best. night. ever.

this fairy tale story starts way back in 2004. this is the year i saw the band, the wedding play for the very first time. instantly in love. loved their sound, loved their stage presence, loved their message. ever since then i've caught every show of theirs possible. skip ahead to last summer- i ended up working the merch table right next to theirs at multiple festivals and got to know them a little bit. this past may i went to one of the smallest wedding show's i've ever been to (shame on you, minnesota, where is your love?!). after the show i was talking with matt (the lead singer) and i asked if they ever had anyone play violin live for the song "redeem" because it's my favorite on the album and i love strings. to keep the story short, the conversation ended with him telling me to bring my violin to a festival called "rock the barn" to play together and see if it would work to play in the show.
so i did. i learned the song and brought my violin, fingers crossed that i would at least get to jam with matt and die a happy girl :) i was so stinkin' nervous that i dang near threw up yesterday morning. that's right kids, rock the barn was yesterday....this is about as fresh as any story of mine is gonna get!
shortly after arriving i connected with matt and we went into the "band barn" to play. i was nervous but a line from the song "redeem" ran through my head, "we cannot afford to be afraid anymore." this was it, do or die, step up to the plate, now or never and there was no way i was going to let this opportunity pass me by! so we jammed (well as much as an acoustic guitar and a classical violin can jam) and it was so great! throughout the course of us running through the song (i think we probably played it about 35 times) the other band members would stop in and listen. once we had it down we stopped for dinner and to listen to some shows.
a short while later matt came to me and said the other guys in the band thought it would be great if we played during the set and were fully supportive! i was out of my mind ecstatic! we ran through the song one more time and then they took the stage.....three songs later i climbed up for the most whirlwind three minutes of my life. it was epic. i even got my own special applause when adam said, "give it up for sara on the violin". not gonna lie, the best part though was after when all the guys in the band told me i did a fabulous job. it means a lot coming from people who play music for a living.
if you haven't listened to the wedding before go listen right now! and they have a new ep coming out later this summer that you can pre-order on their website (www.theweddingrockandroll.com)- so you should probably do that too! i heard some demo cuts from it and i'm already in love with it! and some of the pre-order packages are pretty interesting ;)
xo