Ahhhh, the last concert before Christmas – and what a concert it was!  Out of all the artists that come into the area every year, this group is one that is rare to find in Southern Missouri.  Yet, when they do get booked in, they make some of the best memories and perform some of the best concerts.  That’s why I think this evening was so special – not just because it was the last concert I would attend before the Christmas holiday – but because of who we were seeing during this special season of the Lord’s birth.  Any guesses as to who this group might be?  If you said The Mark Trammell Quartet – you were right!

Once again, I found myself driving up North 5 (the wiggly, wiggly road that it is!) – In search of  the Calvary Baptist Church where Truelove Quartet and the Mark Trammell Quartet would sing that night.  I can say one thing about North 5, it is decorated for CHRISTMAS!  Many houses were outlined by beautiful lights…and not only the houses, but bushes, trees, porch columns, you name it – it had Christmas lights on it!  If I didn’t have my hands on the wheel, I would’ve taken some pictures to post!  They were just so festive!  Well, ya’ll didn’t come on here to read about Christmas lights, so let’s jump right into the concert!  As we were walking into the sanctuary, the Truelove Quartet was singing the Kingsmen’s latest radio single, That’s All I Need…

The Truelove Quartet finished up singing That’s All I Need, and went into He Looked Beyond My Fault (and saw my need).  Jesse Carter was featured on this one, and I couldn’t help but notice that the quartet was wearing “holiday attire” (Christmas colors!) Of course,  you can’t have a concert in December and not sing some Christmas tunes, and Truelove’s next two songs were just that!  Chris Judy sang an up-beat number about the birth of Christ called I Will Glory in the Story and Darrell had fun telling Christmas jokes about Santa’s reindeer in between songs.  Settling down for a more serious ballad, Faces followed, and featured a little bit of everyone on the verses.  If you’ve read some of the other reviews of concerts in Lebanon hosted by Truelove Quartet, you’ll remember that Darrell Pollock is our Missouri State Representative.  He shared about being in the Capital and dealing with issues that those of his trade deal with, and what a contrast there is between what the other politicians claim as “the answer to the problems” and what he knows to be truth from the Word of God.   They sang Saved By Grace, and then Midnight Cry closed out their set.

As the Mark Trammell Quartet came up and took their places on stage, Mark asked, “If you love the Lord tonight, say amen.”  After a rather weak response, Mark said, “I know you can do better than that!  If Mizzou was playing you would do better than that, so I’ll ask you again, ‘If you love the Lord tonight say amen!’”…and a much better applause echoed all over the room.  The music began with an old convention song called Hallelujah, I’m Going Home.  Shouts and more applause filled the air as MTQ sang…no more encouragement was needed for an encore, and they sang another round of the chorus.  With so much energy in the air, Jim (tenor) reached over and slapped Mark on the shoulder in a friendly gesture.  Not to be outdone, Pat took a step closer to Dustin and slapped his keyboard.  When the song ended, Pat took a step back and slightly bent over and pretended to be out of breath. Meanwhile, Dustin happily started playing another encore.  Upon realizing what Dustin was doing, Pat jumped over to Dustin’s keyboard and began slapping the keys (or was he slapping Dustin’s fingers?) – to get him to stop playing the song.  Mark laughed at their antics and quickly introduced the quartet.  He started with Jim Cox, who’s been filling in the tenor position while they look for a new tenor.  (Whom they announced will be Eric Philipps.)  Next, Mark introduced lead singer Dustin Sweatman and bass vocalist Pat Barker, and the later presented the soul stirring ballad – How Big Is God?  (What power flows off the stage and wraps around the audience when they sing that song!)  That one was done back to back with a snappy quartet number, Old Convention Song.  When that one closed, Mark said, “You know it’s good singing when you’ve blessed yourself!”  The crowd giggled.  Mark sought out Wayne Truelove and complemented his group.  “If that pretty little 17 year old was singing with us we’d look a whole lot better too!” Mark teased, then sincerely added, “I’m tickled to see kids singing our music.”  Looking over to his right, he asked for that “old one” (Jim) to come over by him.  Jim made a funny face about being called “old,” while Mark inquired of the audience who was over 40 … and instructed everyone to be honest.  LOL.  “Now, some of you are lying!” Mark exclaimed, and explained that this next song was one that he believed that age group would specifically enjoy, it was Hide Thou Me.  (Featuring Jim – who did a great job on it!)  Echoes From the Burning Bush followed.  On the chorus, Jim noticed that a lady was taking a picture and stepped over to Mark and they both smiled for her.  Then suddenly, in the middle of the soft part of the chorus, they all stopped singing.  “You okay?” Mark asked Jim in reference to his high vocals.  Jim answered, “Yeah.”  Mark replied, “I don’t know what that was, but it was cute.”  As they started singing again, Jim did a little jig – and they had to stop again.  This time Mark announced, “For some reason they liked that!!!”  For the second time they started that part of the chorus again and Jim did the same thing, which made everyone giggle again.  It was hilarious!  Once they made it through that song, Wedding Music began.  Dustin slipped around the keyboard and joined them on center stage as  Mark laid his bass guitar aside.  The next song featured Dustin, as he was singing the verses to Testimony, I couldn’t help but think that he had the confidence of Captain America! (If you replace the mic with a shield, in the picture, what do you get?  A perfect Captain America pose!)  LOL!  Another ballad came next, How Long Has It Been.  Afterwards, Mark said, “I love that song,” and quoting the first verse he continued, “They don’t write songs like that anymore, I wish they did…”

