My Letter to the Choir

In the year 2000, as they were preparing their box set, they sent out a request for fans to submit their own reflections of the band’s first 20 years.  Although I did make the thank you section of the book that came with Never Say Never (in all seriousness, a total point of pride for me), I did not get my thoughts together in time.

So, since this is Choir Week on the blog, I thought I would include the letter I never sent.

Dear Dan, Derri, Steve and Tim,

You guys probably do not realize it…but you have been a major force throughout my young adult life on up.  Beginning in 1988, Chase the Kangaroo opened my eyes.  I remember reading the words from Ecclesiastes 7:3 in the liner notes… “Sorrow is better Than Laughter, for a sad face is good for the heart.”  This was…revolutionary for me(I had not heard Undercover’s disc of heartbreak Branded or L.S.U.’s Shaded Pain yet).

Never had someone suggested to me that sorrow can be a good thing.  I wrote those words on a folder I carried for my Church’s youth choir.  One of the other kids looked and said, “Wow, that’s depressing.”  And it hit me then, at that very moment, that for many in the Church, the idea of sadness and sorrow were incompatable with Christianity.

This was not the last time your songwriting would be intertwined with my spiritual journeys, in fact, every album you released seemed in tune with what I was going through at that time.

Seeing each concert that I went to was like visiting with old friends.  And hey, I got to hang out with Dan a bit while at Cornerstone (thanks for putting up with me, Dan!).  The Choir is that band that just connected with me-and I never got over it.  Really.  Each album is met with the excitement of a kid at Christmas.

Thanks for the memories and encouragement you’ve given me over the years.  Thanks for being a part of my life-even if it was mainly through my CD players and iPod.  You guys rock.  In a really swirly dreamy way, you rock.

-Thom

(For people who own a copy of the box set, just print this out and paste it into the Never Say Never book.)