I had a glorious opportunity this past Saturday to spend all day with my favorite local band, The Nehemiah Band. For one low price, you got a concert, seminars, a Clippers game, AND hang out time with the band. Now, I have never met a band that works so hard to build relationships with their fan base. It's pretty cool when the band knows you by first name. Sweet. The Nehemiah Band is probably one of the most creative groups out there. For one, their music. Wow. I don't know how to categorize it, but simply put, its pure, passionate sonic bliss. And then, what other band out there throws an event like this one? Spending ALL DAY with the band?
[EDIT] Seems like I forgot to add that the sans facial hair Alex Hwang emceed the event and Stephen from Feats in Inches ran sound. They are both wonderful musicians as well. Make sure you check out Alex Hwang and Feats in Inches!
Back to the actual event now. My good buddy, Ben Bae, opened up with his friend accompanying him on vocals and keys. Ben was great as always.
The Nehemiah Band played their set next. It was filled with energy and awesomeness.
They included plenty of crowd interaction and free merch as well.
After the concert portion of the event, we were able to attend 2 seminars of our choice. Each member of the band taught in their fields of specialty. Mike Whang did one on Acoustic Guitar and another on Songwriting, Gilbert did one on Bass and the History of Music in the Church, DJ Descry, the married man, did one on Dating, Kevin Kim did one on Electric Guitar, and John Chong did one on the Music Industry. I attended the latter two, but I wanted to go to all of them.
We grabbed dinner, then it was off to the Clippers game. I'm not the biggest sports fan in general, but wow, that was one heck of a game to go to. Even though the beloved Clippers lost to the Knicks, we witnessed Blake Griffin in all of his blazing greatness. 44 points and some monster dunks. Holy shmoly that was a fun game to watch. I don't have any photos from the game because I realized I was shooting JPEGs the whole day and switched to RAW. My software doesn't support the D7000's RAW files quite yet, so those photos are just sitting on my disk waiting to be converted. Good thing I accidentally shot JPEG!
Raffles were held throughout the day and I won a ticket to tonight's Clippers game against the Hornets as well as play time on the Staples Center floor, but I couldn't make it, so I gave the ticket to one of my friends. Hopefully he'll use it well.
Well that was All Day with the Nehemiah Band in a nutshell.
For all you photo geeks out there like me, I shot most of the show between ISO 800 and 1600. I started out at 800 on Ben's performance and slowly crept up to 1600 during TNB's set. I was shooting on a Nikon D7000 with a 35mm f1.8 at around f2.8 for most of the show.