FROM THE ROAD: STREET WEEK Tulsa, OK

KXOJ in Tulsa, by contrast to the station we dealt with in Dallas, produced the best radio spots (and funniest) I've ever heard on radio anywhere and got a large crowd out to the show in Broken Arrow. They had me on their morning show, the top rated show in Tulsa, and we took radio contest winners to lunch at Abuellos, my favorite Mexican food joint outside of Texas.

First Baptist Broken Arrow is a massive church that is built for great sounding concerts and for the first time we felt like we sounded great. II hope you don’t mistake that for egotism. It’s not. It’s just that I’ve never played electric guitars, two of them, live with my band before while using in-ear monitors. Doesn’t sound hard, but for me it is. In Franklin, TN and in Dallas, TX I made mistakes, lots of them, because I couldn’t hear well enough to know if I was playing the right thing or because I just hadn’t switched pedals and instruments enough to get it down.

But in Tulsa I made no mistakes and neither did the band. The crowd was fiercely into the show, listening and dancing, laughing and pondering at all the right times. And the church just sounds great. I wish more churches paid attention to acoustics when building in hopes of hosting shows. It really paid off for FBC Broken Arrow.

I got the feeling this church doesn’t do anything half way. Want dinner? How about a full spread of Tex Mex and a jillion drink choices? Want a runner? How about a staff member in a van doing nothing all day but waiting for you to need a ride? Want to be baptized? How about a water tower dedicated to nothing but?

Actually I have no idea what the tower is for but I hope people use it to find this church staffed with service minded people, great cooks and of course people who know a thing or two about sound.

Thanks for having us. And thanks to KXOJ, the only station in the country that has played every single of mine ever released, for telling your listeners about the show and just being real people (that are actually funny) I look forward to hanging out with every time I visit. Oklahoma, you’re more than OK.

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