REAL LIVE REALITY

Securing and keeping a tour position with New Hope or any of the other early CCM touring groups was more involved than just auditioning like the young people on American Idol or Nashville Star do today. It was a 24/7 week-in and week-out reality life before any of those TV shows were a gleam in their producers eye. I'd describe it as a combination of Making the Band, Survivor, and Dirty Jobs! We lived, rehearsed, performed, prayed, travelled, ate and grumbled as one. It was called paying your dues. I really believe that if success comes to you too easily you never really appreciate it for what it is. A reward for a lot of hard work. When it all comes together, personally and group-wise, you can see progress being made in your life and career.

THE ORIGINS - from the RELICS

(with tongue planted firmly in cheek)


THEN…crawling slowly from the primitive Northwestern bogs of mashed fern ooze and slime…standing upright under massive pine trees…ever so careful so as to not lock the knees…developing arms to raise and feet to move...and then voices to project past the front row and faces to reflect joy…prehistoric Continentus Vocalis emerged. And Cam looked out on his creation and spoke the words “…the morning and the evening are two concert opportunities…this is good. I will form from dirt a companion, a super-being, and will call it Newhopeus Tambouris. It will multiply and explore the four nether regions of this water and land covered rock

NOW…fossilized, petrified bones, bodies broken and aged, scattered across the land. Anthropologists and musicologists are exploring…spending long hours piecing together the ancient history, bringing various species of Newhopeus, for it evolved past it’s first form, to re-create the beginnings of this primogenitor. Old geezers, with nothing better to do, are studying photos and scratchy marks on parchments (kept in air tight mayonnaise jars lo these many years under the Puget Sound deck of David Miser) with state-of-the-art microscopes, to affect a library of details about early performus…the combined Continentus/Newhopeus Tourem.

There are many unanswered questions. What purpose did them serve and why were they created? Where are the missing links (besides Darrell)? How long did they travel the earth? How tall is that one in the middle? Why and when did this species fade away? And most importantly… are there any descendants? Word has drifted back to journalistic circles pertaining to sightings of similar beings in many foreign countries.
Rumor has it that National Geographic is planning a full spread on the origin of Continentus. Color maps, photos, artifacts, bus itineraries, the works. A similar seminar is scheduled in Houston to study just the Newhopeus branch of the tree, bringing together descendants and rock fossil experts. Any information is welcome.

THERE'S NOTHING TO COMPARE

I love the ritual of boarding in the early morning light.
The sound of suitcases hitting the bins and the smell of coconut shampoo,
hand lotion and damp hair as fellow travelers move up and down the aisles, bumping those already seated with carry-on bags,
searching for friends and calling final goodbyes out bus windows to host families.
Find a seat, make it your own and soon you’re
telling tall tales born of last night’s experiences.
Morning people chatter while sleep deprived souls are already drifting back into slumber.
Each day the same…each day different…another day on tour.
Turn the page…as Bob Seger so aptly put it in a song by the same name.
There’s miles of yellow lines to follow and mystery lunches to eat
before we again showcase our God-given talents.
Pillow people settling in.
And looking around…you spy the greatest show on earth…people.
(cue the calliope)
On or off the bus, in the churches, homes, malls,
and streets of unfamiliar towns and cities,
people are the one thing you can’t anticipate…second-guess or prepare for.
They are the face on the body of touring.
The challenge is to capture their hearts…one person, one family, one church…at a time.
Continental tour…there’s just nothing to compare.

Wes Turner
Continentals/New Hope 1962-72

TO BE A CONTINENTAL

I believe I am of the same mind set as my late father-in-law. You see…Benjamin Franklin Hennacy was a Marine. No, I don’t mean he had been a marine aviation navigator in World War II and Korea…he was a Marine. Year in year out…even at the age of 87…lying in his bed at Country View Care Facility he would relate secret missions with which he had been involved the night before. Not only was his service time the high point of his life…higher even than succeeding in business, raising four daughters and living four score and seven years…but it set the tone, mindset, for his life. How he handled life. The way he looked at things and carried himself. Thru good days and bad…’til his death, Frank was a Marine.
I was in the Army for three years. I am proud to be a veteran and am active with veteran things. But I have never considered myself an Army man for life.
I am a Continental…for life. If there is anything I took away from the 42 year Originals Reunion in Canby and the comments and photos of the recent Anaheim 40th Continental Reunion (which I regretfully missed) is that once a person is a Continental they are a Continental for life. Whether we have been in other music groups; taken our education to the highest level possible for our vocation; pastored churches and ministries; led music; taught young minds of mush; raised children; overseen the progress of grandchildren; succeeded and/or failed as we and faced spiritual, physical, business and personal challenges…we are a Continental…for life.
WE were the first ones to sit under Cam’s steady hand and steely eye. The first to the bus, so to speak. Our zeal and success fed his fire to take the concept and name of Continentals to the whole world. Our worship together in church back rooms and on platforms solidified and sharpened our witness and set the launching platform for an international ministry.
I looked up the word gratitude. The definition is: A feeling of profound appreciation toward an individual. I would like to express my gratitude to Cam. I’ve told him this before in private but just so you all know I credit Cam and his tutelage for my extended career in the music industry, both sacred and secular. I’ve blamed him for the foibles, and I’ve praised him for my successes. My road warrior attitude, my management style, my musical creativity, everything eventually point back to my days as an Original. I like the “Originals” tag as opposed to ex-Con, which I used for years. We have stood the test of time. Coke is an original. There are many pretenders under the Coke umbrella, i.e. Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Caffeine Free Coke, etc) and of course other brands (let’s see…what is the name of that other big brand?) But there is only one Coke.
We were meant for our times. What we did would probably not work today. The new leadership in the Continental organization have realized the need to implement changes for the “New Beginning”. Where are the choir groups much less the giant rallies? We did it without flash pots, bright t-shirts, and extensive choreography. Who would buy our records? (just kidding) We are relics of the past. Sure they can stop, stare and take photos of the dinosaurs. “Look Mom, they can still get up on stage!” Like the mammoth beasts of old we left a big ol’ footprint. Hard to fill those shoes.
After all…we are the Originals. Each of us will always be a Continental.

AND SO IT GOES

Careening thru history,
our talent and life’s ambition bleeding from speakers,
while, joined at the hip, we put on our game face,
turn on our road charm
and meet the audience’ challenge.
Who were you not liking last week at this time? We ask.
Like a slow dog we get our share of kicks
and smile in return.
Our memories, like the poor, will be with us always.
The remembrances enable us to overcome where we’ve been and
blindly charge into the fray of another night,
content in selecting nuggets of gold
from among the rocks.
We become dependent on each other.
Backs to the wall, in our conversations and mannerisms,
we expose ourselves. Laid bare,
no room for the prattling or precocious,
we support our fellow travelers
like steel springs under life’s mattress.
We fall back…losing ground, regroup, recover, and press on.
And all of these experiences are fodder for our songs
as we careen thru history.
And so it goes.

BROTHERHOOD OF THE BUS

(this piece is written about my bus time in NEW HOPE, CONTINENTALS, and LIFE)

There should be trophies presented, or at least merit badges handed out, for those of us who have spent any duration ensconced in a double seat of an old used and abused dog (Greyhound) or Double Eagle (Trailways). I’m not talking about the custom coaches, owned or rented, by the top names in entertainment. Most of them have more than made up for the comforts of home and feel like a hotel on wheels to the vagabond musicians inside. I’m discussing the vehicles of conveyance provided by the financially challenged companies whose acts make up the bottom part of the billing on any venue sign.

When they are running well, air or heat functioning correctly, and full of diesel, the entertainer can go to bed in Columbus OH after a show, and wake up in Atlanta GA and feel sort of refreshed and energy replenished. Granted, you will emerge for breakfast with clothes rumpled, hair tousled, and maybe smelling a bit ripe, but you will be there with your equipment, personnel, and luggage intact. That, however, is the best case scenario.

I’ve listed some of the possible problems with bus travel below:
Not enough seats
Seats too small (short)
Seats worn and cushions thin
Seat backs broken or unable to tilt
Armrests not retractable
Armrests broken
Not enough bin space
Windows un-shaded
Windows that don’t open
Windows shared with someone else who does not share your love of fresh air
Overhead bins limited in space
Overhead bins so stuffed that things fall out when bus turns corner
No hang up space inside
Limited hang up space inside
No electrical outlets inside
Air conditioning limited
Air conditioning broken
Heating limited
Heating broken
Diesel fumes invade inside of bus
Diesel fumes on every piece of clothing you own
Diesel fumes surround you in parking lot of truck stop
Truck stops
Eating at truck stops
God forbid…bathing at truck stops
Going to the bathroom at truck stops or crummy, rundown gas stations
Air bag problems make bus look like a drunken pirate while rolling down the highway
High cost of bus repairs and maintenance
Bus gears being ground to the nub by inexperienced driver
Said inexperienced driver driving like he was Mario Andretti
Name on bus
Name not on bus
Singers warming up on bus
Horn players warming up/practicing scales on bus
Bus not starting
Pushing the bus in summer/winter/fall/spring
Pushing the bus while in good clothes
Pushing the bus while in any clothes
Venue assuming that because you have a bus you can use it as dressing facility
Giving up bathroom so more can be stored inside
Finding someone to tow a bus
Getting quick, quality repairs

AND FINALLY…admitting that even though you have a gazillion problems with a bus it’s still better than cars, trailers, and vans.


