Sean Gallagher

So, this is the first blog of the year 2010! I hope you’re as excited as I am. I should have done this a couple of weeks ago but there wasn’t a whole lot to blog about…until now! In early December we (the Sean Gallagher Band) were asked to play at a youth event, which turned out to be a battle of the bands at the National Guard Armory in Enid, Oklahoma. Keep in mind that the Sean Gallagher Band is the house band for the Saturday Night Service at Enid First Assembly of God. Our Competition was a local band, Refuge, fronted by Jared McClellan, who leads worship at Emmanuel Baptist Church, one of the largest churches in Enid. We accepted and almost immediately after agreeing to perform at this event, it was postponed until January 15th. That was a relief! Was I scared? No, but I wanted to make sure we were prepared for this event. We selected excerpts of Sweet Child O Mine (Guns N Roses), Beat It (Michael Jackson/Fall Out Boy) and then a full cover of I Don’t Wanna Be (Gavin Degraw) along with a couple of worship tunes. The purpose of the event was to draw the youth to the battle of the bands and then give them the opportunity to hear about Christ Jesus. The day of the event we loaded up our equipment and headed over to the armory where Refuge was already set up and ready to go. When we got to the armory we were told to come up with a silly name that we would use during the battle so that we didn’t have to pit a Baptist church against an Assembly of God church. Refuge chose “Mustaches and Tattoos” as their name during the event. What was our name? Well, as it turns out, Raquel Carlson, our bass player, came up with our name. She saw a banner hanging inside the armory that said, “Prairie Thunder” so that became our name for the night. She did a good job picking the name actually. We asked Hector, our drummer, and he came up with “Apple Bottoms!” Why, you ask? I haven’t a clue. He’s a peculiar fellow. Anyway, we set up our equipment and did our sound check, then waited. Finally at 7 the lights came down and the crowd gathered in front of the roped off area and we kicked it off with a little Guns N Roses. The Refuge band answered with Skynard’s, Sweet Home Alabama and we replied with Beat It, al a Fall Out Boy. They came back with Crazy Train and then we moved on to the next round; the full cover. We played our version of I Don’t Wanna Be and they played How Far Is Heaven. The crowd loved it and we had a great time! After the message was given we went into a time of worship and everyone really responded to God’s presence. That was the best thing about the whole night; God’s presence. We wrapped it up at the end and as everyone was leaving I began playing, impromptu, Sweet Home Alabama and both bands began playing together. It was awesome; two drummers, four electric guitars and two bass players! It was pretty incredible. As I said before, we had a great time that night. Unfortunately there wasn’t a winner declared, which was for the best, but we did make the front page of the Enid News & Eagle which was good publicity for both bands and the event that we played. It was a great night and a great cause too. I want to say thanks to Jared and Emmanuel Baptist Church for providing the sound and lighting for the event. Everything sounded great! It was a great way to kick off 2010 and stir up some excitement for what God has in store for us this year.