Third Day - Revelation

The band Third Day released their latest album titled 'Revelation' last Tuesday. Being a fan, I bought a copy through iTunes as soon as I could, listened as I worked that day. I love the album. To me, it marks a return to what Third Day really are: Christ followers sharing the gift God gave them in the most honest, skillful way possible. The lyrics are touching and uplifting, the music is driving and engaging, and the production is very high quality.

As part of promoting this album, the band, its record label, and KLOVE radio sponsored two 'secret' concerts. My wife and I were fortunate enough to catch the Denver concert Friday evening at Crossroads Church Denver in Wheatridge, Colorado. It was a fairly short show, but the environment was intimate and spontaneous. The band played a couple of songs from the new album, took audience questions, interacted with the crowd, and spent a couple of hours meeting people and signing autographs after the show. It was an amazing, spirit-filled night for my wife and I.

Learning about the show is a good story in itself. I happened to notice a guy in my twitter-stream post a message to a user @marklee3d. "hmm," I say to myself, "there's a Mark Lee that plays guitar for Third Day - could he be twittering?" So, I follow him on twitter, and sure enough, it is him! He tweets about their experiences preparing for and performing at a taping of The Tonight Show, then mentions that they're heading to Phoenix for this 'secret' concert and posts a link. I check out the link and discover they're playing in Denver Friday night. "Wow," I say to myself, "an opportunity to see Third Day for free!" Well, I put it in the back of my mind as I was super busy with work and life stuff like taking the kiddo to the orthodontist, guitar lessons, to see his mom in Colorado Springs, getting my laptop fixed, preparing worship team music for rehearsal, and so forth.

Friday comes along, and I again notice Mark tweet about the show in Denver - only now the show is tonight! I fire off an email to some friends at my church, but don't get a response in time. I also IM my wife, and talk her into going. I had to do a work thing on the other side of town, so I told her I'd come to her office as soon as I was done, and we'd head down to the Crossroads Church and see what was up. As we got there, there was a line snaking around their parking lot, it looked like a zillion and a half people were there - but, there was a place to park the car on the street very near where the end of the line was, so we jumped in line and hoped for the best.

Now if you live in Denver, you know that Friday was THE hottest day of the year for the Denver area. The official high for that day was 104F - and we were all standing around on an asphalt parking lot, so I'm sure that added a few degrees. It was HOT. Since we were in a rush to get there, we didn't even think about the heat. We were both wearing, you guessed it, black. In the sun. Standing around on asphalt. On the hottest day of the year. Bleah. At least we sweat-laden fans made the news :)

My wife had just had a horrible day at work and was grumpy, she was having second thoughts about going to the show. I was getting achy, sweaty, headache-y and my own mood was heading down. About then, a guy that was helping keeping the line in order walked by, so I asked him if he thought we would be able to get in. He told us they estimated there were about 1600 people in line, and there were 2000 seats in the church, so things looked up! We were still about 1.5 hours from the start of the show at that point, so we pressed on. My wife went back to our van to put some baby powder on her skin to help keep from breaking out: she gets hives if she's in the sun too long and gets sweaty, making an already grumpy wife just plain miserable.

An hour or so later, the event staff started handing out tickets. We got ours, guaranteeing we'd get in, then shortly afterward, the line started moving quickly and we found ourselves inside looking for seats. We ended up way in the back, stage right - which ended up to be Mark Lee's side of the stage. Our moods were still iffy, the venue was hot and stuffy, and fighting crowds is WAY down on both of our lists of favorite things to do. We don't get out much :)

The show started with words from the KLOVE folks and the introduction of Lisa Williams (afternoon DJ) who would be our Emcee for the evening. She introduced a 'local' band called The Ride from Vail, Colorado, who took the stage and performed a couple of songs. They were excellent! Had a Jars of Clay vibe to them, acoustic guitars and percussion, and a great vocalist. We were glad to have gotten to hear them.

Moods improving, we began to enjoy ourselves. Third Day was announced and took the stage. The crowd went nuts. They started playing, and I leaned over to my wife and said, "Now THAT'S a band!" See, we're both involved with music ministry and are used to...uh...the quality that an all-volunteer band led by a a volunteer worship leader lends itself.

Mark posted the setlist on Third Day's blog, so I'll let you read that for the detail of what they played and what the night was about. You can also check out Third Day's video page for some video clips of the night. The best part of this show was getting to know the band a little. Hearing the stories about some of the songs was touching, especially 'Cry Out to Jesus'. Knowing that the stories in that song are personal and that the song is hard for them to play, really raised the impact of hearing it. I'm listening to it as I type, in fact. If there was a dry eye in the place after that song, I couldn't see it.

After the show, we opted to skip the autograph session. We a) didn't have anything to sign (though I'd have loved to have just gotten to shake Mark's hand and tell him thanks); b) there's that fighting crowds thing again; and c) neither of us had eaten dinner nor had anything to drink since we got there now 3 hours later. So, we went out to the van, prayed together for a minute, and went and got something to eat.

We left refreshed, hopeful, entertained, and impressed.

Oh, BTW, Mac: according to Merriam Webster, 12th is spelled 'twelfth' and pronounced with the 'f' sound. Hope to see you guys October Twelfth :)