I was on a choir/orchestra tour (Continental Singers & Orchestra) in 1965 that had too many personnel for our bus. We put seven folding chairs down the aisle and once we were all in place we stayed there ‘til the next stop. We also had a double cab truck traveling with us. One time when the bus broke down we had to move to a rented bus. They, of course, wouldn’t let us do that, so seven extra guys were assigned to the truck and ended up riding in the back all night.

The New Hope bus (circa 1969-72) had our name on the side, 14 double seats and a place for hang up bags and instruments in the rear. New Hope was the New Hope Singers for the first two years of its existence, and we couldn’t wait to get the “singers” part off the bus sign after we added brass. New Hope sounded more like a rock group. Nothing inside was customized though. Each person had a double seat and in time we were mapped out into neighborhoods. Drummer, Lynn Coulter, called the back couple of sets of seats, Garwood Heights, after the Garwood refuse trucks he worked on when he collected garbage for a parish in New Orleans. I, as road manager, sat in the very rear seat behind Lynn so I could survey my domain at all times. (the former manager had sat in front and never looked back except to glare) It was the high rent district of Garwood Heights. The seats where the two girl singers sat in 1971 was the called the red light district. The seats occupied by Craig Ware, and his wife Sharon, were called the warehouse. The seat of Bill Schenk, trombonist, was know as the neighborhood news stand because of all the magazines and books he kept around. And so on. We were indeed a silly bunch.

My very first New hope Singers tour (fall of 1969) our manager Will was married and the happy couple had just had a baby so….you guessed it, a set of seats was taken out and a baby named Tod came with us for the first four months of travel. Added to the normal strange smells that waft thru any bunch of people familiar with each other was the rancid and ripe smell of a diaper from time to time. One time the new Mom (Louise) was casually tossing a full diaper toward the garbage can in the front of the bus and it landed on the accelerator pedal foot of the driver, unfolding and dumping (pun intended) it’s load on his unsuspecting shoe.

My second year with the newly renamed New Hope (1970) our newly wed manager and his wife bought a puppy when we were in the Seattle area that fall. If you thought that baby poop was bad you obviously haven’t had the priviledge of being the first one to the bus in the morning, opening the bus and experiencing baby dog doo doo throughout the bus. In all reverence I must say that the dog died (distemper) within weeks…also on the bus…and we endured the total grief of the parents for days. Fortunately it was the catalyst that caused them to leave the road.

The bus of the group LIFE (1974) was a welcome sight after our inaugural year of traveling in a station wagon and cargo van. Painted with red, white, and blue stripes, and our name, we announced ourselves wherever we went. It already had something like 12 million miles on it from Greyhound and a charter company. We took out seats in the back and installed two bunks on the back right side (primarily for drivers) and clothes bars on the right. That and a bit of carpet made us happy for a while.

Once, while approaching a major intersection (where a busy road crosses a four lane state route) in northern Ohio in the LIFE bus, the drummer/driver Andy yelled “no brakes!” …and I, standing in the well, grabbed the bar and alerted the group “hang on”. We sailed thru and onto a small service road on the other side and felt pretty good about it until a trucker using his CB told us he had come with inches of slamming into us.

The “new” LIFE bus that came on the road as I was going off in 1977 was an ex-Trailways from Miami (also with millions of miles on it) and on the first trip west, after turning on the heat, the cockroaches came scurrying out of every crevasse and hole. The group ended up “bombing” it three times throughout the trip before being reasonably sure the legions of critters were dead. That bus was remodeled to have wall-to-wall carpet, twelve bunks, twelve closets, and twelve seats and some storage. Very comfortable and practical without spending a lot of money.

ALL fellow travelers of the road in the 70’s, the Spurrlows, Common Ground, Imperials, Renaissance, Continentals, Truth, Bridge or what’s-the-name-of-that- group from John Brown University…ALL had bus problems. But…we were traveling in our home. What did we expect? Think about how many things can go wrong in a home; leaky pipes, garbage disposal, roof, squeaky mattress, cracks in the basement floor, short-circuit on a lamp, T.V. blacks out, bugs and varmints, broken chair, whatever…

The bus was our home sweet home. It was our dining room, bedroom, recreation room, music and relaxing room, dressing room and closet, storage room…and it is where you received guests, whether it is family, friends, pastor, principal, agent, police officer, etc. The chances that the whole bus will be ship shape at any given time for a quick-look-see-tour are nil. Hence, when inviting anyone aboard you automatically offer a disclaimer that sounds like this…”please excuse the mess… we had an overnighter a week ago Wednesday and haven’t gotten things back into place.” Many romances were started and ended in bus seats. Tour can make fickle lovers…even more fickle. Nothing like a fighting tour couple to make people take sides. In the early days the motto of NO PDA (public display of affection) was the standard. But in the dark…on those long, dark overnight trips a guy can lose his sense of propriety.

Well, we of the brotherhood of the bus, will never forget our experiences, both tour related and bus related. Some of our greatest tour stories, growing wilder and bigger each year we are removed from the actual time we travelled, were bus stories. I personally wouldn’t trade a minute of the years I spent on a bus. Riding, gazing out the window watching signs and pavement slip by, creating, sleeping, fellowshipping, reading…and growing as a musician and person. I am better for the hardships.
Just a hint of diesel smell brings it all back. O.K. guys…where’s the next stop?

THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL

We are a group of players and singers but we are a dichotomy.
Caught between rockin’ out for Jesus and pleasing the saints,
the only time we can really be ourselves is when we’re rolling down the highway.
Yes sir…no, maam…whatever you say, pastor…we are all things to all people
thank you Paul.
On the west coast…the left coast, packed with crazies and weirdo’s and surfer dudes we are pleasantly surprised to find a Bible belt in the middle of California.
And in the middle of the Bible belt we find a drug culture and Satan worship. Thank God for church coffee houses.
Magnolia Mississippi pops into my mind. Great church, pleasant, normal everyday people, southern hospitality…and high school kids into drugs without the parents having a clue.
Mankato State College in Minnesota was the site of the first New Hope dance. Really. Our booker’s idea of a joke I guess. We worked up some jams and vocals to “California Dreaming” on the bus that day.
We survived only to find that after an overnighter we were headlining a rock concert at Kiel Opera House in St Louis! Then on to Fort Sill to rock a serviceman’s dance. Wow.
Bible thumpers, pew jumpers, Holy Ghost revelators and tongue speakers tried to put a mind trip on us in Washington one night. I think they prayed over one guy for hours trying to force him to speak languages not instructed to him.
This is, indeed, the Hallelujah Trail.

FROM NEW HOPE ON

This is the catch-up official bio that usually begs for more answers rather than answering questions. Now each of you will have to sit down and write a similar piece. I look forward to hearing your history.

The years away from the West Coast have been busy ones for me. After all it's been over THREE and a half decades! After my third year with New Hope I went with Young American Showcase, based in St Pete. FL, and headed one of their groups, FREE FARE, singing lead and managing, doing a rock 'n roll anti-drug/love-your-brother assembly program and ticketed night concerts. I followed that with four years as singer/Road Manager for a Fifth Dimension-style show band, LIFE, either headlining our own show or opening for people like Bob Hope, Kenny Rodgers, Bill Cosby, Tony Bennett, Smothers Brothers, Dolly Parton, Lena Horne, and dozens of performing artists. I spent 14 years with part-time group called Goodtime Singers, opening act for Tennessee Ernie Ford. LIFE also did assemblies, Vegas, Atlantic City, small and major conventions (McDonalds, PepsiCo, GMC, TWA, etc), and State Fairs. Ex-Spurrlows Stan Morse and Dave Ayers were our arrangers. During that time I met and married my wife Heidi, also a singer with our show group LIFE, and had two daughters. I moved to Florida for almost four years to be vice-president of the highly successful 7Up Gold Coast Concert Series with Justin Smith. We had the first commercially sponsored Contemporary Christian Music series in the country. In the late 80’s and 90’s I co-produced shows for USO shows, Carnival and Dolphin Cruise Lines and theme parks in U.S., Europe, and Japan. Wrote material for park music shows, western shows, gunfights and kids programs. During those years I also booked thousands of school assembly programs for the AEP (American Entertainment Productions) road shows. I had to have the phone surgically removed!
In the 90’s I was Recruiting and Talent Director of American Entertainment Productions, auditioning nationally 600-700 performers a year (singers, dancers, and actors) for cruise ships (Carnival among them), theme parks, and Business Theater shows. We produced a large convention each year for Kraftmaid, fronting their headliners with a troop of singers and dancers. We opened for Tom Jones, Kenny Rogers, Beach Boys, Dick Clark's Rock Show, Kenny Loggins, Ben Vareen, and ... anyway…you get the picture. We had some very successful years. Back about 1995, we started noticing a trend as the small parks were selling to Premier Parks, who eventually bought Six Flags, and eliminating the independent producer, us. Also Carnival was building bigger and better ships and taking away the smaller ones we were producing on, replacing us with themselves. All of a sudden we were down to nothing. I left at the end of September 1997, after finishing off a summer with a hotel show in the Catskills and a show for The Scotia Prince, a cruise ship running from Maine to Nova Scotia. I was the last employee to go, and after two filler jobs I was hired in July of 1998 here at my own church.

