At the San Antonio stop on the Elevation Nights Tour, Scott Gardner, Elevation Worship’s keys player, lost the click in his in-ear monitors during their acoustic set. Chris Brown picked up on the issue and subtly but effectively kept Scott on time.

Elevation shared the moment on Instagram, and it garnered tons of views and comments of people who were either impressed, could relate all too well, or both!

We were among the impressed and decided to dig into the situation further with Scott on how he remained so calm, practical tips for when this happens on tour or on Sunday, and more.

So we, among many others, loved this video Elevation shared last week of you losing click in your in ears at the San Antonio stop of the tour and how Chris Brown kept you on track. Can you tell us more about what happened? How were you and Chris able to silently communicate?

San Antonio was an interesting night for sure.

There’s a point in the show where we would transition down to the front of the stage to do an acoustic set. I played while the worship leaders were setting up the moment. Right when it was time to start the set, the click never started in my ear.

At this point, there were thousands of people watching and ready for the set. So it was either stop the flow of the show to fix the issue or keep going. I decided to keep going.

But the real secret is, I genuinely thought that everyone on stage didn’t have click in their mix and something might have happened with our session because we made a couple new adjustments to that particular set right before the show started. I had no idea that I was the only one without click until halfway through the last song in the set. I’ve been worshipping alongside Chris for about 2-3 years now. He knew something was off from the very beginning of the set.

What song were you playing when the click stopped?

We were doing a five song set at the time which included “Million Little Miracles,” “See A Victory,” “Never Lost,” “Shall Not Want” and “Jireh.”

How long were you off click, and when did Chris come to the rescue?

I was off click for the whole time during this acoustic set. So from the beginning, I just decided to lock in with Chris’s vocal and anticipate the tempo with how he was singing.

I noticed Chris tapping halfway through the first song but I was able to notice one of the other worship leaders, Isaiah “Zeek” Templeton, tapping his foot to help with tempo as well. I was also able to lock in with our MD for this tour run, Joey Signa, who played acoustic guitar for that particular set. Once he started playing, I was able to set in the groove with him.

It was definitely a full-team effort.

You remained very calm (as did Chris). How do you keep your cool and not panic? Have you been in a situation like this before?

I was able to keep my cool by just reverting mentally to what life was like before I started using click.

I’ve been playing keys for a long time. So there’s been more years of me not using click than having it, in my career. I also trusted the fact that I was prepared through rehearsals and trusting everyone I was on stage with at the time. In my head, we were all in this together.

“The use of a click track is an interesting thing…on one hand, it has dramatically helped our team through the years play tight and stay very synced. And of course, having the ability to use supporting tracks for our songs has added a lot to our sets. But on the other hand, you can become a slave to it if you’re not careful, and it can become a crutch. As a musician, you should stay in the driver’s seat and make sure the click is serving your team’s ultimate purpose.”
- Chris Brown

What typically causes something like this and how do you avoid it happening?

In this case, there was a simple switch up with my IEM pack. I was given the wrong one before going down to front center stage for the acoustic set.

The best thing to do in cases like that is to always check with your monitor engineer before the experience even begins.

Do you recommend a redundancy setup for things like this? What would that look like?

I believe that having something as simple as a talkback mic would have been more than enough to help with the problem. There was just no way to communicate to anyone that I had no click at the time.

Share your biggest live production fail moment.

It’s kind of hard to top the biggest fail for me outside the San Antonio stop, but one that comes to mind happened during our Easter season this year.

We celebrated Good Friday with a beautiful experience curated by the Elevation team. One of the songs that we sung for this experience was "Communion" by Brooke Ligertwood (amazing song). If you’ve ever heard or played this song you know the time signature in the chorus can be a little tricky.

For some reason, something happened with the session and the click just went off the rails during the biggest part of the song. Somehow, we managed to play and sing against a click that seemed to feel like it doubled or skipped in our ears.

What lessons did you learn from this experience that you think would be of help to worship leaders who may end up in a similar situation?

I think the biggest take away anyone can learn from a situation like that is to trust your entire team and the preparation you put into something like this.

Click is absolutely a necessity but it’s also a privilege.

If I only relied on click and not trusted the team that I had the honor of sharing such a stage with every night for this tour, I might not have gotten through it as easily.

Watch the Reel on instagram

When The Click Stops with Elevation Worship