NbN)

We’re hoping that with two more great shows still to come this year, we’ll be pushing the $ 50K mark.

Hope to see you Saturday.