I need you all to get your car keys out, and then you hold them up in front of you, and you just shake 'em to the beat. And if y'all do that, together we'll make this whole place sound like a jingle dress at a really cool pow-wow.

[Save Me]

[The Howling]
br> [Calling Out Your Name]

Thank you. This is a song off the new album, it's called, "Cry The Name."

[Cry The Name]

(drum intro to "I See You")

All right, now this is a song you have to sing on. So the way we do it is, I sing a line of this song, and then you sing it back. Or you can think of it as, I'll pray a line of this song, and then you pray it up.

[I See You]

Thank you! I don't know if any of you have ever had the chance to meet Beaker or not, but this is Beaker over here. And, singing with the background vocalists is his wife, Julie. They now have a sixteen-month little boy named Aidan, and Beaker wanted to write a song for him, and we wrote about 500 and none of 'em were good enough, so I was very relieved when we finally wrote this. This is called, "Let Mercy Lead."

[Let Mercy Lead]

Ok, now this song you guys have to sing on because it's got notes I can't hit - so I'm trusting you can hit 'em for me. Every now and again you gotta go, "One thing!" only hopefully better than that. Let me hear you do it.

Crowd: "One thing!"

Yes, you do do it better than that - so, if you'll just do that at the appropriate moments, this will go great! And if you know the part about the 'pure in heart', sing that too.

[My One Thing]

That's where you do it, right there...

[rest of song]

This song is called, "Brother's Keeper."

[Brother's Keeper]

Thank you... and here's another sing-along song.

[Hold Me, Jesus]

This is the first song Beaker and I ever wrote together, and it's called, "Boy Like Me, Man Like You."

[Boy Like Me, Man Like You]

Mark Robertson on bass, Aaron Smith on drums. And, I don't know if you've had the opportunity, if we've ever been here before, I'm sure they've been with me, because we've been traveling together for about six years, and they're a big part of everything I've got to do, this is, over here is Lee Lundgren. And on my left is Nikki Lundgren. And so I think just about everybody in the band that's married had kids this year, including them, and they had a little girl that I think is about 15 months old - her name is Eliza. So, since I'm not married, I don't have kids of my own, I horn in on other people's business - talked them into letting me write a song with them about her. So we took some of their ideas and some of my ideas, and a lot of inspiration from their little girl, and wrote this song.

[Eli]

Thank you. This is a song that I wrote for the album, but we forgot to record it. And, it's probably better that way becuz, on this last album, it was like, family time in the studio, or something, because we had three nursing mothers, all at once. So it became really weird, because you never knew where to look. And...

Other voice: True! (laughter)

...just the way it goes sometimes! Very wholesome atmosphere, you know. And it was so weird, because normally, we don't have women around, all the time, in the studio. And so the conversation was so, so weird when women are in the room. You know, so sedate. It's normally quite something. And this time we, people were talking about Congoleum and stuff. So it was a new and interesting experience. You know, like I said, I don't have kids, I don't have a wife, I don't even date, I don't do none of that stuff. But, I... it's because all these, so many songs on the album have to do with these families, things, this probably wouldn't have fit on the album even if we had remembered to have done it. You know, I was just concerned one time because I noticed, and I don't listen to a lot of music, but one time I listened to a whole afternoon's worth of Christian music, and it struck me as odd that there are no good Christian break-up songs. (laughter) And I thought, you know, I know a lot of people who are Christian and who have broken up, so I took it upon myself to write a song that I might know something about. So, that's this song. It goes something like... don't you hate it when you go to a concert and someone goes, "I'm gonna do a song and it goes something like this"? And you always wanna go, "Look buddy, I paid exactly fifteen bucks to hear you. I wanna hear exactly what that song sounds like!" So, I'm not sure exactly how I wrote it, but tonight it goes exactly like this:

[We Are Not As Strong]

Thank you. Thank you very much. Someone requested this song, it's one of my favorites, which is why I don't do it very often, because, if you like a song, the best way to end up not liking it is to do it night after night. So I only do it occasionally, but I'll do it tonight. It's a song I wrote when my great-grandma died, but it's not really about my great-grandma. Just, it's... when you're young, you think that your grandparents are gonna live forever. And when they die, it kind of strikes you as weird. Then all of a sudden you realize that you're gonna die too, and none of us really want to do that soon so... I just started thinking about how mortal we are. Which is kind of a relief, because on the other hand, whereas none of us are anxious to die or anything, the idea of not being able to is not particularly appealing, either. In that way life is a lot like comedy - timing is everything.

So, this is... (coughs) One of the songs, and I think the thing I like about, and you know, I like most of my songs. I don't see any point in writing songs you don't like. 'Cause there's always some of you in the audience that's gonna want to hear it, so you're gonna have to play it. So you better write stuff that you enjoy.

And writing is such a peculiar thing, because if you write, then people think that you're naturally smart. And the truth is, that's just not so. And people think you sit around in this, you know, like, real, kind of, spiritual fog, and have these great revelations. Well, if I was getting revelations, I wouldn't submit them to my publisher, I'd give them to the American Bible Society and have them canonized. Just because you can make things rhyme, and you know, put certain meters in things, doesn't mean you know anything. And that's the scary thing about Twentieth-century Christianity, is, we no longer have, in America, anyway, it's, we have this celebrity-based kind of spiritual aspiration thing. It doesn't make sense. And we all want to grow up and be like someone we've never met. And the problem is, if we ever met them, we wouldn't want to be like them anymore, we'd want to be like the people we know, that are older than us, that we ought to be looking up to.

So it's always a weird thing - people want me to pray for them and stuff after concerts, and I go, wow. If you knew how bad a 'pray-er' I was, you would never ask that. Why don't you go to your elders? Because they're gonna be able to pray more effectively for you. They're gonna know better how to pray, and then, when God answers it, they'll be there to help you to see it. 'Cause a lot of times He answers, and we don't recognize it. And I ain't gonna be around to help you see it. So, I think I just believe in Church more than I believe in Christian music. Although I like Christian music, because if it wasn't for this, I would have to get a job. (laughter) But anyway, this is a song that, I guess, it doesn't attempt to so much make sense out of death as it just attempts to say, ok, it's gonna happen. So, if I have my 'rathers,' this is how I wanna die--so that's what this song's about.

[Elijah]

(IBS appeal)

[Quoting Deuteronomy to the Devil]

[The Color Green]

This next song is a dance song, and if you don't dance, we'll be wasting our time and yours...it's called "Damascus Road."

[Damascus Road]

While you're up, why don't you sing now? 'Cause some of you don't dance too good, I can see that! (laughter) Which is ok, I don't dance neither. I would always go to them dances, you know, as a kid, 'cause, you don't meet a lot of girls hanging out at home. Not the datable type, anyway - unless you're from Arkansas. (laughter) So, I would always go and hang out by the punch bowl, because I'm, you know, kind of shy and wishing I was a Nazarene, or something. You know, people would come up and say, why don't you dance with us? I always thought it would be so cool to be able to go, "It's against my religion." (laughter) But I just always had to say, "No, man, I'm too hung up." (laughter)

But I could hang out. I was a very hanger-outer. After the dances, that's what I always liked. After the dances and the ball games, and stuff. Because, I don't know if you remember this, but they used to build trucks out of steel, and you could run over anything in them. We'd all go up on North Cart Road, because there weren't any houses around up there. We would all go up there and park our dads' trucks next to each other, and everyone would tune their dad's AM hi-fi radio to the same station, and we'd have terrible sound coming out of several trucks in a row.

Then we'd take walks, and lay out in the backs of those trucks and look up at the stars, and we had everything figured out. We knew how to impeach Nixon... wish I could remember that now. We knew how to end the war in Viet Nam, we knew how to end poverty and stay rich, we could do anything. And then, you know, we graduated, and we forgot. And we've been getting stupider every day of our lives. So if you're young, enjoy it, 'cause you won't know everything when you're older. (laughter) And you won't like that, either, because you'll find out that information ain't all it's cracked up to be. And some things are more important than information.

I think the most important thing in the world is to know that you're loved. I think that's the reason that I'm most thankful to my parents, having me read the Bible and go to church and stuff, because if the Scriptures communicate anything to us, it is this, that we really are loved. And there are people who are all fired up about current stuff, and there's people who are all excited about the antiquities. And I think everything comes and goes. And you know, up there on North Cart Road now they've built all these houses, and stuff. They've ruined it. (laughter)

But the nice thing is, if you go a little bit farther north you can get away from people, and the stars are still up there. And the stuff that really matters, it stays forever. And that's kind of what this song's about.

[begins piano intro]

You know, it'll sound really good if you sing...

[Sometimes By Step]

You're singing. That's good!
[end of tape]