Track 4 : In My Life (aiff)
You know, when you play in an old church, they often don’t want you there. To guys in their 30s showing up with guitars in hand to play a wedding in a very traditional church. Let me back up a moment. As I understand it, the church where we played “only allows classical instruments to play during services.” I’m not sure what this meant aside from no CDs and no bands: just strings and piano. Ashley, somehow, got them to accept having us play. And when she mentioned we were her friends, they told her to reconsider: “Friends ruin weddings” so they said (that’s also our working band name).
During rehearsal, this was obvious. The church lady did not like having us there. She told us there was no PA system. And that we shouldn’t be on the church stage. And that we won’t be able to put chairs by the alter for us to sit. It went on and on…till the Priest showed up. This man came up to us. Said hi. Shook our hands and asked if we could play “Blister in the Sun” for him. Then he proceeded to tell us where we can get chairs and provided us with a single microphone and a boom that ran into the church PA. We went through the songs and worked on our timings. During the candle lighting ceremony rehearsal, we were told we’d have 1 minute to play. We had arranged The Beatles ”In My Life” to be cut into 1 minute pieces, so this was great. We were to play for a minute and they would light the candle, and the priest would turn and look at me and nod as the signal to finish up. All was good in the world.
Wedding day arrives. We just finished the bride’s march. All was well; we were on the home stretch. Candle lighting ceremony begins. Mike and I start playing. They light the candle. The priest turns and nods at me. Um. Did you know this took all of 18 seconds? Now Mike is playing and is in the zone while the priest is nodding at me. Panic stricken, I swing my foot out and nudge Mike out of his zone and whispered “we have to stop.”
“No way, we just started,” he hushed back at me.
“No No! We have to stop now, go out after the D minor.”
“Really?”
“Yes, now!”
And on a very shaky A chord, we faded out the song some 24 seconds after starting. I’m not sure if anyone noticed what happened. People seemed to be smiling. For this album, we thought to record just the short 24-second clip we got to play…but decided to offer the full arrangement we had worked up instead.