During the 90’s the girls grew, thanks to Heidi, into lovely Christian ladies. They went to Bible College at Word of Life Bible Institute, Samantha went for two years and met her man, and Tabitha just one. (Yes...Samantha and Tabitha from THAT show) Sam (31 now) was great about everything. Her and Quinn live in Grand Rapids and have three girls, 7and 5 and 3, and Captain Jack, 1.
Tab (30) married in April 05 to Matt Dyer. He’s a degreed artist working to establish a photography business. Tab is a medical writer for a dermatologist. They live here in Columbus.

Heidi had established a home cleaning service and then worked with Weight Watchers as a leader for a few years. She had just gone on staff as a full-time recruiter of leaders when we bought a large house and moved her Mom and Dad in with us (Sep 99) Within weeks her Mom’s heart problems worsened and in five months she died. Heidi was her primary care giver during all that time and decided not to go back to work for Weight Watchers. Her Dad lived with us for another 8 years before passing in 2007.
She reestablished her cleaning service and also has a catering business that does a few things each year. She is personality plus and the love of my life! Her current job is Wedding Administrator at our church.

My job here at the church came out of left field. I was originally hired to be on the Media Team, selling the books, tapes, CD’s, back up tapes, arrangements, that our people create to other churches and ministries. You know…attending the music conventions and Christian publishing events as well as spending time on the phone talking to music directors all over the country. I had no sooner settled in my cubicle than the Music/Media Director called me in and said the Copy Center Supervisor gave a short notice and by the way did I know anything about printing. The short version of this story is that once I was established here I never looked back. They were able to match the money I would have made in the cubicle and I really liked the freedom here. Set my own hours, be a self-starter, help pull peoples feet out of the fire, etc. I run four machines that have a yearly volume of just over 2.5 million. I supervise the other 7 machines in other locations of the church and schools. I also handle all the mail, bulk mail, UPS, and inter-office stuff. The church and school combined have 210 employees and I print for all of them. Teachers, staff, administrators, ministries, etc. I have full benefits, retirement, investment opportunities, two weeks vacation a year, the works. Man…I was so tired of the phone, and trouble shooting, and putting out fires. It sounds crazy, after my lifestyle, but this works for me. It’s a people pleasing position and I love it. And I can listen to music all day, any kind of music.

I’ve gained a few pounds over the years, but who of us hasn't. I like to think I have aged gracefully. My knees are not great so I don’t play much basketball anymore. Did you ever try to shoot a jump shot without jumping? I write for fun, both poetry and memoirs, but I have two partially developed novels locked away too. The memoirs are called respectively GAS FOOD LODGING next Exit, about my road adventures, and (They call it) Wanderlust), about moving 30 times in 62 years. (and that doesn't include my 8 years on the road)

Another thing I enjoy is finding folks on the internet. I've tracked quite a number of people I traveled with, including half of the original Continentals from 1963-65! I’m now working on other people I traveled with.

Heidi and I are both in our choir (120 voices) and recording ensemble at Grace Brethren Church of Columbus, OH, and we are involved in a small couples Bible study. Heidi does solo work and is on the worship team. I am very active in Grace Veterans. The five couples in the Bible study are our extended family. We love them.

Well…this is turning into a novel. We could add a couple car chases, explosions, and some gratuitous sex and sell this baby as a blockbuster.
I’ve been dwelling on my side of these lost decades but would love to hear of your life. What’s up?

Enough for now…..

Your old tour friend,
Wes Turner

The bugaboo of booking (written to the Continental bookers-at Cam's request)
by Wes Turner (2007)

I feel qualified now, as I look back at my career in entertainment, having been both a beneficiary of booking and a booker, to speak on this subject. This little tale will concentrate on the performing of dates for a Continental Singers group from the early Contemporary Christian Music era called New Hope. BUT…having been on the road professionally many years following New Hope and then having moved into a production office and gathered dates (booked), to the tune of 3000 assemblies for another company, I also have a booker’s perspective. On the professional level I have taught promoting workshops for the Fellowship of Contemporary Christian Ministries in which I spoke on determining the right group for your audience, block booking, publicity, corporate sponsors for Christian events, and avoiding the cardinal promoters sin…bringing in your own favorite group in spite of the lack of audience demand.
Anyway…I digress.
I believe successful booking is built upon past history, timing, good credentials, a bit of luck, and much faith and prayer. Taken into consideration is: the history of the group in that particular church, school, area; the track record of that particular group i.e. personnel changes, changes in music presented from year to year or gossip flowing thru the “Christian underground”; how much is happening during that season, not just with that church but in the community.
Having said all of the above I say…solid booking is the lifeblood of a company. (I think I heard Cam say amen, all the way from Hawaii). Even more important than personnel? Yes…because somehow the recruiters will always bring together some group of performers (scholarship or paying) but there must be somewhere to send them. Every day.
So…let’s see…how bout putting a big map of the U.S. on the wall and using the method that I was sure was used in the days of old…throwing darts. If our goal is to get to, say…New York City, by a certain day then if we draw a straight line from L.A. and find the nearest towns we should find ourselves in…Butte, Montana on the fourth day! Talk about feeling like the children of Israel. I have been on many tours that seemed to wander and eventually be fed on manna.
The New Hope tours were to run from September thru late May so that the participants could also go on a summer Continental tour. Two of the three I went on ended early because of booking debacles.
In the spring of 1972 we, the New Hopers, embarked on a crazy schedule that we were willing to endure because a 4-6 week stay in Florida was dangled in front of us like a carrot to a mule. We had just finished an exhausting week in Pittsburgh working with Young Life during the day and churches at night. In 1971 our bookers had turned us over to Young Life and said, ‘here is our group for two weeks. Burn them out.” And we had done 41 concerts in 13 days! Figure that out per day and you will see it was non-stop. So the deal for 1972 was for them to go easy on us. So they only took booking responsibility for one week. And…you guessed it…21 shows in 7 days.
From there we moseyed down south a bit and had in Texas had an extremely spiritual experience. We had prayed on Monday during our devo time that God would intervene and give us some rest. What a sense of humor he has. On Tuesday morning we were scheduled to play at San Marcos Military School, a Christian high school with military leanings. I walked into the principal’s office and presented myself to the general or whatever and he said, “Hi, nice to see you again. Are you playing in the area?” We had arrived exactly one year later than when we had been there before. The office had sent us LAST YEARS CONTRACT!
I announced thus when I climbed back aboard the bus and the shout of HALLELUJAH’S rang throughout the valley. We proceeded to go to a grocery store, get us some grindage, and head out to a park to have a well deserved day of picnic and rest.
Then came THE WEEKEND FROM HECK. New Hope had in our repertoire three shows that we scrambled or played separately depending on the need. A vocal oriented please-the –saints church program…a pop/rock assembly program…and a college show with pop/rock/, original tunes, Jesus rock, and assorted solos. As we headed back north I get the call from the home office that we have been booked for a Friday night date at Mankato State University in Minnesota. We were pretty excited until we learned that it was a dance. Dance? New Hope playing a dance? We obviously were a group more accustomed to being watched/listened to than danced to. So…on the way we worked up some jams and a couple new songs we thought would fit better in a dance. I especially remember California Dreamin’. To compound this equation we were to then, fairly late in the evening, drive overnight to St. Louis to headline the next night with two local rock bands at a rock n roll show in a major auditorium (Kiel Opera House). AND then head to Fort Sill Oklahoma to play another dance a couple days later. I really almost had a riot on my hands delivering that news.
We did the Mankato State gig without too much problem…traveled overnight and sat in the parking lot of this arena on Saturday for a few hours sleeping and then I talked the promoter into letting us go first so we could get our equipment off the stage and get out of there before the real rockin’ and rollin’ started. Once he saw our sound check and M.O. (girls, horns, pop songs, etc) he agreed it was the best idea. The trip to Oklahoma was somber for we were indeed burnt out. The booker was called and swore she didn’t know this one was a dance. The God-Of-All-Of-Us New Hope was broken. Only that glimmer of Florida sunshine could keep this thing together now. Then…disaster. The booker called and said that she had turned the 4-6 weeks of dates in Florida over to another person and that person had dropped the ball. We only had three or four dates total and we would have to cancel that leg of the trip. We were home by Easter. The bus slowly made it’s way across the country with people slipping out the doors and grabbing luggage and instruments along the way. An ignominious ending (big word meaning …bummer) for a group that started as the New Hope Singers a short four years earlier.
Did I say that booking was the lifeblood? Well it’s really everything. The flesh, the skin, the teeth…everything. Without the dates you have no reason to put a traveling aggregation together. The problem the booker faces is every church wants a Sunday night and every principal wants a Friday afternoon. EVERY other program has to be sold. No administrator wants to start Monday a.m. with an assembly that will fire up the kids and leave them bouncing off the walls for the next 7 hours…but someone has to take the early time. To successfully book that date takes salesmanship, and that’s what a booker is. A salesman. Wednesday night is not a bad alternative to Sunday for a church concert but Friday night in the middle of football season in a small football-crazy town in Texas isn’t.
I could write a book…but we’ve all been on those tours that seem to stagger across the country, crossing state lines faster than flames in a Malibu canyon firestorm. The bottom line is that an empty date book means no tour…so bookers - fill the dates, with God’s help, to the best of your ability.


