7:00 a.m. · Registration
Powered by Sheer Righteousness was formed in Dallas in the spring of 1984 for a single regional sales rally in a hotel ballroom off the Stemmons Freeway. Denise Haldane assembled it. She was a keyboard player and arranger who had spent four years writing radio jingles in Dallas, and she had been asked to supply twenty minutes of music between the second and third speakers.
She hired Ron Petrakis and Phil Ammons from the jingle sessions and Curtis Bell from a music-theory class she taught on Saturdays. The singer was Gary Lindquist, a copier salesman who had sung the national anthem at his company’s last three regional meetings. The set ran twenty minutes to the second. The meeting planner booked the band for four more rallies before the coffee break was over.
From the stage
“Every room is already on its feet. Some of them just haven’t stood up yet.”
— Gary Lindquist, from the stage, Houston, 1986
7:30 a.m. · Agenda
The band's history, printed as the agenda of a single convention day. Every session is in the order it happened. Times are as printed in the programs the band kept.
1984–1985
The first bookings were the ones nobody else wanted. In 1984 and 1985 the band played the 7:00 a.m. breakfast session at sales meetings in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, to rooms of salespeople holding coffee and pastries. Gary Lindquist sang every one of those sessions as if it were the last night of a tour.
Denise Haldane built the early set around the agenda. A breakfast session ran forty minutes. The band played the first four and the last six. In between, it played under the announcements at a level the room could talk over. Meeting planners noticed that the 8:15 general session started on time when the band had played breakfast. They began booking the band for the whole day.
1986–1990
From 1986 the band was the house act of the Sun Belt convention circuit. It played between keynote speakers in hotel ballrooms from Phoenix to Orlando, sixty to ninety sessions a year. The work was exact. A speaker’s walk-on was timed to the second, and so was the song that ended under it.
Denise Haldane wrote every arrangement to the agenda. She kept a stopwatch on the music stand and a printed program on the synthesizer rack, and she rewrote endings in the corridor when a session ran long. The band traveled with five road cases, two garment bags each and the program for every meeting it played. The archive holds four hundred and twelve of the programs.
1987–1991
Every session ended at the product table. The band sold its audio programs from the back of the room: cassettes, cassettes with workbooks, and three-ring binders with tabbed dividers. Denise Haldane ran the cash box. Gary Lindquist shook every hand at the table, with both of his.
The second program, You Are Already There, came out in 1987. Denise had the title painted on a cloth banner for the release, and it hung behind the band at every session for the next four years. It was rolled after the last song, carried in the bass-drum case and hung again the next morning in the next city.
1990–1991
By 1990 the circuit was changing. Companies held fewer conventions. Hotels installed their own sound systems, and walk-on music came from a tape deck run by the audiovisual crew. The band recorded its last program, The Awards Banquet, live at three banquets that year.
In the spring of 1991 Denise Haldane was offered the position of musical director at a dinner theater in Fort Worth. She accepted it and told the band in a hotel corridor in Tulsa, between sessions. The last session was a regional awards banquet in Dallas that June, in a ballroom off the Stemmons Freeway, seven years after the first. The band packed the road cases after the recessional. The banner was rolled on the floor and not hung again.
8:15 a.m. · Presenters
Five musicians, as listed in the program. Each badge is reproduced with the ribbon its wearer was issued. Biographies are printed as submitted.
Stemmons Audio Programs
Denise
Haldane
Dallas, Texas
Session roleKeyboards, harmony vocals, musical director
Arranges · Directs · Books · Keeps the cash box
Founded the band, wrote every arrangement, booked every date and kept the cash box. Timed every song to the second with a stopwatch on the music stand.
“A speaker walks on in eleven seconds. The song ends in eleven seconds.”
“Belief is a feeling. A downbeat is a decision.”
Stemmons Audio Programs
Gary
Lindquist
Garland, Texas
Session roleLead vocals
The keynote. Wore a headset microphone from 1985 and kept a handheld as well, so that he always had one hand free to raise and one to hold.
“I don’t sing at a room. I sing with it.”
“You are already there. I just say it louder.”
Stemmons Audio Programs
Ron
Petrakis
Richardson, Texas
Session roleLead guitar
A jingle-session guitarist. Played every solo exactly as charted and exactly as long.
“Denise writes eight bars. I play eight bars. That is the whole arrangement between us.”
Stemmons Audio Programs
Curtis
Bell
Mesquite, Texas
Session roleBass
The youngest member, nineteen at the first rally. Wore his conference badge on stage at every session, on a lanyard, with the first-timer ribbon still attached.
“I was nineteen. Everyone in the room had a quota but me. So I made one.”
Stemmons Audio Programs
Phil
Ammons
Irving, Texas
Session roleDrums
Kept time for the band and for the agenda. Counted in every walk-on from the second hand of the ballroom clock.
“Seven a.m. is not early. It is the downbeat of the day.”
10:00 a.m. · Back of the Room
Three programs, sold at the product table after every session. Each one is a cassette with a workbook. The J-cards are reproduced from the archive's copies, opened flat.
Stemmons Audio Programs
Volume One
Powered by Sheer Righteousness
1985 · Audio Program
WorkbookThe first audio program. One cassette and a twelve-page workbook, sold from the back of the room. Recorded in Dallas in two days between conventions. Every song runs as long as a walk-on, a coffee break or a lunch line.
