Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

 

It’s been a while since we’ve had a mention of Our Lady of Tennessee (AKA soprano supremo Sabrina Laney Warren) and a recent post on her Facebook wall was pretty much begging for some blog postage. 

A quick bit of backstory… over the past couple of weeks I have been getting texts from her about how someone who plays for some of her lessons reminds her a lot of me and she’s even starting referring to him as my blonde doppelgänger.  Then I later found out that he is also a Baylor grad.  His last name is Aber, which is eerily reminiscent of our Eber day in Germany.  THEN Sabrina informed me that he also had one of the same shirts that I took on tour this summer and apparently that was the last straw—they decided to do a bit of photo reenactment from one of my earlier posts:

 

CLIPPITY CLOP, BISCUITS!!!

 

Artist: Gerard Alessandrini / Album: Forbidden Broadway, Volume 3

Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?

 

After my brief stay in Ann Arbor it was back to the campgrounds at Blue Lake for one more final round of concerts.  Sabrina and I were fortunate enough to get to stay with Leah and Josh as our host parents!!  Leah was technically my boss (though I do consider her a friend now) and was responsible for hiring me last year for the Elijah tour. Truth be told the only reason I returned this year to do the Brahms was because I failed to get one single picture with her in 2011—and you all know how much I love a good photo op!

As I feel I have already exhausted myself on talking about the camp itself I’ll just focus on all the fun we got to have in North Muskegon… starting with THE FOOD.  Bernie O’s is a local pizza joint that has been ranked nationally and even appeared on the Food Network (did you hear that, Jan?!).  One of their claim's to fame is the Firebird pizza, which isn’t so much an homage to Stravinsky as it is to the fact that it uses ghost chili peppers.  There is a competition to eat the pizza (at the third level of crazy heat) within a certain time limit and if you win then you get to go on the wall of FLAME!  Josh and I joked about doing it but you need a third person and neither Leah nor Sabrina were up for it.

 

Please notice how the wall is completely empty :(

 

We, however, opted for a couple of more sane options and they. were. DELECKER!!

 

Before Sabrina and I had to part ways again we needed to get a picture we’d been talking about taking for the whole summer.  It was noticed very early on that our computers appeared to match our respective sizes and here is the evidence to prove it:

Yeah, I’m pretty sexy in argyle sox and shorts.

 

Now, some of you may notice a certain toy of the equine persuasion trying to get in on the photo action.  Sabrina found it in the basement and naturally neither of us could resist a good opportunity to prove our ages.

 

 

Apparently we’re not very coordinated… It looks like I’m trying to speed up while BriBri is slowing down

 

There aren’t really words to describe how appreciative I am for Leah over these last two years doing the international tour.  She didn’t go to Europe this summer (she was busy coordinating all nine of the Blue Lake tours while concomitantly organizing over twenty European groups that were coming to the states to do tours themselves!) and was greatly missed by everyone.  I’ll never forget last year when sweating my way through 3 hours of Elijah in the summer heat every other day she was always there on the front row acting as our cheerleader.  I’m pretty sure she was contractually obligated to do so, but she at least did a good job of pretending to enjoy it each time ;)

Finally, as is customary for the last picture of these such posts, we got a family photo!

Leah and Josh: host family first timers NO MORE! I finally got to get my picture with yooooouuuuu!!!

 

Artist: U2/ Album: Achtung Baby