The Gaither's are my New Kids on the Block

Much like most 70-year-olds, I love southern gospel music. Seriously, some of the best conversations I've had with the blue-haired have been about southern gospel music. I see no shame in it either. There's no shame in having blue hair either. (You rock it, Ethel. Wha what!) I mean, you'll never hear tighter harmonies than in southern gospel music. But give it a chance. Here...watch this. It's the Gaither Vocal Band. My favorite gospel group singing my favorite song.



Ok, yeah, the set is a little TBNey, but come on. Pretty good, huh?

A friend of mine got some friends and I tickets to the see the Gaither's in Ontario last weekend. I couldn't sleep the night before I was so excited. THEN, while we were driving up there he said that we were meeting one of the guys in the band for dinner.

What?!

Was my childhood dream of meeting a living, breathing Gaither going to come true!?

I tried to stay calm and said, "That's cool." While inside I had just wet my pants.

We drove to the arena and around back to the tour busses and standing on the curb waiting for us was the Gaither baritone and funny man, Mark Lowry. I've listened to this guy since I was a kid. This guy is one of the funniest people I've ever met. Such a fun dinner.

I won't go into huge detail about the night but we got incredible seats, backstage passes, and got to hang out with the Gaither's after the concert. It was a super special night for me.

Ok, so here's a little-known fact about me. Growing up I wanted to be a christian recording artist. Yeah, like a singer who sings songs about God like Carman or Michael W. Smith or Michael English. Michael English has always been my all-time favorite christian singer. So, yeah, I wanted to be a christian singer. If I went home and looked hard enough I could probably find the list I made when I was 12 years old listing the Dove awards (aka God's Grammy's) I wanted to win and at what age I wanted to win them. Someone once told me that if I wrote down my goals they were more likely to happen, which is a heaping load of crap given my empty Dove award shelf and unmaterialized marriage to Carrie Underwood.

Squirrel!

Ok, back to the story.

So I got to meet Mark Lowry AND Michael English that night. They were both in the video above.


Ok, so one last video. Thank your stars that I only included 2 videos because I whittled it down to these 2 from about 50.

If you want to get a feeling for a what Gaither's concert is like watch the whole video, but if you just want to hear one of the most incredible a'cappella start playing this at 3:14.



So as I'm moving to Laguna Woods in my 40s, you better believe I'll be jamming out to my Gaither's.