As I mentioned in my last Acappella post, I performed over 1,400 concerts in the space of 11 years. That does not take into account church service performances, radio stations, bookstores or mission trips. I couldn’t even begin to remember even 1/3 of those. That said, there are a few that stand out with vivid recollection. South Bend, Indiana is one of those.
The South Bend / Elkhart / Goshen area was a good place for Acappella and AVB. Both groups appeared there many times. Radio airplay was good to us as well. We consistently charted quite high in that local market. AVB’s The Victim stayed #1 for months in 1989-90. Needless to say, we were in that area annually for a concert.
Sometime in the 90’s, around 1998 I believe, we released a “best of” album called The Collection. There were far too many songs requested for the album. As it was, we included 17 and the CD was full. As a means to include more songs and pay homage to some of the older tunes, we put together a medley. It was just short of 12 minutes and covered many tunes. We then worked up a slightly edited version of the medley and added it to our concert repertoire. To make the presentation of the medley more intimate (and give us a slight break), we used tall stools for the medley.
You can probably guess what’s coming.
As I recall, it was the late Spring of 1999 and we were singing at the ELCO Theater in Elkhart (now renovated and called the Lerner). The house was full with just short of 3,000 people. The concert was going very well and we were in our 2nd set, after intermission and nearing the end. It was time for the medley and we pulled up our stools and started in.