“There is one thing that I know for sure, that I can answer tonight, and it’s not on my authority that I do so, but on the authority of the Word of God.  The Bible teaches me that our sins are scattered as far as the east is from the west…only a perfect love, from a perfect God could do that.  Satan would like to think that he can do whatever he wants to do to the child of God in this day and time.  And if we’re pretty honest with each other, in certain areas, he’s done a pretty good job with what he wants to do, but there is one thing that I know for sure of tonight, that he can’t do – he can’t keep the born again Believer from loving the One that died for them.”

And pointing to a fan in the back, Mark said, “I’m going to sing this for you tonight, buddy.”  The song was the stirring ballad, Loving the Lamb.  A big applause arose in the room at end of second verse – all four guys were so in tune with the message they were singing, it was moving.  An immediate standing ovation!  Speeding up to a faster song, Standing on the Solid Rock came next.  The audience participated with a lot of clapping on this one – both, clapping along with the beat and offering an applause at the end.  Dustin stepped back and pushed the “encore” button and gave Mark a little push, making him stagger.  After the encore, Mark said that he would like to do that again, but didn’t have the energy.  While Mark was saying that Jim sat down on a stool for a moment.  Mark turned to him and said, “Why are you sitting down?”  Mark peeked at his watch and told the audience that he and Wayne didn’t even talk about how long they were supposed to sing!  Wayne answered by saying they could sing for as long as they wanted.  The audience applauded in agreement.  They took a moment to do a Cd pitch and then kept on singing!  Is it me, or do the product pitches keep getting funnier and funnier?  Mark was showing everyone the Christmas Cd they have available, and Mark had Dustin keep holding it out further and further, because he couldn’t read it – finally, Mark took the Cd from Dustin and dropped it on the floor, saying, “I can read it from there!”  The humor continued as Mark said, “This year for Christmas I’m getting a new engine in my bus… and I don’t like buying my own Christmas present, so you are going to help them,” (here he pointed to the guys) “buy it for me.”  The other three guys made some contorted faces when he said that.  LOL.

MTQ having a good time...