HAVING SENT THIS STORY TO THE CAM FLORIA WHO FORWARDED IT TO THE BOOKERS OF CONTINENTAL SINGERS, JERIMIAH PEOPLE, ETC
I RECEIVED FURTHER INQUIRY TO EXPOUND…SO I WROTE THIS:


I know you don’t know me from Adam (that would be the other oldest Continental) but I wanted to write and encourage you. Cam wrote back and said he had passed my booking article on to each of you and I was sore afraid (biblical reference) that it would impact you negatively instead of it being the tongue-in-check epistle it was meant to be.
Every word of it is true…and the biggest truth is that I didn’t realize how difficult booking was until I got my own phone and date book. I spent eight years fulltime and six summers on a bus complaining about the booking…grousing that those people had no idea how difficult the schedule was. But when I sat down for my first “desk” job it was to fill a schedule of three road groups. Now…for me a knowledge of touring, set up, need for rest, food, etc was a real plus. Except that in the heat of the battle all that goes out the window…fill the dates, man. That’s the bottom line for the budget.
I guess no matter how long you have been doing it there are some basic truths I’d like to pass on:
You MUST really believe in your product. Don’t do this and treat it like you are selling windows over the phone. Your livelihood and the daily welfare of a whole group depends on your attitude.
You never face the booking day without first acknowledging that this is something you can’t do in your own strength. It’s one thing to have enthusiasm, phone charisma, knowledge, optimism and a mission…but in the forefront of your mind should be the words …”I can do all things thru Christ who strengthens me.” And I think I can hear the old Oral Robert Singers theme song playing in the background…”Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world”. I’ve prayed my way into and out of many bookings (nothing worse than having to re-schedule what seemed like a perfect set of dates).
Whether it makes a difference in the dates you book or not it’s nice for the tour director to have personal contact, phone, e-mail, a visit when they are in the area…something human that will show them you care. Let’s face it, sometimes you have no control over a set of dates…it begins to take on a life of its own. That’s usually good. Then…there are times when it either falls in place or you hit it with your shoe and make it fall in place.
Has there been a recent mass mailing of information to the area you are booking? Finances don’t always allow for that but with the reputation of Jeremiah People and Continentals sometime just jogging the memory can get you some dates.
It may or may not make a difference but I know many heads of companies that started by booking their own dates. Cam, Roger Brelin of Truth, Thurlow Spurr of the Spurlows, Justin Smith of Evangelism Tickets, Lowell Lytle of Young American Showcase, Gary Henley of American Entertainment Productions, etc who have had groups out there for years and did their own booking to get things started. Now don’t go getting entrepreneurial ideas just yet…just rest in that fact. Cam…on the phone to churches across the US and Europe!
I don’t know your system, exchanging information with the others may already be happening, but remember “no man is an island (sorry ladies)”. Encourage each other as best you can. You may not even be in an office together but a trade of information can be helpful.

Well…I hope you accept this e-mail with a spoonful of sugar. If the shoe fits, etc. If I can further encourage any of you just write and I’ll give it a try. There are not that many tricks of the trade. Open date book, phone or e-mail in hand…nose to the grindstone…GO.

Wes Turner
(thankful I am not doing your job)

HOME IS WHERE YOU HANG YOUR BAG

People…people who need people…are the luckiest people in the world.
That song and its, more accurate counterpart People need the Lord are my favorite songs about people (if you don’t include Short People). I always have…and always will love people watching. I guess I could just tell tall-tour-tales in this particular epistle but in my opinion one of the super cool aspects of traveling and performing is the “getting from here to there”. Meeting new folks, exchanging viewpoints and past history, and building new friendships is invigorating and stimulating. Being real…walking the walk…meeting people where they are in life. Being “all things to all people” (Paul’s words). Getting to see the cultural differences in various parts of the world is a big plus, AND…the people I meet is fodder for my nasty habit…writing.

While performing six summers with the Continentals/Continental Singers and three years with the full time contemporary Christian ministry group New Hope (1962-1972), I was a guest in approximately 2000 homes. If you are reading this you probably know the drill. We stayed with host families from the church or school where we played. The ladies of the church would provide an evening meal, often potluck, and your host family a late snack in the evening. After a comfortable (?) bed and breakfast it was sack-lunch-to-go and the cycle started all over again. “I’ll trade this interesting eggplant sandwich or my beautiful authentic Chiquita banana for your Twinkie”, was a phrase frequently heard on the bus. “oooh…can I have your lime jello?” probably wasn’t. At times it felt like grade school lunchroom all over again. The next-day stories about experiences with our host families ranged from interesting or ho-hum to great to terrifying (they were Manson family wanna-bes). I don’t know about the other young men but I was always ecstatic when I was able to stay with a family that had a daughter near my age. While playing Cam’s home church in Lansing in 1964 I was among the lucky ones that stayed with some of his family friends. This family sported two or three beautiful blonde babes our age that drove us around in a convertible and even let one of the guys drive the car.

Between 1963 and 1972 I toured the U.S. (many times), Canada, Alaska, Mexico, Bahamas, and Europe. In 1968 I was actually on a tour that went to the Caribbean too but I left tour early to go back to the Army. There I was, boney behind (this was obviously a long time ago) in a bus seat, chris-crossing the U.S. with one aggregation or another playing hundreds of churches, auditoriums, colleges, high schools, and parks. The housing ranged from a millionaire’s mansion in Indianapolis, with an indoor pool and tennis court, to the small clean home of an Indian Agent on a reservation in the hottest portion of the U.S., near the Nevada/California border. From a family farmhouse in Coshocton, Ohio and a peach farm in New Jersey to a singles apartment two streets off the beautiful Pacific Ocean in Huntington Beach, California. I spent one night with my eyes wide open in the upstairs of a mortuary with who knows what laying cold below. When we played in Boston I spent time in a Massachusetts lady’s house that was on the eastern-most point of the United States, out past Salem.

And…there was the nighttime snack that just kept on giving. I was one of four guys staying with a couple near Albany, NY the night before we flew to Europe from New York City. For some reason I don’t recall having had dinner before the concert…running late or something…anyway, by the time our gang arrived at the host home we were very hungry. As a snack, the lady of the house had prepared a scooped out watermelon full of cut up fruit, other melons, peaches, strawberry’s, etc. Boys will be boys so we ate our fill. There was an early bus loading back at the church the next morning and a mid-day flight and by the time we were boarded and winging our way to European adventures the four of us were trotting up and down the aisles. All the way to the Old Country our stomachs churned as we took turns in the lavatories.

On a more serious side I found as I got older (my last New Hope tour as director I was 25) I had a greater empathy with the adults in the household than with the kids. My geezer mind wanders to Magnolia, MS and a New Hope assembly at the high school, followed by an evening performance at the local First Baptist Church. Folks, the ‘rents had no clue. There was drug experimentation going on among the church high school kids, spoke openly about with us, but when we asked various parents if Magnolia had a drug problem they laughed at us.
Throughout the New Hope years the concept of using “rock” or “contemporary” music in churches as a valid outreach to the young’uns was a subject I defended for hours at a time with the older generation.Folks…we fought the battles out there to make way for the Contemporary Christian music of today. I’ll share two stories.

