Tim Bach band serenades fair crowd

Danielle Switalski

The sky was a grayish purple hue and the clouds were swirling and dancing as if to the tune of the Tim Bach band Thursday night at the fair. The lights were mesmerizingly similar to the color of the sky and accentuated every rock song played by the band that night.

The crowd was a combination of the young and old, and the music could be enjoyed by people of all ages. The stage was centered in the middle of the dirt pit in the main arena with mostly young teens surrounding the stage.

The band began their set with Christian rock songs off their new album, Graceology, the band’s fifth full-length record. The theme of the concert was Revolution, going along with the chorus of one of their hits “I’m gonna start a revolution.” However, if Christian rock is not the type of music you enjoy, the band played mostly popular cover songs such as “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Route 66” for the second half of the show at which point almost everyone was singing and clapping along.

The Tim Bach band is known for their Christian rock songs and the emotion and connection to the lyrics could be seen on lead singer Tim Bach’s face throughout the concert.

This is not Tim Bach and bass player Lonnie Chapin’s first time to Plains. The two best friends came to Plains a while back to help chop wood for women in need of wood for heat in the winter. They were then invited to do an assembly program at Plains schools at which time they were invited back to the Sanders County Fair, and agreed to return after having “a great time” on their first visit.

“We’re really excited because sometimes in bigger towns, they are saturated with entertainment, but we are always in a big environment and when you come to small towns, sometimes people are a lot more excited which is fun for us,” said Bach.

The band, which includes mostly guys who began with Bach from the beginning 17 years ago are drummer Brandon Coker who plays with a band named Fee that had a number one song in Christian rock called “All because of Jesus,” guitarist Dusty Beach who played with a band called Day of Fire which had the number one Christian rock album of the year and guitarist Michael Walker who is an engineer and producer at Shetland Productions in Atlanta.

The Tim Bach band has been on the road for 17 years, playing for all 50 states and in five continents. Despite their success, Bach keeps grounded by remembering the background he came from.

“I would just say all of us came from challenging backgrounds, none of us were born with any silver spoons, it was a lot of hard work,” said Bach. “We love this and love music and I think it’s cool that the tough things that a lot of us went through in our lives, really positioned us and made us endure it for working our way towards something that was a little bit of a dream.”

After living on the streets, Bach was taken in by a man who entered him into a program to try and “get straight.” The program had a tour band that went to public high schools to play. Bach auditioned and made it into the band where he then met Chapin.

After living in the same apartment complex for a few years, Bach moved to Atlanta and Chapin moved to Nashville with his brother. It wasn’t long until Chapin called Bach and asked him to come to Nashville to record a few songs.

“So I came up and sang a few songs and that kicked up and it was a ripple effect and I kept making records and years later here we are still playing all over the place,” said Bach.

Bach stressed his constant amazement at the fact that he is able to do something he loves and get paid for it. He added that everybody has remained focused and thankful to be where they are and was excited to interact with the crowd at the fair and just have a great time.

If Bach had one piece of advice to share with the crowd it is that “people should work at whatever craft or art that they enjoy, invest themselves in it and try to perfect it and do the best they can with it because in the end success is just disguised as a lot of hard work, but it’s worth it.”