“Let’s do another old Cathedral tune I did back in the 80’s,” said Mark.  After another remark from Pat (who was giving Mark a hard time about the number of years between being with the Cats and now…I think he said something about 100?) Mark said, “You’re having a hard time with time tonight!”  Pat just laughed, then Mark added, “You’re ‘time’ is coming up real soon!”  Turning to the other side of the stage, Mark addressed Jim, “What did you say? – You were a baby in the eighties?”  Jim made an effort to make his remark sound casual, “It’s been so long, I can’t remember…”   Soon they just decided to sing another song, Bloodwashed Band!  Another Cats song featuring Mark came next, That Day At Calvary.  After that, Mark exclaimed, “Let’s try a Christmas song!”  Jim cried out, “No!!!”  Mark and Dustin huddled together in low whispers discussing the song they would choose.   Then a little louder, Mark could be heard saying, “Just five clicks and it starts…”  And Jim (who didn’t know one word of the Christmas song MTQ would be singing) said, “You’re not even going to give me a word?”  Mark tapped a finger on his lips in deep thought and mumbled to himself, “A word?  Hmmmm…”  Then his eyes light up with an answer, “Watermelon!  That’s a good one!”  Jim looked totally confused, so Mark explained that when he was a young singer, someone told him that if you didn’t know the words to a song, just sing “watermelon” over and over again and no one would notice.  Mark no sooner finished imparting his words of wisdom when the “five clicks” sounded and they began singing Carol of the Bells.  Jim had a little fun on this one, when they came to the part where the tenor sings, “Oh, how they pound, raising the sound,” Jim sang, “Oh, how I love  w a t e r m e l o n !”  The crowd just burst with laughter!!!  I don’t know how those guys finished singing without laughing too!  It was so funny!  Marks said, “That was a train wreck;  let’s see if we can redeem ourselves.  How many of you like sweet tea, cornbread, etc.?”  (While Mark was listing off foods, Jim loudly added “watermelon” to the list which made Pat just die of laughter!)  Mark, trying to compose himself from that off-the-cuff joke, said, “Let’s sing this song for plain, ordinary folks like us.”  It was another Christmas tune, O, Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.  “How many moms do we have here?” and Mark asked for a show of hands.  Mark told us about his mom, and how the next song was her favorite Christmas song.  Mark had the solo on The Christmas Song, and made sure the guys knew that it was a song featuring him, and let them know that they could step back and take a break for the next couple of minutes.  A break???  Ha!  Instead of taking a break, the three mischievous background vocalists were putting on quite the show!  Dustin was directing Pat and Jim on what to sing for the vocals, and that worked fine until Pat started making suggestions himself!  The motions Pat was making as he tried to communicate what he wanted to do without speaking was hilarious!  When they did what he wanted successfully, they all gave each other high-fives.  (Mark of course, pretended to be oblivious to all these things as he was singing.)  On one part towards the end of the song, Pat stepped up behind Mark as he was singing to which Mark exclaimed (between lines), “Get away from me!”  But before the song ended, Pat succeeded and softly spoke these words to Mark, “Your hair looks pretty.”   Mark just lost it!  He started laughing!  Happy with the reaction they produced at the end of the song, Jim, Pat and Dustin lined up and took a bow.  The night ended with Mark’s favorite Christmas song, O Holy Night.  This song is stellar to begin with, and given the energy and emotion these guys put into it, you can’t stay in your seat . . . and this crowd agreed  . . . Can you say, “Another standing ovation?”  (!!!!)

Dustin teaches Jim the words to Carol of the Bells

Conclusion:  What more is there to say?  Every time I see these guys in concert I think they just can’t get any better!  My favorite part of the evening had to be the Christmas songs!  MTQ combined stellar vocals with just enough humor for a perfect combination of fun and great singing.   It is quite amazing to see that one of the most traditional quartets out there, no matter what setting they are in, get such a response from their audiences.  These guys have something special going . . . I’ve been to many a concert where no matter how hard the artists try, they just can’t get a response from the folks they are singing to.  Not so with MTQ!!!  When these guys take the stage, right from the first few notes, energy and excitement flows from the stage into the audience . . . their excitement truly is infectious  . . . combine that excitement with powerful vocals and you are in for one Spirit filled evening of ministry!  Thanks guys for giving and perserving the treasure of Gospel Music and the message of our Lord and Savior!  (Loved the “bus decorations” too!)

Mark givin' Jim a hard time...or maybe it was the other way around?