The first takes place on a fall weekend in 1971 in Bend, Oregon. We had driven, to the middle of nowhere in central Oregon, to perform on a Sunday evening at a church. We did our “church”, please-the-saints program. I don’t use that phrase in a careless way. It was a meaningful and well received event aimed at the church audience. The sanctuary was small but the place was packed. We took a love offering for expenses and stayed with folks from that congregation overnight Sunday evening. We told the congregation that we would be performing an assembly at Bend High School the next day and inviting the school kids to our ticketed night concert Monday. We also offered them the opportunity to come out and see what that show was all about. Monday evening came and we had a great concert with 13 kids coming forward at the end. We did our secular rock n roll and our Jesus rock mixed with testimonies and an invitation. While our group members were dealing with the ones that come forward, two young adult couples came up to me and asked to talk. They started by saying they had been at the Sunday evening program and how wonderful it was. They said they could feel the Spirit of God right there in the auditorium. Then they proceeded to say that they had been in a rock group and had been called out of that lifestyle when they became Christians and then asked why did we feel we need to play that kind of music? Why couldn’t we just play Christian music and play churches. I said…as calm as possible…that as much as we enjoyed church music and the fellowship the plain facts are: 1. None of these teens were at the church concert because it was at a church, and 2. Our total offering last night was 38.86. Tonight we sold tickets and made a few hundred dollars. We have 11 people and a bus to propel around the country and that will not happen on 38.86 a night. We are first and foremost in business to witness to kids and to do that we need to meet them right where they are. I then proceeded to say that if they felt they need to avoid rock music, if that was how God had spoken to them, convicted them, then they should do that, but we really felt called to do what will put us in front of the most kids.

My second story is a doozie. We were playing in Moore, OK. Moore High School was large and we had to perform two assemblies a day for three days to catch all the kids. We started on Monday and by Wednesday we had invited almost 2400 kids to the Wednesday night concert at Moore First Baptist Church. It was a large church but the capacity was probably 850. On Wednesday afternoon we were eating pizza in the youth building at the church when we started noticing cars drifting into the parking lot. By 6:30 the sanctuary was packed and they started putting kids in the choir loft and putting up chairs. At 7 pm, with the concert scheduled to start at 7:30, I was in a conference with the pastor, music director and some very heated up deacons. They were upset because the church regulars had arrived for “prayer meeting” at the usual time and some couldn’t even get in much less sit in their regular pews. And to top that off the kids were mostly unchurched and so they were clapping for the group to come out and being rowdy. I had to go out before we ever started and warn them against being overly rambunctious. They didn’t know it but the pastor had warned me that if things got out of hand he would stop the program at the offering and call it a night. We made it thru the evening (with a few reminders from stage) without them pulling the plug and had dozens of kids come forward for counseling. The pastor told me that we were taking too long with the counseling and some of the folks that had promised to house us had left because they hadn’t been able to get in. As the housing was shuffled around some of our guys ended up going home with the pastor and his weeping wife. She cried in the car and said she was afraid her husband was going to lose his job. Then she asked the question. Why did you go to the school? Why not just invite some of the kids to the church and that would have left room for the rest of her friends. Basically she said she just wanted a nice church event…not an outreach. Now…what would they do with all the kids if they started coming to the church and expecting something like that all the time?
When we hit the road there were still 80-90 % of the churches in the country that didn’t want drums on their platform and weren’t too crazy about guitars either. I’m not just talking about live musicians. Trax were a really new thing and sparingly used.

Now, the singers they liked… because we could change our show to do anything they wanted. I’ve been asked to point the trumpets into the curtains so they wouldn’t be so loud. To put the drummer in the baptistery. To perform without drums. Unplug the electric guitars and go acoustic. Lots of variations. When we added horns my second New Hope year we were continually fighting the “loudness” factor. Between the amount of shows we did, the potluck dinners, the staying-in-homes, and the bus breakdowns I can honestly say that this gig was something you really had to want to do.

One more story before wrapping this up.
In August of 1969, just before I went into New Hope I was flown out to New York City to meet up with Steve Hilson’s tour coming back from Europe. Dan Burgess had been assistant director but had to fly to L.A. to help get things ready for the fall tours. So I flew in from Portland OR where I had been staying with my sister after getting out of the Army. I arrived at JFK shortly before 2 pm, schlepped my bags over to the International Terminal, and guarded my stuff for 7 hours. When the group finally came in the bus driver and a truck driver got thru customs first and hustled out to the parking lot to recover the vehicles and have them ready when everyone else got thru. I joined the throng and as I met these kids I walked with them to the bus, dropped my hang up bag with all the rest, to be loaded in the truck, hand delivered my suitcase to the bus bins and boarded to be introduced to everybody officially.

We were staying at Sloan House, sort of a YWCA/YMCA, in downtown NYC. We arrived there and because I didn’t need my bag, just my suitcase, I never gave it another thought. Sometime during the next day as we are tooling around sightseeing a group member comes up and introduced himself and says, “Did you have a hang up bag when you arrived?” Not appreciating the past tense in that question I said yes. He started to apologize and I knew I was in trouble. Seems that he was loading the bags at the airport and noticed that one didn’t have the same tags as all the others…and not knowing about my arrival, since he was in the truck, he had taken it back INSIDE THE TERMINAL!

My first experience driving in the total bedlam of NYC was driving that truck back out to the airport and visiting all 13 of the terminals searching for a bag that disappeared off the face of the earth. Houdini couldn’t have done it better. Four jackets, 13 shirts and 8 pairs of pants…all my clothes for New Hope tour as well as show clothes for this current Continental tour were gone. We were then headed to a small town in New Jersey or Pennsylvania where I proceeded, at a local Penny’s, to try to get enough clothes together to get on the risers. I think a kind orchestra person lent me a coat since they’re not as visible as the choir. The valuable lesson I learned…one that stuck with me thru the next twenty years of performing professionally, was to never assume anything. The devil is in the details.

I didn’t take many photos but the memories of my tours are all colorfully vivid. The eye-popping New York World’s Fair in 1964, where we performed both in the Oregon Pavilion and the Billy Graham Pavilion; a cruise ship performance on our way to the Bahamas to do a performance for the Governor; three and a half weeks in Europe in 1965 with the unbelievable treat of staying in hotels for the whole trip! We enjoyed castles in Germany, Stratford-on-Avon in England, the exciting opening of the Salzburg Folk Festival in Austria, and the charm of Lake Lucerne, Switzerland and youth hostel in Amsterdam. Everett King and I saw Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip coming out of Buckingham Palace gates just hours after arriving in London! Seeing the Colorado Rockies, Red Rocks and Garden of the Gods, outside of Denver and Colorado Springs; performing and staying at the castle Glen Erie owned by the Navigators. We recorded the album SOUL at Capitol studios in Hollywood with Ralph Carmichael in the same studio where he worked with Nat King Cole. We even went to his house in Bel Air to swim and listen to the yet-unfinished-tapes. I had great fun (though we only sang a couple times) on my first visit to Lake Tahoe, Disneyland, Tijuana, and Palm Springs during a December 1963 Mexico YFC missions trip. New Hope worked in a secular show with Bob Hope and the Brothers Four AND with youth evangelist Bill McKee in the dead of a Minnesota winter in 1971, and witnessed hundreds of high school kids make decisions for Christ at rallies. We had special teaching sessions with Dr. Dave Breese and stayed a week at Campus Crusade headquarters in Arrowhead Springs, CA, followed by a show.

And how about the magnificent splendor of British Columbia and Alaska in the summer of 1970? The Steve Hilson-led Continentals sailed the inside passage of British Columbia and Alaska on a 140 foot converted minesweeper, drinking in the breathtaking scenery and soaring mountaintops. The glaciers and whales were so close you could almost reach out and touch them. We performed in Indian villages, city halls, and sometimes right from the top of the ship.
These people and places memories…and I have a truck load of ‘em, will stay imbedded in this ol’ brain forever.

Wes Turner
Original Continentals 63-65, Continental Singers 67, 69, 70, New Hope 69-72

WESTBOUND AND ROLLING

refuge of the roads
hiding on the highways
bumming Baja beaches in a passport photo haze
drifters in a diner
picnics in a small town park
creeping out of town as darkness steals away the day
light and easy attitudes
longitudes and latitudes
innocence and ignorance together on a bus
Westbound and rolling



rushing past pastoral farms
still life thru the window
barbed wire boundaries
concrete drives and
pathways made of stones holding back the grass



refuge of the roads
the Huck and Jim of shows
on the lam and moving thru the malls and city streets
milling with the faithful
smiling for the cameras
soothing seething masses with our music words and beat
music is our mistress
travel is our master
innocence and ignorance together on a bus
Westbound and rolling



(continued)

homeless for a season
bankrupt for a time
God-inspired travelers passing mileposts of life
as suitcase toting refugees
as bandmates in a capsule
harmony’s our watchword, making friends for life
pilgrims making progress
players in our prime
innocence and ignorance together on a bus
Westbound and rolling

(germ for this idea stolen from Joni Mitchell)

Fun, Fun, Fun?

A friend recently queried:
…was New Hope all that much fun?
This is my embellished response.

Dear__________, I’ll preface my answer by saying …IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES…IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES.