Side A
Side B
Chrome tape · Play at normal speed
Open the programStemmons Audio Programs
Volume Two
Powered by Sheer Righteousness
1987 · Audio Program
WorkbookThe second audio program, and the one that gave the banner its words. Two cassettes in a vinyl album with a forty-page workbook. Arranged and produced by Denise Haldane.
Side A
Side B
Chrome tape · Play at normal speed
Open the programStemmons Audio Programs
Volume Three
Powered by Sheer Righteousness
1990 · Audio Program
WorkbookThe last audio program. Recorded live at awards banquets in Dallas, Atlanta and Phoenix in 1989 and 1990, between the salad course and the plaques. The applause is the audience’s own.
Side A
Side B
Chrome tape · Play at normal speed
Open the program
1:30 p.m. · Breakout Sessions
The customs of the band, on the overhead projector, and three banquet event orders from hotels on the circuit.
01 / 04
Cloth, nine feet by two. Hand-lettered in navy in 1987 for the release of You Are Already There. Hung behind the band at about three hundred sessions. Rolled after each one and carried in the bass-drum case. It was last hung in Dallas in June 1991. The archive holds it rolled.
02 / 04
Denise Haldane timed every song, every walk-on and every set with a stopwatch taped to the music stand. Her charts carry the running time in the top right corner in pencil, to the second. No session she directed ran long.
03 / 04
At every session the band handed out blank index cards with a single printed line: MY GOAL. Gary Lindquist asked the room to write one down before the last song. Salespeople still send the archive their cards. Several of the goals are checked off.
04 / 04
Curtis Bell was given a first-timer ribbon on his badge at the band’s first convention in 1984. He never took it off. By 1991 the ribbon had been to more conventions than anyone in most of the rooms. It is in the archive, still pinned to the badge.
Issued by the hotel to its staff before each function. The notes are the banquet captain's, entered after the event.
Captain's notes
At a general session in San Antonio in October 1985, the cable on Gary Lindquist’s handheld microphone failed in the second verse. He walked to the lectern, bent the gooseneck microphone up as far as it would go and sang the rest of the song from behind it. The room stood for the last chorus. The following week Denise Haldane bought a headset microphone. Gary wore it at every session from then on, and carried the handheld as well, in case.
Follow-up
Band to supply its own headset microphone. Done.
Captain's notes
The 9:00 a.m. keynote at a national sales meeting in Phoenix in March 1988 was held in Denver by snow. The meeting planner asked the band to cover. Denise Haldane rewrote the set on the back of the program in the corridor: every song the band had, in an order that would build, with the walk-on held for last. The band played for fifty-two minutes. The speaker arrived at 9:54, was handed a headset in the service corridor and walked on to his own music, on time.
Follow-up
Keynote to be met at the airport by the band's car. Noted.
Captain's notes
In August 1989 the band was booked for an awards banquet in Salon A of a hotel ballroom in Orlando. Salon B, on the other side of the folding partition, had been booked for a lecture to an association of cardiologists. The banquet captain asked whether the band could play quietly. Denise Haldane rearranged the program for half volume in twenty minutes. Phil Ammons played the banquet with brushes. Gary Lindquist sang without the headset. The lecture ran to time. Two of the cardiologists bought cassettes on the way out.
Follow-up
Band to be placed in Salon A only when Salon B is dark. Requested.
3:00 p.m. · The Circuit
Ten cities in 1988, from the band's own calendar. Hotels and clients are not named. Opening and closing sessions are marked.
Today's events
The Circuit · 1988
4:45 p.m. · Evaluations
Forms returned by members of the audience, and one clipping from the trade press. Entered without amendment.
Session Evaluation
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Comments
First year selling copiers. I had not made quota once. They played the breakfast session in Tulsa and the singer shook my hand at the table. I made quota that quarter and every quarter after. I still have the binder.
— D. Whitaker, regional sales manager (retired), Tulsa, OK
Session Evaluation
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Comments
I planned meetings for twenty-two years. They were the only act that ever ended exactly when the agenda said. The keyboard player had the program memorized.
— M. Reyes, meeting planner, San Antonio, TX
Session Evaluation
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Comments
My mother won Rookie of the Year at the 1989 banquet in Atlanta. They played her song while she walked up. She played the cassette in the car for the rest of my childhood.
— J. Pruitt, Marietta, GA
From the trade press
A Dallas five-piece has played more general sessions than most keynoters. Its musical director times every one of them to the second.
By L. Okafor
Meeting planners across the South describe Powered by Sheer Righteousness the same way: on time. The Dallas band played seventy-four sessions last year, from Phoenix to Orlando, and did not run long at one of them.
The band’s musical director, Denise Haldane, is the reason. She writes every arrangement to the printed agenda, keeps a stopwatch on her keyboard and rewrites endings in the corridor when a speaker runs over. She also books the band, sets its fees and runs the product table. “The room has a schedule,” she said. “We are part of it.”
The singer, Gary Lindquist, wears a headset and carries a handheld microphone. Asked why he needs both, he said only that he had been in sales.
5:30 p.m. · Product Table
Back-of-Room Order Form
Shirts, cassettes and printed matter are issued through the Sideband Label store. Every order is packed by hand and shipped the next business day.
Please return your badge holder to the registration desk.
My goal
Already there.
Signed in the presence of the band
Front
General SessionGrand Ballroom8:15 a.m.
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Powered by Sheer RighteousnessDallas, Texas1984–1991On time. On message. On your feet.