|
Dear Essta Friends,
Howdy! Yes, we are still alive. We have not moved onto the great rockdome in the sky just yet. Many, many, many apologies for the lack of communication and hellos of late. To say that life has been pretty busy would be an understatement.
Firstly, we better fill you in on AGMF. Essta played the Theatre stage at AGMF over Easter and it was FULLY SIC!!! We had a great crowd show up for our set and it turned out to be a fun, dynamic, rockful time. Thankyou to everyone who made the effort to see us and thankyou to AGMF for having us and putting on such a great festival. Check out some AGMF pics:(insert link).
Now, we would like to make an announcement. Unfortunately, 2006 will be the final year as a band for Essta. This is something that we have been dreading, but we have thought and prayed about seriously. In life, things tend to change over the years and for us, family has taken a front seat. Nate, Ben and Judel were married in the last 2 years. Philemon and his wife have just had twins so now the child count for them is up to 3. Along with that, we have all taken a different direction as far as jobs are concerned, the biggest being Nate, who is now working in Cairns.
Its extremely sad to say goodbye to a major chapter in our lives, but we're excited and confident that God has big things lined up for each of us in the future.
We plan to play a couple more gigs before our demise, including, the all-out farewell show. So stay tuned. But thank you to everyone who has shown us support through the years.
Love yas all, and God Bless the Cowboys.
Essta.(Phil, Nate, Judel, Ben)
Ps. We've also post some pics of the extended Essta family. Check them out
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
25/5/05
Ciao amigos,
Well, yes, we played at AGMF and it was exhilarating. Nerves almost became the better of us. We felt very unworthy of playing such a big stage, for such a large audience… but we pushed aside our egos and the pressure to impress, and we played for fun and for God. In fact, in our opening we said “We can worship God at any time, in many ways, so let’s worship him now” and then launched into “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf. It was an extremely exciting time. Not one of our best performances, but without a doubt, the most fun we ever had onstage and off.
And if you thought preparing for and travelling to and from AGMF was a stressful time in our lives… it was nothing compared to the following 2 months. What causes more stress than anything else in the world? Yes, that’s right… weddings. And we’ve had 2 of them.
On Saturday, April 9th 2005, Judel married his beautiful bride, Stacey, up in the tropical far north of Queensland, Cairns. A wonderful wedding, that almost never was, according to some. Stacey had suffered terribly from sickness all that week, yet neither bride nor groom were willing to wait any longer. Judel wrote and performed a beautiful song for Stacey on the piano, which created a very moving wedding, bringing more tears from the groom than the bride. Raise your glasses to Judel and Stacey.
And then, on Sunday, May 22nd 2005, Ben married his bride and long time friend, Tabitha. A very picturesque, outdoor wedding, with a backyard, fairy-light fantasy land, reception. Ben, also, performed a song, for Tab, that he’d written on the guitar. A very dynamic song that varied from soft tearful moments to acoustic rock, including a merge, near the end of the song, into Essta’s “Where You Are” chorus. Not wanting to exclude anyone, Ben had his brother, Ivan, as Best Man and then, band members, Philemon, Nate and Judel as groomsmen. It was quite a musical day, including a short air guitar moment for the groom and groomsmen as Tab walked down the aisle.
With all the pressures, business and stress of the last few months, Essta is very glad to have a few weeks rest. A chance to catch up on song-writing, individual practice and sleep. We will reunite upon Ben’s return from his honeymoon, to prepare for a concert in Middle Mount, Queensland. A concert organised by Middle Mount’s school chaplaincy, for the last weekend of school holidays. We’ll be sharing the stage with fun-loving Townsville band, “Cranky Pants”. We’re very much looking forward to performing with them and for the whole westward journey.
Until next time, enjoy life, have fun and sprinkle some marshmallows on your rice bubbles,
Adios,
Nate.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
22/3/05
Helllooooo Friends,
This coming Thursday, Philemon, Nate, Judel and myself shall embark on a wondrous adventure. We shall all pile into Judel's executive business class vehicular transportation (VT Commodore), and we shall drive south...17 hours south, to the beautiful town of Toowoomba. The Australian Gospel Music Festival kicks off this Friday and we are extremely excited to be a part of the 136 artist line up.
We will be playing on SATURDAY AFTERNOON at 2:50PM, at the NOURISH MUSIC BIG TOP STAGE. If you're coming to AGMF, please come and see our set. And make sure you come and say g'day. If you're not coming to AGMF...well, than...come! Check out www.agmf.com.au.
We ask that you would keep us in your prayers. Other than that, we hope that you all have a grandiose Easter, and we pray that many a zit shalln't adorn your faces from the abundance of chocolate eggs, bunnys, and general consumption sugar enriched products.
Ciao,
Ben
Ps. Did you know that Essta has actually been called “Easter” on more than one occasion. That’s funny.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13/3/05
Aloha Friends,
Welcome to the brand new essta.com. We hope that you will enjoy your stay at our little home page. Everyone give a big “HOOAAH” to our web technician superstar, Simon.
Now, we would like to extend muchos thankyous to everyone who came out and saw us at Sonfest. It was a blast. It was our first time playing and we rocked hard, even during our little acoustic set. Thankyou to all who bought our cd and to all who said, “hey, you guys are cool!!!”. We appreciate you. Yes we do. You can check out photos from Sonfest on our photo page.
Our next big thing is AGMF. This will also be our first year playing Australian Gospel Music Festival, and we totally can’t wait. If you live near Brisbane or Toowoomba, or even if you don’t, please come out and see us. There’s more info about this gig on our gigs page, or check out www.agmf.com.au.
Now the biggest thing on the bill for Essta this year is the marriage of Judel and Ben (umm, not to each other). For those of you who don’t know, Nate tied the knot last year and we send out huge congrats to Nate and Reasha. In April, Judel shall wed the beautiful Stacey. And in May, Ben shall wed the beautiful Tabitha. This year will mark the official end to singledom for all the members of Essta. Hooray!
We would also like to announce that the wonderful Ezra Henderson shall now be a part of the Essta team. He will be coming on as our permanent sound technician and we are very excited about this as he is a fine and upstanding citizen who is much skilled in the area sound and audio. Thankyou Ezra.
So yea, welcome to the new Essta home page. Please sign the guest book, and please join our mailing list if you haven’t already done so. In all seriousness, we want to launch Essta out there in a big way, so can we ask that you help us in this. Please tell your friends about us and about essta.com. We will be doing some giveaways in the coming weeks for everyone who is on our mailing list.
Also, we ask that you would keep us in your prayers. We love you! You rock our faces off! And Jesus is rad!
Essta (Phil, Judel, Nate, Ben)
|
