The first church gig was a circus. The usual sound guy was not there, and we had all kinds of trouble with the headphone mix (except for me, of course, because I do not wear them). Static, instruments disappearing, screaming acoustic guitar. All there.
We were asked to stay and play half of the next service, which featured the adult choir, the children's choir, and the "orchestra" (which was really the church's community band). It was chaos. We had so many tunes stuck in the music books, and some were for the second service and some were for the first, and nobody was sure what belonged to what. We rehearsed everything (but without the adult choir, children's choir, or "orchestra") that morning, but not in any kind of order--more of "Hey, can we play through this one?" kind of thing.
My second church gig began a half hour after the Super Bowl. From my position, I counted sixty-eight people in attendance. The band was about the same. After the first song, I had comments from the band--"can't hear the singer." They probably didn't notice that I was dealing with the fact that nobody had plugged in the piano mic! Once I got the stuff up and running it was fine.
I had good cell phone service in the church, and didn't miss a second of the game.
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