Having been in many different performing and rehearsing situations, Continentals (both Originals and later 60’s years), Free Fare, LIFE, Goodtime Singers (back up for Tennessee Ernie Ford) and having been in charge of rehearsing (and later critiquing) hundreds of kids for work on cruise ships and theme parks I’d have to say…New Hope was certainly one of them. I could write a book. Oh, wait…I did. I covered a lot of tour stories in my memoirs GAS FOOD LODGING…next exit.

I’ll start this way. Each year, each personnel change within the year, and each tour combine to make bitter-sweet special memories. Each tour had it’s own landscape…face , if you will, to look back on. There are personalities involved in those three years that make them special above all the other tours I’ve ever been on. I met and performed with people that I shall call friends for the rest of my life. I cried with folks that couldn’t take the pressures of touring and for one reason or another left prematurely. I learned so many things that benefited and furthered my career in music. I have busloads of memories that could never be replaced or replicated. New Hope performed in large locations, Universities and colleges, high schools, churches, coffee houses, parks and beaches, etc. We did multiple shows a day, while staying in the homes of strangers at night and existing on offerings, sack lunches and pot luck dinners. Sometimes it seems like a miracle we could hold it together a week…much less a tour.

The concept of a Christian group, able to stand on its own or open for other artists, with a great look, good vocals and super arrangements was a solid one. I don’t think Cam ever thought of the New Hope Singers, at least the first two years, as a “rock” group, more pop and easy listening. With 7 singers and a four piece band that was more believable. Though we were out there on the front line in schools, coffeehouses, and colleges, we were not “Jesus Rock” like Larry Norman or Love Song. Campus Crusade had a similar sized group doing college campuses as New Folk, but they were strictly ministry oriented, and very similar to The New Christy Minstrels.

With the seeming success of that first year with New Hope Singers (the Tambourine Band part had been hotly dropped) Cam took a now-experienced core of performers and added horn players from various Continental tours and created a professional act called Renaissance, sponsored in that show biz venture by a businessman by the name of David Shine. Rick Barberio was enlisted to book this group while Bob Ferro was hired to book New Hope. New Hope was overseen, within Continental Singers Incorporated, by Steve Hilson, who later left to work with the people handling Pat Boone and The Imperials.

Quite honestly as soon as Renaissance came into being, New Hope got shoved into the background and over the next few months, as that “professional” project went south, the company eyes turned back to New Hope to bring back in the money. New Hope picked up some good people, costumes, and music when Renaissance fell. In my third year the consensus, as a group, was we really wanted to minister with our own music, in our own way. Looking back, if I could have hand-picked a group from the four years of New Hope and performed music created by Michael OMartian and many of our own guys I believe that New Hope could have been the first really big musical Christian rock group. Right there with Love Song, PETRA and Second Chapter of Acts. We had the horses but not all together at the same time or in the same group.

The second-year batch of New Hope Singers (the ones I joined in the fall of 1969) were all newbies, except the manager/lead singer, Will Renzema. Some were ex-Continentals and some were auditioned just for the group. Dave the Drummer was from Denver, Rick the bassist was from Indiana, guitarist Martin Downing was from Alameda, in the Bay area, and Alan the keyboardist was a piano player from Southern Oregon. Up front we had myself and Danette (sop) from Portland and Willie (an Original from Portland now living in L.A.)…all with Continental experience, and Cindy Perry (alto) also from the Bay area, Castro Valley. Then there was Connie Baker (second) from Fort Worth, Lyle Countryman from Bakersfield, CA, and Bruce Cripe, from Tucson, AZ. Our bus driver was Ray Smith, from San Diego.

We rehearsed at First Baptist Church Van Nuys, in L.A. and stayed in homes arranged by the church and Cam. I stayed with Cam’s vice-president and former Spurlows Bob and Cheri Miller. She was one of Dean Martins Gold Diggers, appearing weekly on his T.V. show. I just remember very little interaction with them and the vague feeling that something was amiss in the relationship. They had two kids and while we were out on tour that year they split, Bob left, and she ended up eventually married to Cam. Shari went back to Oregon with their two kids.

I believe we started camp without a bass player or had one that left or something, but Bruce knew Rick, had gone to school with him at Fort Wayne Bible College, and Rick (with wife Janice) in tow arrived shortly. It’s too bad we couldn’t have added the lovely voice of Louise, Willie’s wife, but she had just given birth to the youngest member of our traveling troupe, Todd. Yes…we modified our seating set-up just a bit and wedged a crib where a seat had been. Danette was the designated caregiver when Louise was busy because her seat was right by the crib.

The first publicity shot of that group showed a fresh-faced group, anxious to please and eager to hit the road. Anyway, I loved the sound and look of that first group I was in. But we started out traveling with a baby! And smelly baby poop diapers mixed with young 20 something’s is not a recipe for success.

The school show songs were a light pop variety that included a couple originals by last year’s band guys and songs like “Good Morning Starshine”; the Beatle’s “Hey Jude” and “Julia”; Simon and Garfunkle’s “Homeward Bound”; “Everything is Beautiful” by Ray Stevens; “People Gotta Be Free” by the Rascals, and Judy Collins “Both Sides Now”.
At some point in the year we had changes…not all at once, but changes. Dave the Drummer was replaced by Lynn Coulter from New Orleans. Danette was replaced by Bev Snell from Wichita, Rick left and Martin started playing both guitar and bass, with the slack being taken up by keyboards. Aubrey Bowles joined and Lyle went to Renaissance and Will (and family) got off the road and was replaced by Dan Burgess. I confess I do not remember in what order all those changes took place. I do not remember who ran sound although Bruce Braun ( ex-Spurlow, ex-Continental, ex-Renaissance was around to drive or run stuff. Also over the course of the next couple of years we had a business manager that traveled with us. I can’t remember exactly when or how long but one was Art Lindsley, from Pittsburg and Howard parker, from Yorba Linda, CA. Both had toured with Continentals.
As you can probably understand those kind of changes entail lots of extra rehearsal time…and relationship building. That, tour schedule (or lack of it), and bus troubles are the biggest killers of spirit.

Then, in the fall of 1970, after many of us had taken a summer to tour again with Continentals, there was Danny Burgess and his new bride, Soozie. New Hope dropped the Singers part of the name and added horns. Solid players and personalities all. Craig Ware (and wife Sharon) played bass trombone and arranged many charts; Bill Schenk was on tenor bone, Gordon Simmons and Randy Smith played trumpet. Then there was Justin Smith (from Florida) on guitar, Martin Downing now played full-time bass, Lynn Coulter hit the drums and Phil Perkins (from Oklahoma) was our keyboardist. Singers were Lucia Taylor (from big Spring TX) as alto; Judy Cole (from Oakland area) sop; Bruce, Dan Robbins, and Dan Burgess were the guys.
Other Jerry Lanier from Lakeland FL was brought in to play keyboards but he was partially deaf and that created many problems during rehearsals and the few shows he did. The sound and lights department got a whole lot better when we were joined by Dave Misner, a really pleasant fellow from one of the islands in the Puget Sound near Seatlle. He was a wiz and went on to work with a sound and lighting company in L.A. along with Howard Parker. At one point we had a really thin creature, her waist was the same size as Bruce’s thigh, named Pam, singing soprano, but she was so skinny she fell thru a crack in the bus floor and disappeared. I think it was the last year of New Hope that Charlie Steele from Nachadoges (sp), TX joined us a bus driver. . Larry Kingery (tenor) came into the group somehow…or was that the next year? Wow…brain freeze.

One of the bigger projects New Hope took on was the recording and performing (for Gospel Films) of Don Wyrtzen’s musical called “What’s It All About Anyhow”. We did the filming at KTLA. The two young stars of that project were A. Martinez and one of T.V.’s Van Patton boys.

In the fall of 1971, in order to create an instant family Dan and Soozie bought a puppy while we were in the Pacific Northwest and kept it on the bus. Again…poopy dogs and 20 something’s do not mix well in small confined areas. The dog’s legacy was a wet one, always peeing in the bus and would even wonder back down the bus aisle and pee on Gordy’s’ shoes. He died…on the bus…of distemper. Dan and Soozie left the road at Christmas with a broken heart.

I had started my second year with New Hope as sound man. That’s a long story but since you are going nowhere I’ll tell it.

My first tour with New Hope ended really strange. For some reason…lack of booking or whatever…we ended our tour a few weeks early, sometime in April) in Albuquerque. Next morning as we headed across the Southwest towards Tucson to drop off Bruce I became deathly ill. Never found out what I had but when we got to Bruce’s house his mom said I shouldn’t travel and I should stay there a few days and get better. The bus pulled out and I was there for 5-6 weeks…three of which I was pretty sick. When I got better Bruce and I worked for a man his mom knew and earned a bit of cash doing landscaping. When I finally got home to Portland I couldn’t find a job…most of the summer-only jobs had been snatched up by students.

