Catholic Campus Ministries opened with a fake news show announcing Audrey Assad's concert with a reporter interviewing Gideon Barr, a Southeast student and member of CCM, about her. Barr, who performed as the master of ceremonies, made a few jokes, which included him pretending not to know who she was and, based on hearing only her name, asking offhanded comments about if she was a terrorist or a dictator. Assad is of Syrian descent. Barr returned to the stage to introduce Assad officially by showing a few of her tweets on the screen.
Audrey Assad walked onto the stage wearing olive green leggings, a sparkling black shirt and knee high brown boots. She pushed her hair out of her face and settled down on the lone bench in front of the piano, smiling out at the crowd.
"I don't usually get introduced by a terrorist joke and my tweets on the screen. Then again, it is Cape Girardeau, Mo.," Assad said.
She curved her fingers and began to play her piano.
DICE, Student Government and Catholic Campus Ministries, along with a few others, brought to Southeast Assad, a four-time Grammy nominee who is friends with well-known Christian singers like Matt Maher, who has released his fifth album. Two of the songs she sang, "Restless" and "Garden" were co-written with Maher.
"It was my pleasure to emcee for this concert," Barr said.
The concert lasted from 7:30 to 9 p.m.
Assad sang 15 songs and concluded the concert with an encore. Assad joked that normally she walks off the stage first and then comes back, but since everyone started in saying, "encore"right away, she decided to just stay there. She asked for requests and then began to play "Show Me."
Her first song "Dream" was a new one. After the first song, she said it was weird to be back at a college. She'd only gone for three classes one semester.
"I wanted to be a musician," Assad said.
After some of the songs, Assad explained her feelings and motivations behind some of the songs she wrote.
She played "I Love Him So," which was written for her husband while they were dating.
She also sang "Until You Came Along," from her album The Cancer Years, which came out of her motivation to write a "fun" song during a stressful time of her life when her husband was diagnosed with cancer early in their marriage.
"I mean, not every song has to be appropriate for a funeral," Assad said.
About midway through the concert, she opened up the floor to accept songs to translate, which meant taking something like a "poppy" song such as Michael Jackson or Beyonce, as Assad called it, and translating it into her kind of music, which was soft, contemporary music.
"I might brush up on my pop music before I do that again," Assad said.
She managed to translate a few lyrics from Beyonce and House of Jupiter. After her attempt, she returned to playing her own songs. She played "Come Clean," which she said was written at a time in her life when her writing was fruitful.
"Breaking You" was her next song, which she said came out of a period of her life when her parents were getting a divorce. She performed "Sparrow," which was the title track of her album "Sparrow" and a few other songs. She ended the night with "Restless."
