Ocean City Show = A Success!

This past week has been a whirl-wind of craziness…so much traveling, tons of writing, and loads of family.

Tyler and I celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary on June 30, and as our gift to each other we went on a little trip.  This trip combined fun vacation stuff, family visits, and of course a show.  Overall we had a great time, but came back pretty exhausted.

On July 3rd we played at the Ocean City boardwalk in OC, NJ.  The story behind this gig is pretty amazing and really demonstrates God’s provision and providence at work, so I thought I’d share a little….

This Spring Tyler was trying to book shows and our friend Bethany Bracht suggested that he try to get a night at the Ocean City boardwalk.  After 5ish phone calls Tyler got to the lady who was booking the shows, directed her to our website, and was able to book the show for July 3rd—possibly the best night other than July 4th to play in Ocean City.  Seriously, thousands of people were out on the boardwalk, it was insane.  Anyway, we got the gig and were under contract to play with a percussionist/djembe player.  The night before the show we realized that if our usual guy Paul came to play the show, he’d be driving 6 or so hours in one day through beach traffic.  Paul agreed to face the traffic, but we knew it would be better if we could find someone else.  As soon as Tyler got off the phone with Paul about the situation he thought about calling our friend Chris Zwakenberg.  Tyler called Chris and before he could even ask him about playing the show, Chris mentioned that he saw we were going to be playing in Ocean City and that he was going to be staying in Sea Isle that night and wondered if he could play with us!  It was crazy–and truly providential!  Paul wouldn’t have to play, and we wouldn’t be in breech of our contract—problem solved!

We were told at the beginning of the week that we would not be allowed to sell our merchandise or put out a tip jar on the boardwalk.  We were kinda bummed, but still thought the gig would be worthwhile.  We brought our merchandise just in case, and I’m really glad we did.  Chris’s mom suggested we partner with a vendor and try to sell our stuff in a shop on the boardwalk.  I thought the idea to be pretty far fetched, but my salesman husband (I love that about him!) decided to give it a try.  And wouldn’t you know it, but our gig was about 50 feet away from the only CD shop on the boardwalk.  Tyler went over and was able to put up our whole display in the shop, and the owner only asked to take 25% of the sales.  At the end of the night we sold $400 in merchandise—such a blessing!!!!

This is a minor detail, but it meant a lot to me—we played across the boardwalk from a Kohr’s Bros. and at the end of the night the girls selling ice cream liked us so much that they gave us all the ice cream we wanted for free!  Yum!

Anyway, it was an amazing night and we truly felt blessed to be able to play the show, have so many people hear the music, and walk away with some compensation at the end of the night.  Shows like these allow us to keep playing music as much as possible.

Thanks to everyone who came!

This weekend you can catch us at:

Starbucks, Glasgow, DE @ 7pm on Friday

or

Borders Bookstore, Newark DE @ 7pm on Saturday.

-Jenny