I had already told Cam I was not going back into New Hope but about three weeks into summer I called him and asked if any of the Continental groups would be coming thru Portland and if so could I join one. As it happened, Steve Hilson…the director I had joined for three weeks the previous summer, was headed thru the Pacific Northwest, Canada and Alaska and on to Hawaii. That very satisfying tour carried me into late August.

A number of the folks on the Alaska tour were going to be in New Hope that fall. I contacted Cam and said I would like to go back myself. He said that my spot had tentatively been given to Dan Robbins but I should plan on going to camp (the first couple of weeks in September) anyway in case that didn’t work out. Then a couple days before camp when it looked like Dan would be back Cam asked if I would be the soundman…with the possibility of coming up and doing a rock song now and then when needed. So….I became a sound man. No experience but a good ear and lots of ambition.

Once I was taught where things plugged in, the most difficult thing for me was repairing cords. Mr. Fix-it I am not. That got a whole lot better when Dave Misner came in because besides doing lights he did most of the fixing. I grew to love that job as much as anything I ever did on any tour. Very gratifying. Throughout the fall Martin Downing and I had sat back and discuss the ins and outs of tour and comment on how relieved we were not to have the responsibility of making decisions. All we had to do was get on the bus, get off the bus, set up, do the show, tear down, get on the bus, and go wherever someone else had deemed that we go. Then, as the inner workings of tour became shaky I became disillusioned.

I took my Christmas break in Fort Worth TX because that’s where my girlfriend, Connie Baker, the second soprano from the year before, lived. Connie’s mom had offered to help me get a job there in Fort Worth if I decided not to go back on tour. So I called Cam and expressed my unhappiness with the management and said I wanted to quit. He said “how would you like to be the road manager?” He informed me that Dan and Soozie wouldn’t be returning. He said he would send Ken Waggoner (with his wife Nancy) out for a few weeks to train me and then I could take over management as well as sound. I agreed and New Years day found me in waiting in the Wichita, Kansas airport for the New Hope bus as it slowly moved across the country toward our January destination of snowbound Minneapolis. Ken Waggoner and wife, Nancy, came on board for almost two months to “train” me.

My reason for taking over the management was simple. I believed I could do it correctly because I had seen enough people perform the job badly. I would be working with a great circle of friends and if we had problems they would be group problems…bus, booking, schedule…and not personnel problems. We would work on them together. Developing almost a “them against us” situation with the management, instead of speaking to the group from a management point of view. That philosophy served me well throughout many more years of touring and “being in charge”. The major change for me was being confident about my own decisions and not taking advantage of the management position. I got out of the bus first and met principles and pastors, spoke during offerings and altar calls and called any meetings or rehearsals.

My third year of New Hope started after a restful non-Continental summer in 1971. I had toured with Continental Singers parts of, if not whole summers, in 63, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70. The summers of 66 and 68 were spent with Uncle Sam. I spent the months in Portland living with my oldest sister, Ginny, and doing things a young 20-something guy does. Going to concerts, playing basketball with my buddies, dating young ladies, and being involved in our church college-age group.

There was a good core group of musicians coming back to New Hope. We had been told we were going to record near the front of the tour so we’d have new product to sell at the concerts. The line up included returnee’s Craig Ware (with wife Sharon), Gordy Simmons, Bruce Cripe, Lucia Taylor, Martin Downing, Dan Robbins, and me. New folks were Kevin Peterson on trombone, Ric Schultz on trumpet, George Gagliardi on guitar, Gary Hughes on keyboard, Jon Robinson and Kerri Martindale (vocals). Charles Steele was driving bus and Dave Misner running lights.

The rehearsal camp was held out west of Los Angeles off I-10 at the site of a small defunct bible college in West Covina, I think. Rehearsals went well and we found a couple of writers among the new people. Between our guys and Michael OMartian and Ralph Carmichael (because we were on Light Records we always had to have a Ralph song or two) we went into the studio (in…Downey?) and came out with a nice recording project. A bit sterile and not exactly “Jesus Rock” but out in front of the Contemporary Christian Music of it’s day, still in the formation stage. We used our own musicians and singers but brought in “ringers’ when it came to keyboards. Our keyboard guy had to leave tour because his father had just passed away. We were doing school shows around the area while recording so we called Don Wyrtzen, who’s musical we had done the year before, a keyboard player himself, and asked him to help us out, which he did. One side of the record had Michael OMartian playing and the other Tom Keene, another well known Christian player from the area.

After our rehearsal period we went to Lake Arrowhead to the Campus Crusade headquarters and went thru a week of evangelism training. We wore our brand new school outfits to do a show that ended our time there. It didn’t go so well. The girls were in hot pants with long vests over them and Jon was wearing a jumpsuit…but no underwear. Oh, the Jon stories I could tell. He had the opposite of sugar diabetes and there fore need to keep his nourishment up. He fainted a few times, both on and off stage. He didn’t last more than a couple months.


I had help in the tour management that year. Helping in their respective areas, especially when it came to critiquing and rehearsing were Bruce Cripe, with the vocals, and Gordy Simmons with the band (later Craig Ware took over when Gordy left mid-tour).

One of the most obvious problems was that yearly we were let down by our bookers. Too many shows (in 1971 we were in the Pittsburgh area and did 42 shows in 14 days), too few shows (both 1970 and 1972 we ended the tour 5-8 weeks early because of failed or non-existing bookings, and weird shows (in 1972 we had to learn a dance set because in one week we played a dance at Mankato State College in Minnesota, headlined a three group rock show in St. Louis, and played an officer’s club dance at Fort Sill, OK). And the really tough one was to try and figure out why we were in Minnesota for a month…in January. The plus side of the Minnesota dates were the shows we played with youth evangelist Bill McKee. But cancellations, bus freeze ups, etc made that winter really hard. And the clincher was the falling thru of 6-8 weeks in Florida, causing an early tour end and eventual demise of New Hope. The name was used by CSI a year later to put a seven guy band on the road (sort of like the Imperials) but it was a short lived effort. That last year we had a booker by the name of Bonnie Larson.

Maybe, in retrospect, all was not fun, fun, fun in the New Hope years. I guess when I look back on things I tend to remember the good stuff better. Or maybe it’s just that the good stuff made all the bad worthwhile.



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TELL ME THE STORY OF JESUS...MUSIC

Larry Norman was on the right track. "The devil should not have all the best tunes.” In 1844 Reverend Rowland Hill, pastor of Surrey Chapel in London, intoned these words within his Sunday sermon. The concept reflected by those words are the germ, the reason, the driving force behind the inception and continued growth of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM).

I’ve never taken the words of Larry’s popular song Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? at face value. It’s a fun tune and easy to dance to but can be taken too literally. I believe we’ve sung and played some terrific lyrics and tuneful hymns in Christendom over the centuries. I grew up on hymns and occasional choruses from the little blue and white spiral-bound Singspiration booklet. Do Lord and V Is for Victory are a couple of catchy ditties that jump to my Sunday School saturated mind. But by the time we baby boomers reached “The Summer of Love,” the times they were a-changing. Those who were coming to the faith and hearing Christian music for the first time were scratching their heads of plentiful hair and saying “Whoa, dude…this stuff is ancient sounding…too mellow, man.”

By then we 20-somethings were ready to explore a new way of expressing our faith and using it to reach others our age who were listening to some pretty cool stuff by then. Hundreds of those early participants in CCM became part of what I used to call “The Christian Underground.” People in motion are the people I want to know, to borrow a phrase from an early Michael Omartian tune. People from the very root groups of CCM, who with their friends formed other groups, helped the music evolve by moving into record company leadership, becoming recording artists, writers, session musicians, arrangers, and taking positions as pastors and music and youth directors. The pioneers of Jesus Music became the glue that held together this new genre called CCM.

Without turning this into an obvious “where are they now?” piece, I’d like to re-visit the story behind why I and my cohorts, active participants in CCM, look so fondly out the big back window of the bus and reflect on where we’ve been and our life on the road .

Here’s a handful of well-known story starts. “Come listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed,” or how about “Here’s the story, of a lovely lady,” or even
“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.” Those tunes set the stage for some of the best story lines in television’s archives. Music is used in entertainment for dramatic effect, to embellish the emotional high and low points in stories. The following story is about music and its makers at a particular time in their lives. As Bob Dylan said, “We were so much older then…we’re younger than that now.” The music we were making was about Jesus.

