Trainwrecks coming off the tracks

I have all the room in the world to comment on this particular problem, as I flew brain-first into one at a recent date.....the advent of tracks has made on-stage goof-ups (often referred to as trainwrecks) all the harder to fix.

Case in point - not too long ago, we were singing the classic "Old Country Church" during a show. The group hadn't done the song for a while, and I had never done it on stage with them before (other than soundchecks and a couple rehearsals). We had it down pretty well that afternoon, so we decided to take it to the stage.

BAD IDEA!!

The typical arrangement of this song goes as follows: Verse One, "Shall We Gather At The River," Verse Two, "In The Sweet By & By," Verse Three, "Leaning On The Everlasting Arms," Verse Four, "I Have Been Redeemed." Triumphant demonstrated this arrangement beautifully on the "Remembering The Greats" project from the NQC a couple years back. As long as you can remember the order that the songs are sampled, you're set.

I didn't.

Instead of singing my lead in for "In The Sweet By & By," I belted out, "Well, I'm redeemed....," only to hear "In the sweeeeeeeeet" coming from the other three singers. Not only did I screw up my part, but I threw the rest of the group off who was questioning whether or not we had somehow skipped two verses without knowing it. We pulled it back together in time for me to botch the third verse, try to replace "Leaning" with "Redeemed" (again), and a no-mercy forth verse, finally getting to the song we all so desperately wanted to sing, just to get the song over with.

In the spur of the moment, it was incredibly embarrassing (God bless the congregation for being so lenient!!). Immediately afterward, it was maddening. The next day, I wrote the entire song down on my water bottle so I didn't screw it up again (much to the delight of our tenor singer!).

Now, had this been in the days of bands, the band would've simply followed where we went, the song probably would've ended a couple verses early, but we would've been in control, even when we weren't. Nowadays, we're at the mercy of the IR360, which does NOT stop unless we tell it to. If you flub a line, you gotta get back up, jump back on the train, and keep on chuggin' somehow.

I talked to the band leader of a mainstream group who told me once that they use a pre-programmed synth loop along with a live band on one of their songs. This particular song is notorious for both minor and major trainwrecks on stage, so he has what he calls the "kill switch," where the synth loop is turned off and the band just follows where the singers go. So far, he's only had to use it a few times, but it still has been used nonetheless.

Too bad we don't have the same advantage in SG, unless we're really good at impromptu acapella!!!