The Number Wonders
Remember when I said last year after I went to the Peanut Festival that I wanted to make up a gospel band to play at the next year's fest? (I posted pictures of the fest as well.)

Meet the Number Wonders.


Dave plays his pink electric bass that he got one Christmas in high school. AC plays the violin, and she welcomed us into her home for our first practice at the end of June, pictured here.


Dave painted that image of a sword stabbing a flower on the back of his bass, and he has a tattoo of the same image. If I'm getting this straight, the tattoo came first, selected painstakingly from a book of tattoos at the parlor.


Rebeca plays the guitar, and Justin plays the banjo.


Tracey, me, and Sarah sing.




Missy tickles the ivories.


AC's dog watches us with interest. She has a name which I am unable to spell; I think of her in my mind as "the gospel pup."


Arin sings, too, and plays the tambourine! Here, she concentrates on harmony.

Did I forget anybody? I hope not.

We scored a place to practice on the UNO campus when we found out that three rooms in the music building have pianos, and all classes are over by 5:45. That's where we've had three practices, now. We might have difficulty in the fall, but we'll see how it goes.


The business of having a band and playing songs together has gone over better than I imagined, but at the same time, it's been more difficult. I think when I first hatched this plan, I had the idea that I'd ask some folks to join this band, and we'd run through some songs a couple times, and we'd be good to go. Nooooooooo, no, no. We've got five songs now that we can play, and one that I think we can play pretty well. Every practice, we get better, but it definitely takes practice. And I'm not as good at just remembering the notes as I thought I would be. Or hitting them.

At the same time, though, I was almost shocked by how when, the first time we played a song, actual music happened once everyone started playing their instruments. In the moments leading up to that music, I looked at the lot of us and wondered how it was possible to create anything other than cacophony. But it worked! It was very exciting.

We somehow came up with the name "Number Wonders," and we're all going to come up with a design for a T-shirt and have a third party pick the best one. We're definitely playing the Peanut Festival the first weekend in October, and we've got a few leads on some other gigs, too. All of that is kind of jumping the gun; like I said, we only have five songs right now. But we're enjoying ourselves. The Peanut Fest is a definite gig, and why not have T-shirts? If we like doing this, maybe we'll keep it up.




Good times.