It would make a great story, for those of us who’ve worked with him over the years, to paint Cam Floria as the inventor of the genre we now know as CCM. He and his contemporaries, Ralph Carmichael, Kurt Kaiser, Thurlow Spurr, Sonny Salsbury, even Andre Crouch, and oh…say, Larry Norman and Michael Omartian all coming at CCM from several directions, forged a more acceptable, palatable Christian music for young people and the hip adult churchgoers in the late 1960s. Cam, founder and president of Continental Singers Inc., was not the inventor but the purveyor. He spread the word. Long before there was an American Idol, he originated a Christian teen talent search that crossed denominational lines. It was part of his long-running Seminar in the Rockies, currently owned and produced by the Gospel Music Association. Cam’s groups were formed under the umbrella of the now 42 year old Continental Singers organization (originally not CCM because the term didn’t exist then but producing youthful aggregations just the same). Continental concerts around the world were instrumental (no pun intended) in getting music about Jesus out to the people. As of 2008 approximately 65,000 young people worldwide have toured under the banner of one Continental Singers tour or another.

Shortly after relocating to Los Angeles from Portland, Oregon, where he had taken his Continentals from Portland Youth for Christ to a YFC National Championship and secured a WORD recording contract, Cam saw a need for an uber-group. This group would be customized to make “Jesus Music” palatable to the churchgoing public of the day. His vision was for a group that was music ministry oriented but not a church youth choir; teen friendly but not Jesus Rock; well produced musically but not studio singers; and appealing to older church audiences but not Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. What he produced in the fall of 1968 was Light recording artists The New Hope Singers and Tambourine Band, a dynamic, visually appealing, pop-sounding group of musicians whose legacy created a tremor like a Southern California earthquake still being felt in Christian music today.

This now geriatric group of original members is coming together in Houston in August of 2009 for a reunion. Reuniting with them will be the casts that followed them onto the road, all produced by Floria’s company during the 1968-72 time frame: the professional band Renaissance, New Hope Singers (having dropped the Tambourine nonsense), and New Hope.

Like a fly on the wall, this writer witnessed the germ of the idea that became the New Hope Singers, etc. I’m an Original Portland Youth For Christ Continental (1962-65), and I also toured with Cam in 1967. I was passing through Los Angeles while changing Army duty stations in the spring of 1968. Five friends (all originals) went to San Diego for Mexican food and while returning were stuck in traffic on the I-5 listening to the radio. The song Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers came on the radio.

Cam listened a bit and commented he wanted to start a group that fall with a light pop sound to perform in churches, schools and even open for various secular artists such as Henry Mancini or Andy Williams. It would be a clean-cut, fresh, harmonious guy-girl group. Vocal groups, pop but not edgy rock, were doing well in the music business,The Mamas and Papas, Fifth Dimension, Association, and so on. All of the TV variety shows had guy/girl groups. Cam would audition talent and/or use some of the top Continental kids. We all felt a gimmick was needed. We also wanted one of those long “hip” names like Big Brother and the Holding Company or Quicksilver Messenger Service.

I told Cam about a record by a Gospel group called the New Jerusalem Singers and the cover showed them all playing tambourines…and the conversation went from there. Sheepishly I now admit I suggested “and Tambourine Band,” which I lived to regret. We continued talking concept, potential members, and even advertising, right down to the idea of putting each member’s face in a tambourine around the edge of the initial promotional flyers. That was the group I joined in the fall of 1969 after they had completed their first tour.

I don’t think Cam ever thought of us, at least the first two years, as a “rock” group or a band whose members could and eventually would create original material. He would attempt that by positioning New Hope’s sister group Renaissance (1969-70) in the secular market. New Hope, however, was out there on the front line in hundreds of schools, churches, coffeehouses, and colleges, even if we weren’t officially “Jesus rock.”From Christian schools such as Baylor University and Wheaton College to Stanford and University of Washington, we met the anti-war and drug culture head on. We are talking old-school touring here. No whistles and bells…no down-to-the-last-detail rider or concert financial guarantee…no monster lighting, stage, and sound setup…just a bus, an itinerary, and twelve willing people.

Yes, there were other collections of musicians around the country just starting to shake up the Christian music norm. But think of this time frame. When Larry Norman’s first album Upon This Rock was released by Capitol in 1969, New Hope Singers had been touring for a whole year already. A handfull of years before Love Song, Petra, Second Chapter of Acts, and Keith Green appeared on the CCM scene, the New Hope Singers were wearing out their Rand McNally atlas while crisscrossing the country. Decades before Nashville became a home base for CCM artists, producers, and labels, New Hope Singers were recording in Los Angeles with a talented cast gleaned from many different home states.

To my recollection we genuinely loved what we were doing as well as each other. We were brothers and sisters of the bus. Linking arms, we believed our cause was noble, honorable, and pure. We were indeed innocents abroad. We were using our God-given talents in ministry. We were representing our own church youth programs and towns. We were shining examples of Christian leadership. We were warriors on a holy mission. We were…oh, let’s face it. We were fellow human beings, earning a miniscule per diem, sweating together in dressing rooms and on buses with over-taxed air conditioners and on church platforms in America’s fly-over country. We poured out our hearts and voices, overused our lips, bandaged blistered fingers to make chords, whatever… in a symphony of song. We tempted ill health night after night at the potluck tables and risked life and limb staying in homes of possible would-be-Manson families. Among us were pew jumpers, Bible thumpers, high church, low church, no church…even a healthy smattering of Baptists! Whether reading, sleeping, or jamming to music, the hundreds of travel miles each day were spent pouring out our lives and perspiration on each other. As we traveled America’s asphalt ribbons, the dotted lines that divide coming from going and east from west drew us together as friends. Life-long relationships were started between those seated in our bus seats.

A person traveling on just one nine-month tour would have performed well over 600 concerts. Many days it was more than once, and because we played churches sometimes it was twice on the Lord’s Day. Sunday was not a day of rest. The time spent on stage or a church platform is really just a small part of the total, body-punishing, brain-stretching, heart-tugging commitment to being involved in a ministry. The touring lifestyle, no matter how long you do it, impacts your whole life. It shapes how you look at music, people, friendships, and your relationship to God. That time you spend in front of an audience and the lives you see changed is worth the bus breakdowns, truck stop bathrooms, pot-luck meals, overnighters, and the challenge of staying with host families.

It would have been one thing if the church folks would have understood that our “new music” was an alternative method of bringing kids into the church, by playing the music they really liked laced with Christian principles but many times the opposition throughout the land was formidable. Once the amps were plugged in though and the guitars unleashed, there was a rumble of response. Kids were sitting in the audience saying, “Hey, I can sing…I can play…I can write. Maybe I can put a group together right here in my own church.” Christian music artist Steve Camp was one of those kids. Music directors were picking up ideas, starting their own traveling aggregations. And I believe it is safe to say that church music has never been entirely the same.

And today? Those shaggy, hip travelers, pioneers in contemporary Christian music have, for the most part, integrated into mainstream society. Some are “reformed musicians,” but many have stayed in music for the last 40 years. One L.A.-based trumpet player/arranger/sought-after session player is with the Les Brown Band of Renown. A Chicago–born bass trombone player/educator
and arranger plays with a Grammy-nominated big band and can be heard on many blockbuster Disney movie soundtracks. Both of these session musicians play with Ralph Carmichael’s Big Band. Another trombone player is a well-known independent Christian television producer. A keyboard player started writing in the group, played with Pat Boone and Waylon Jennings, and is now one of the top writers of Christian children’s songs. A soprano/keyboard player double-threat is well-known in the jazz field and another soprano in operatic circles. Among our alumni are a famous daytime soap performer and a tenor with a gold record. One guitar player has a full service sound, lighting & video and concert production company, and was Vice President of the Gospel Music Association. Dozens are still writing, performing, and producing today. Organizations and ministries such as Focus on the Family, Compassion International, WORD Records, Light Records, Lexicon Music, the C.S. Lewis Institute, World Vision, Gospel Music Association, Youth With a Mission, American Entertainment Productions, The Spurrlows, and Continental Singers, Inc. have benefited from the experience these post-war babies gleaned while participating in the above-mentioned traveling aggregations. Professional songwriters and arrangers, pastors, teachers, youth directors, choir members, symphony players, dedicated family men and women (grandparents), company CEO’s, community and church leaders…we are they…four decades later.

Here’s a news flash, music has changed in forty years. Are we, the follicly- challenged travelers of old, now just archaic relics of CCM? I think not. My research shows that aside from the 40th reunion, where we will definitely revel in the past, the majority of the alumni still in music are performing, writing, and arranging relevant viable music for today’s ears. No retro sounds here (although I think a retro CCM band, touring with well-known songs from the major music groups of the first ten years of CCM would be a hit in churches where those our own age are now in charge).

So…a reunion is at hand. Will we be able to recognize these geriatric friends from our 20’s with whom we toured the U.S. raising the rafters of churches and auditoriums with infectious energetic music? Will the stories and routines we’ve repeated to our spouses and kids hold the same fascination for us now as when we first regaled each other in the basement dressing rooms of the Third Baptist Church of Flat Rock, Montana? Let’s dig into our suitcases and hang-up bags full of memories and share our unique touring experiences. We’ve put on our glasses, looked at the shining faces in the photos, and to our amazement we see they are us! Now, feeling the aches and pains of my 60’s, I finally feel like a CCM pioneer.