Meet another Blogger

Howdy ya'll!

Did I get that right? As a kid growing up in rural minnesota the only exposure I had to the South was through TV, mainly Dukes of Hazzard. In fact, we even had two black labs named Bo and Luke that were big enough to ride around on in our yard. But I digress... I was trying to capture the southern drawl that I'll soon be hearing for a few consecutive days. Was it convincing? I'm pretty excited to battle heat, humidity, and homophobia all in one exciting sweep of the Bible Belt.

At any rate, my name is Brad and I'm an upper second tenor and official bus captain of the anything goes "Southern Belle." We're taking 3 busses, but sadly none will have oversized shoes adorning their shiny roofs. So, as matron mama of The Belle I'm in charge of making sure my traveling companions are all aboard and accounted for. You can imagine how this might be a challenge - corralling a few dozen gay men from place to place? Wish me luck.

I'll be honest, when the tour itinerary was first announced last year I rolled my eyes. "Why would we bother going down there?" I asked myself. "Couldn't we have flown to New Zealand instead?" While I do enjoy a good kiwi, as soon as Chorus Poohbahs explained the logic behind choosing the South as our touring destination I realized my folly. Of course we need to have a presence there! As "gay men building community through music" we have an obligation to use our voices to lift people out of the trauma that some must be suffering by living in less-than-enlightened states. Growing up gay in rural MN wasn't easy, but I had the Twin Cities to retreat to. Birmingham and Jackson don't necessarily enstill confidence in my heart.

In addition to all of this do-gooding our group will accomplish, I'm glad I'm getting a chance to explore the origin of the Civil Rights movement, something to which the GLBT movement obviously owes a huge debt of gratitude. I hope to explore that a titch in this blog as well.

Astute readers might be wondering how on earth I can keep up with a rigorous blogging schedule while spending several hundred miles on the bus? Well, through the miracles of modern technology I plan on buying a data plan to use my Bluetooth-enabled cell phone and laptop to connect me back to the North Star state. Fancy, I know. I also plan on bringing along a video camera so that any captivating moments might find themselves back to you gorgeous people and in a very homegrown documentary-vacation_video-esque DVD to share with friends, loved ones, and enemies.

With that, fair readers, I leave you with this:


PS: I just did a spellcheck for this post and discovered "GLBT" isn't in LiveJournal's dictionary. I have that same problem at the office but refuse to add it to help remind me - there's a lot of work that still needs to get done.