Sound of Faith 1972 Cable TV pilot shoot The Story!

Here's the TV taping story, as best as we can recall...

Rod Washowich, the associate pastor at our church, had a friend who worked at the Presbyterian Church in Palm Desert. His friend wanted us to perform at a Sunday service, so we went there on a Saturday night overnighter, and sang in the church the next morning. After the service, a guy (who we remember as a little old guy, but who knows? — he might have been younger than we are now) came up to us and said that we should be on television. Since we heard that all the time, we didn't take him too seriously. But he was persistent, and called Rod later that week. Rod talked to Steve G., Steve H. and Mike (the 3 senior members of our group), who decided to look into it. That's when we hooked up with Mike Elley, who had experience producing and directing television shows, and managing groups.

So then we went to Palm Desert with Mike Elley to meet with the little old guy and see the studio. Now this guy was an retired oil executive who had a weekly 15 minute show about the oil industry on the cable station. Back then, the local cable stations usually just showed a stationary picture of a thermometer, a barometer and clock most of the time. This guy didn't own the station, but he had some kind of pull there. So, after meeting with him and seeing the facilities, we decided to do the pilot. This guy insisted on being the announcer for our show, and we couldn't say no. We recall that his introduction on the pilot went something like, "...And now, here they are, the Sounds of Faith!", and we all cringed but couldn't get him to change it. But the pilot was pretty good, with lots of music. We taped it in their large, new studio and, with Mike Elley in the control room producing and directing, we completed the entire show in just a couple of hours.

Sometime after the pilot taping, we were informed that TelePrompter wanted a series of 13 shows, but that we would have to tape the series in their smaller studio in San Bernardino. They set the schedule for us to tape in 13 successive nights. But, based on our previous experience in Palm Desert with Elley at the controls, we felt that we could tape a show in a couple of hours. So we worked hard over the course of the summer to rehearse, build sets, make costumes and write some skits, so that we could accomplish 13 shows in 13 nights.

Then, in September, right after Labor Day, we went to the studio in San Bernardino. But our experience in that studio was very different. First of all, they told us that much of their equipment was missing, due to their studio having been broken into and robbed by "a bunch of hippies." (If you look at our photos, what do you think we looked like to them?) So they already had a bad attitude toward us. Then, someone on their end butted heads with Mike Elley, insisting that he, not Elley, was the director, and they threw Elley out of the taping! We stayed behind and attempted to tape the show, but without Elley's direction, things were going very badly. Finally, it was nearly midnight, and we only had 15 usable minutes on tape! So, we went into the break room to discuss our situation and decided that it just wasn't working out. We tore up our contract (which they had never signed), and went home. And that was the end of our big break into sho-biz!