Saturday, July 04, 2009

Brandon Heath


Tuesday, July 2, 2009 - a day that will live rather fondly on in my memory -- or what's left of my memory lately. LOL

I left my house to head for Calvary Chapel Salt Lake City around 11 a.m. or so with plans to stop at Smith's for ice, and a couple of items I'd not purchased for dessert and cornbread stuffing I was making. Everything went pretty smoothly until the north side of salt lake city, and then construction slowed traffic way down. I thought for sure I was going to be late by a bit, so I called Eleanor to warn her. I ended up just leaving a voice message. As it turned out, I was only three minutes late, so there were no worries. I got things unloaded and we set up for lunch which was a potato bar. It went over well. I did have to make a store run for some ranch dressing as what we had had been left out a bit long last time around and I wasn't about to serve it. I had forgotten that we had a vegetarian (and I really didn't plan the menu) so I felt badly. I would have brought a few more things to add to the salad for protein (like Kidney/Garbanzo beans,sprouts,etc.) if I had remembered.

At any rate after lunch, I did dishes and cleaned up and then I had some more help and I had her start putting desserts on plates for dinner and I prepared other things. Susan had made a lot of things ahead (turkey, mashed potatoes) and I put together the stuffing. Liz was good to cut up the onion for me. I cry too much. LOL
But the details are probably boring. Suffice it to say that everyone was quite appreciative of the efforts and loved the "Thanksgiving in July" meal we served.


Soon it was time for the show to start, so I grabbed my camera and headed over to my seat at the front. People for Christ Ministry did a drawing for a couple of cd's and then it was time for Josh Rosenthal to sing. Josh sounded terrific.



After Josh's set it was time for Brandon's set. Brandon sounded amazing as always. He is so much better live to be sure and he has a great voice. JoJo on the keyboards (Joe Moralez) has a pretty good voice as well, and he harmonized really well with Brandon. Anyone that knows me knows how much I love good, tight harmonies. Brandon was so sweet the whole night, even on stage. At one point he brought up Erica who came from Las Vegas to see him and he sang happy birthday to her. She was 7. Then he set up to sing "Give Me Your Eyes" and Erica was in the bathroom, so he just tried to kill time until Erica came back. Then he joked about it blowing his set up. LOL IT was really cute and sweet and very memorable. I moved over to a seat on the side for one song to try to get a pic of JoJo and a different angle,

and then went back Erica and family were at my seat. I told them no problem (Everyone was standing anyway) and the guy next to me put his daughter on his lap and made room for me, which was also a very nice gesture.

Anyway, Brandon finished the set, came out after applause for and encore and did three "Love" songs. He played quite a long set, but it almost didn't seem like it at all. Then I went over and snagged a setlist (I confessed later. LOL), bought merch, and took more pics. Then I went back to the kitchen to help with clean up.




While we were back there, Diana had brought out a birthday cake earlier for Brandon, and even though his "official" birthday wasn't until July 21, we celebrated the UT version just a little early. Brandon told me he loved birthday cake. The cake had cool sparkler candles. There were a few things that needed to be done, so he promised to come back to cut the cake. It was nearly forgotten, but finally they took it to his dressing room, and he blew out the candles there. Eric lit the candles and he had to blow them out again. Then Brandon cut and served the cake. He tried to give me some with extra icing. LOL It wasn't on my low fat, low sugar diet, and I had already had a small piece of dump cake. It did look good, though.


Finally Brandon, et al., for the hotel since they had a really early flight. IT was so very, very cool of him to stick around and meet and talk to everyone after the show (he did an autograph table for quite a while) and for those of us who were working also. He had to have been tired.

I continued to work on clean up and packing my things, and was able to load it into my car with a little help from a new friend. Then I went back inside. I ended up staying to help with promo and tickets for two more upcoming shows. I ended up leaving after 2:30 a.m. I made one pit stop at my P.O. Box on the way home and didn't get to sit down at my computer until 4:03 a.m. and wanted to look at the pics before getting to sleep. I was a bit disappointed and nothing was as sharp as I like, but I did get a few decent shots. I hope you enjoy them.

Love, peace & good times!

-Melanie

No comments: