Indianapolis, IN: October 14, 2015 - Singin with the Grobes

My first repeat!  But it was a very special circumstance under which I visited Indianapolis just a bit over a year since the first time 'round.  You see, Josh Groban was on tour, and he needed a backup choir for his concerts in Louisville and in Indy.  So a volunteer group from U of L did the Louisville concert Tuesday night, then rented vans and drove up Wednesday to do the second.  It was a fun, quick adventure - the kind I'm finding just tend to happen when you're a part of the U of L choirs.

Anyway, probably the biggest reason to even write this post - aside from the humblebrag about being in Der Grobenchor - is to show you a picture of this big dumb vehicle:

Turns out that's something you can legitimately call a 15 passenger van, rather than a slightly smaller bus, which is what I would have guessed.  Now, since I'm 25 as of this writing, and since I was one of the three grad assistants going on this trip, it ended up being pretty much inevitable that I'd have to be the pilot of one of these things as we caravanned the 30-person choir, plus our choir director, up 65 North for the 2-hour journey from Louisville to Indianapolis.

I've never driven anything bigger than a Ford Escape, so it was quite the harrowing experience.

You do get used to it quickly, though, and aside from being a little bigger and a little higher up than you're used to, it's just like driving anything else.  No prob. 

We left the school just before 2:00 and got there around 4:30, my van first, as I'd passed the others at the Ohio River bridge and hadn't looked back.  Figured out parking, then made our way to the venue, to find this greeting us:

Woop woop.

Oooh!  By the way, the concert was held in this building:

You may recognize that photo from the other Indianapolis trip post, when I couldn't figure out what it was.  Yet again, I find myself building more of a continuous narrative throughout this blog than I intended when first starting it.  Connecting those dots.  How about that.

We did our sound check, which wasn't even a sound check since they just used our same levels from the night before, then had free time to go get dinner.  Most of us ended up going to Bazbeaux, a pizza place recommended to us by Lydia.  Then we hurried back for our 6:00 meet-n-greet with Josh himself.  It was, predictably, brief, but Grobe's got a lot going on, we get it.

We did get the group photo though:

Yay.

More free time.  Went to another restaurant to get a few deserts n' coffees and whatnot.  Happened to be a place right in front of this thing:

Which is still dancing to this day.  A few of us danced in front of it, but I think the only video documentation was Snapchat.  Oh Snapchat.  So fleeting.

Other people from our group came by at a different time and also danced with it, and that video is on Facebook in more permanent form.  But it's not a video with me in it.  So...it will not go here.

Right!  So.  Then the concert.  Which was fun, of course, but we are on stage so briefly.  The performance is mostly just waiting in the dressing room, standing around, chatting, then whup whup time to go rush rush rush sing the stuff okay back down to the room okay more chatting.  After our second song, which was the concert's grand finale *pauses to brush dust off shoulder*, we made efforts to get back to the vans and out of Indy as quickly as possible.  Another two hour drive home - mitigated by a short stop for sodas halfway through - and then a trip to return the vans once everyone was dropped off got me home at around 1:00 AM.  About 11 hours all told start to finish.

A fun time!  And not your everyday experience.  But oh, will it ever be dwarfed by the things to come singing with this group.  Stay tuned.