June 25
On the road coming back from 5 days on the road playing in GA at Camp Barney and Camp Coleman, NC at Bluestar Camps, and in IN at Camp Livingston. This was the first leg of our US summer tour and couldn’t have been a greater start. We tried out all kinds of new songs which the campers did great with - Or Zarua, L’cha Dodi, and Or Chadash… lot’s of loud singing. We had our new multi-media projector screens running the whole show along with our new LED light show and hazers. In the secular world, this production stuff would be no big deal, but in the Jewish world, it’s practically unheard of . For that reason, I’m totally psyched to be going through all the extra work and expense (LOTS of both!) to set this all up night after night since it shows our Jewish community that WE can do it too… Jews can do it too. Jewish rock concerts should never be ‘less-than’ anything youth would see in their ‘normal’ lives. It was really neat seeing everyone react to all the production - checking out the videos, digging all the smoke and lights. It’s just people getting super excited at a rock concert, but this is a Jewish concert, so the excitement is in a Jewish context which is even more cool! Budgets are so low out there and the demand is just growing, but I can’t stop thinking about how far we could take this and what an impact it would have on Jewish youth, Jewish identity, Jewish music, and Jewish education. And when we have more awesome artists out there, the impact will be even exponentially greater. I’m tired and ready to be home for a couple days, but all this stuff gets me motivated for a very long run starting next week all the way through mid Aug. Hope to see you out there!
RR