The Sleep Deprivation Tour

And....we're back. The annual trip to the Rockport Gospel Music Festival is all too quickly over and thanks to Southwest Airlines we're back in California and at the helm of HolyCoast.com. I'll have some photos coming up in a day or so.

First, a couple of acknowledgements. The City of Rockport does a great job of helping with the Festival promotion, and many of the hotels in the area provide rooms free of charge to the artists who are coming to the show. We had the privilege of staying at the nicest joint in town - The Lighthouse Inn at Aransas Bay. It's a first class hotel with very well appointed rooms, friendly and helpful staff, spectacular views of Aransas Bay (if you're up early the sunrises are amazing), and a great hot breakfast free to hotel guests every morning. If you're ever down in the Rockport-Fulton area there are lots of nice places to stay, the first on the list should be The Lighthouse Inn.

We stayed at that hotel on a previous trip in 2004 and there are some photos here.

My thanks also go to Gary Howard, the recently retired Commander of the Rockport Police Department and the guy who was involved in the creation of and ongoing running of this Festival. Gary is a dear friend and a dedicated supporter of Southern Gospel music.

I called this the Sleep Deprivation Tour because sleep is the one thing we don't do a lot of while we're in Rockport. I left my house at 3:45 am on Friday to drive to our meeting point and pick up the other guys. The flight left LAX at 7 am and we were in Corpus Christi by 2:15 pm. It's an hour from there to get to the auditorium, set-up, sound check, a quick lunch (provided by our hosts Vaughn and Nancy Ganem), over to the hotel to check-in and change clothes, and back to the auditorium. The Friday show ran from 6pm to 10pm, and although we were on stage for only a small part of that, the rest of the time is spent talking to the people we haven't seen for a year and selling CDs.

After the show a bunch of us headed to the nearby Whataburger for the nightly bull session. There are several artists from different parts of the country who have done this show every year for some time (we've been there 11 years) and us regulars like to get together to trade jokes and stories and generally catch up with each other. It was nearly 1am before I finally hit the sheets.

Up again by 7:30 on Saturday, breakfast at the hotel, and then over to the auditorium to greet the early arrivers. The Saturday show started at 10am and ran until after 10pm. I was there for most of that. Another late night bull session, this time at Pizza Hut, and it was 12:30 am before the lights went out.

Up early again on Sunday for a trip to Portland to sing at the Oak Ridge Baptist Church. After lunch we headed over to First Baptist in Rockport for the third session of the Festival which ran from 3pm to 9pm. Final bull session, again at Pizza Hut, and it was after midnight before I got to bed.

The last day we were up again early to make the drive to Corpus for the flight home. It all seems like a blur now.

The crowds were good all weekend, but I could see the effect of the recession. Sales were down for all artists by a significant amount. We still came out ahead, but saw our numbers fall by nearly 1/3 from last year. The older crowd that shows up for this event (many of them are "winter Texans" who spend the cold months on the road and in warmer climes) were hit hard by the stock market collapse and are holding onto their money just a little tighter. I can understand how they feel.

It was great fun. The people back there always treat us well and we'll keep going back as long as they want us.

Now, back to the regular blogging (as soon as I can focus my eyes again).